One year ago today, El Salvador, which is smallest and most densely populated country in Central America, became the first nation to make Bitcoin legal tender.
As you may know, on 5 June 2021, Zap Solutions (a Bitcoin payments startup that uses the Lightning Network) Founder and CEO Jack Mallers announced at Miami’s Bitcoin 2021 conference that El Salvador’s government wanted to pass legislation to make Bitcoin legal tender (alongside the U.S. dollar).
During his talk, an emotional Mallers presented a recorded video 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.
On 9 June 2021, this proposed bill got passed by the Legislative Assembly (with 62 out 84 voting in favor of it).
Then, on 25 June 2021, Reuters published a report that said El Salvador President Nayib Bukele had announced during a national address on 24 June 2021 that “Bitcoin Law” would become effective on 7 September 2021.
On 6 September 2021, President Bukele announced that his country had bought its first 200 bitcoins and they planned to buy “a lot more”.
Since September 2021, El Salvador has made 11 purchases of Bitcoin, with the country estimated to have bought a total of 2,381 bitcoins. The last $BTC purchase took place on 30 June 2022, when El Salvador bought 80 coins at an average price of $19,000.
Interesting, today (7 September 2022), which is the one-year anniversary of “Bitcoin Day”, Bitcoin is trading around $19,000, which is how much El Salvador had to pay for one bitcoin the last time it made a $BTC purchase.
Although some critics argue that El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has failed since the small Central American nation has ungained losses on its Bitcoin investment, there are also Salvodrans who are very happy and proud that their country embarked on this journey.
Image Credit
Featured Image via Pixabay
