Encountering hostility from the World Bank, opposition parties and IMF to his stand to make bitcoin legal tender in EI Salvador, President Nayib Bukele has promised $30 for each netizen who endorse the crypto.
Began by Bukele, this month EI Salvador’s parliament accepted a law to allow the crypto money to be accepted as tender for all services and goods in the small Central American country, along with its national currency – the US dollar.
The digital currency is to become a legal tender in September.
Nayib told that in a bid to uplift its huge adoption, each netizen who opens an electronic bitcoin ‘wallet’ called Chivo will have the equivalent of $30 uploaded to their account.
Late Thursday, Bukele told national television, ‘it will be a gift’. ‘Simply register, download and you’ll get the bitcoin equivalent of $30 to use’.
However, the president of EI Salvador didn’t mention where the money will come from. He added that more than 50,000 people in the nation of 6.5 million were already using bitcoin.
Bukele, on Twitter, also accused the opposition of trying to ‘build fear’ among the citizens of Salvador about the bitcoin law.
Further, he assured that the use of crypto will be optional and pensions and wages in the nation will continue to be paid in US dollars.
The president has supported the stand as a way to make it easier and cheaper for Salvadorans abroad – around 1.5 million, primarily in the US – to send money back home in the form of remittances, which represents around one-fourth of the nation’s GDP.
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