On Monday (June 7), El Salvador President Nayib Bukele provided an update on the status on the proposed bill that Zap’s Jack Mallers — who helped with drafting the bill — announced at Miami’s Bitcoin 2021 conference last Saturday (June 5).
During his talk, an emotional Mallers, who is the founder and CEO of Zap Solutions (a Bitcoin payments startup that uses the Lightning Network), showed a recorded message from President Bukele and read out a small passage from the proposed bill:
Mallers went on to say that his firm would be opening an innovations centre in El Salvador with the help of Blockstream.
Later that day, the El Salvador president went on Twitter to explain the motivation for this decision to make Bitcoin a form of legal tender in his country:
He went on to say:
- “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.“
- “Furthermore, 70% of El Salvador’s population doesn’t have a bank account and work in the informal economy. Financial inclusion is not only a moral imperative, but also a way to grow the country’s economy, providing access to credit, savings, investment and secure transactions.“
- “We hope that this decision will be just the beginning in providing a space where some of the leading innovators can reimagine the future of finance, potentially helping billions around the world.“
The next day, President Bukele gave four reasons why crypto investors and entrepreneurs might want to consider moving to El Salvador.
And yesterday, he had the following update on the status of the proposed bill.
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IMAGE CREDIT
Photo by “Donbrandon” via Pixabay
