President Nayib Bukele Describes What Legal Tender Means in El Salvador

By flarnrules | Talkin Bout Crypto | 10 Jun 2021

I'm going to make this quick to get to the content.

The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, was in a Twitter group last night with several prominent crypto folks. He explained what it means to make Bitcoin legal tender in the country. I have transcribed his description below:

Using Bitcoin - accepting Bitcoin - is going to be a mandate.

So, its not like, if you go to McDonalds and probably most of you don't like McDonalds, but anyway, if you go to McDonalds or whatever, um, they cannot say "we're not going to take your bitcoin".

They have to take it by law, because it's a legal tender, just like any other currency in any other part of the world. So if, for example, you go to Mexico, they have to take your Pesos. It's not like they will say "I'm not going to take your Pesos, you have to pay me with dollars". They have to take your Pesos because that's the legal tender of Mexico.

So, in the case of El Salvador, Bitcoin's gonna be legal tender just as the US Dollar. It's only not gonna apply for account, that's the only part where the US Dollar is gonna remain as the exclusive. Company balance sheets are going to be in US Dollars.

Companys' taxes can be paid with Bitcoin. So it's gonna be a full mandate, and everybody, every restaurant, every barber shop, every hotel, every bank, every personal transaction. If you wanna sell a car - everything can be paid in US Dollars or in Bitcoin, and nobody can refuse the payment.

Like, for example - foreign currencies - you can accepted it, but you are not obligated to accept it. You can do a transaction in Euros, but you are not obligated to do that transaction in Euros because it's not a legal tender here, it's just a foreign currency.

In the case of Bitcoin, it's gonna be legal tender, and it's gonna be treated like a national currency, so everybody has to accept it.