El Salvador has become the first country to make bitcoin legal tender, which president Nayib Bukele hailed as a historic step towards financial inclusion and economic growth for the poor Central American nation. Some poor countries have floated cryptocurrencies as a way of ending reliance on the dollar, which El Salvador made legal tender in 2000. The government will set up a trust at the Development Bank of El Salvador to enable automatic conversion of bitcoin to dollars. Overall, the move’s impact on El Salvador was expected to be small, given the size of its economy. “Being accepted as legal tender in a country is a coup for bitcoin.”– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2021

Source: The Irish Times June 09, 2021 18:11 UTC