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El Salvador President Purchases First 200 Bitcoin To Make Crypto Legal Tender



Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador, has purchased its first 200 Bitcoin (BTC) for the September 7 rollout of a new law set to make the cryptocurrency legal tender.


Bukele said:

“Our brokers will be buying a lot more as the deadline approaches.”

It has been reported that the purchase is part of a new $150 million Bitcoin fund passed last week by El Salvador’s Congress. The fund will be used to facilitate conversions from BTC to United States dollars in the lead-up to the new law being implemented. At current prices, the BTC purchase was worth just over $10.36 million.


However, in June of this year, El Salvador became the first country in the world to recognize Bitcoin as legal tender. Although the decision was met with praise by the Bitcoin community, detractors from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund warned that the new strategy isn’t a good idea. More recently, internal opposition saw hundreds across the country protest against the new Bitcoin Law.


The report said that meanwhile, Bank of America recently outlined at least four potential benefits to El Salvador accepting Bitcoin. In a report published in July, the bank said the country’s adoption of BTC could streamline remittances, promote financial digitization, provide greater consumer choice and open the country to foreign investors.

Likewise, the new Bitcoin Law gives Salvadorans the ability to hold the digital asset as part of a long-term investment strategy or withdraw it in cash at any of the 200 ATMs installed across the country. The country is also building infrastructure to support a state-issued Bitcoin wallet, dubbed Chivo.


Thus, the Chivo wallet will have its own ATM that allows citizens to withdraw cash 24 hours a day without paying commissions.


Source: Cointelegraph


 

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