8 June, 2021
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said on June 5 that he would send a bill to Congress next week to make bitcoin legal tender in the country.
“In the short term this will generate jobs and help provide financial inclusion to thousands outside the formal economy,” Bukele said in a video shown at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami
Bukele took to Twitter to call promoting financial inclusion “a moral imperative” as well as path to growing El Salvador’s economy by providing access to credit, savings, investment and secure transactions.
But it’s unclear what is the “first bitcoin country” will imply for the Central American country, which is economically unstable and oppressively impoverished, with 70% of citizens lacking a bank account.
