El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele Pledges To Make First BTC Legal Tender As BTC Goes To Moon

By Vendata | Quick Crypto News | 6 Jun 2021

Thumbnail Source: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nayib-bukele-the-president-who-dares-to-say-the-unsayable-on-migrant-crisis-n05kzfjxq

El Salvador's president Nayib Bukele pledges to make Bitcoin (BTC) legal tender next week - the first in the world - as Bitmex promises to literally send BTC to the Moon in Q4.

El Salvador's Pledge For BTC Legal Tender

Before detailing the exciting event, it is first important to know what a legal tender is, and in this case a BTC legal tender. First, a legal tender 'is anything recognized by law as a means to settle a public or private debt or meet a financial obligation, including tax payments, contracts, and legal fines or damages.' (Investopedia, 2021, Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/legal-tender.asp). To put it in simple terms, a legal tender means lawfully putting something as a currency. For the most part, the world has fiat legal tenders - currencies often by the government - but not a crypto legal tender, especially BTC being the most popular crypto payment currency. Putting the definition in context for BTC means that El Salvador will legally be putting BTC as a part of the country's currencies, which is a very significant event for both the real and crypto world.

The announcement came at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami from Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, via Zoom. According to President Bukele, it is planned that the bill will be submitted next week that acknowledges BTC as legal tender. He also revealed that a partnership has been established with BTC payment firm Strike, launched by Jack Mallers - a 27-year-old American businessman and investor.

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In regards to the bill, President Bukele mentioned the following during the conference:

Next week, I will send to congress a bill that will make bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador. In the short term, this will generate jobs and help provide financial inclusion.

During the conference presentation, Mallers stated the following:

What’s transformative here is that bitcoin is both the greatest reserve asset ever created and a superior monetary network. Holding bitcoin provides a way to protect developing economies from potential shocks of fiat currency inflation.

The two quotes above essentially summarise the benefits of having BTC as a country's legal tender, the former in the short term and the latter in the long term.

Although there are great benefits for implementing BTC into El Salvador's economy, there are also some drawbacks to consider. The main factor to consider with having BTC as a legal tender is transactions. Legal tenders include as mentioned above 'tax payments, contracts, and legal fines or damages,' and this can become an issue with BTC being a decentralised cryptocurrency. Who holds the wallet to transact the payment and tracking El Salvador's economy with BTC can become a problem. Another aspect to consider with transactions is their fees, particularly with BTC not being updated for a long time and having no development team. As more and more people use BTC, its system potentially will become clogged, turning into Ethereum's (ETH's) current position. However, such issues have likely been recognised and addressed as low risk, so overall the establishment of a BTC legal tender is a great milestone.

The announcement of El Salvador's BTC legal tender has quickly gained popularity and support over the media, including Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao. The support from Zhao came in a tweet shown below. It can be visited here: https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1401372884648357893.

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Bitmex's Promise To Literally Send BTC To The Moon

Bitmex is a centralised cryptocurrency exchange and has recently made a promise of literally sending BTC to the Moon. A unique physical BTC will be minted and sent to the Moon by commercial space company Astrobatic Technology Inc. that Bitmex supports. This coin will contain one BTC with its address set to be publicly addressed. The project sounds ridiculous, yet is set to be done in the 4th quarter of this year. With BTC set to be reaching $1 million in the following years by the views of many, it does seem infuriating to think how much money is being sent away to the Moon.

On the project, Bitmex detailed the following:

Bitmex will mint a one-of-a-kind physical bitcoin, similar to the Casascius coins of 2013, which will be delivered to the Moon by Astrobotic. The coin will hold one bitcoin at an address to be publicly released, underneath a tamper-evident hologram covering.

They also noted the following:

The payload is occupying an official slot on the manifest. It will be the first-ever bitcoin to be on the surface of the Moon, with photographic evidence taken to prove it.

The coin that Bitmex will send on the Moon will contain the Bitmex name, mission name, minted date, and BTC price at the minting time.

For all the talk of bitcoin going to the moon, we’re actually going to do it,

Bitmex CEO Alex Hoptner stated.

Bitmex also referred to Elon Musk's claim of getting DOGE to the Moon, responding as follows:

We’ve nothing against Dog Money, [but] we felt it was only right to help bitcoin get there first.

The announcement was also tweeted on their Twitter account. The tweet is shown below and can be visited here: https://twitter.com/BitMEX/status/1400816060857819140.

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El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele Pledges To Make First BTC Legal Tender As BTC Goes To Moon

El Salvador's Pledge For BTC Legal Tender

Bitmex's Promise To Literally Send BTC To The Moon

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