El Salvador’s president to submit a bill to legalize Bitcoin
Miami, Jun 6 (EFE).- El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced that he would introduce a bill next week to make the Bitcoin crypto-currency a legal tender in the Central American country.
Bukele made the announcement in a recorded message played at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Florida on Saturday during a presentation by the founder of the lightning network payments platform Strike, Jack Mallers.
“In the short term, this will generate jobs and help provide financial inclusion to thousands outside the formal economy,” Bukele said in the recording.
The president also took to Twitter to explain that “Bitcoin will have 10 million potential new users and the fastest growing way to transfer 6 billion dollars a year in remittances.
“Besides, a big chunk of those 6 billion dollars is lost to intermediaries.
“By using Bitcoin, the amount received by more than a million low income families will increase in the equivalent of billions of dollars every year.”
Mallers said he had been working with Bukele in preparation for the move, which, if passed by the Congress, would make El Salvador the first country to formally adopt the digital currency.
More than 70% of El Salvador’s population does not have a bank account and is not in the financial system, according to Mallers.
He added that he would provide an open-source guide called Bitcoin for Countries, in the framework of the project.
An estimated 50,000 people have been part of the Bitcoin conference, which had former US congressman Ron Paul, senator Cynthia Lummis and the mayor of Miami-Dade county, Daniella Levine Cava, among its speakers.
