El Salvador will adopt bitcoin as legal tender, president says

By Mitchell McCluskey, CNN Business

El Salvador will become the first county to adopt bitcoin as a legal tender, Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele announced in a video recording shown during the Bitcoin 2021 conference held in Miami.

“Next week I will send to congress a bill that will make bitcoin a legal tender,” Bukele said, according to the conference’s organizer, Bitcoin Magazine.

Bukele said El Salvador partnered with digital finance company Strike to establish the logistics of the decision.

“Over 70% of the active population of El Salvador doesn’t have a bank account. They’re not in the financial system,” Strike CEO Jack Mallers said. “They asked me to help write a plan and that they viewed bitcoin as a world-class currency and that we needed to put together a bitcoin plan to help these people.”

El Salvador currently uses the United States Dollar as its official currency.