El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele announced that he’d send a bill to Congress next week to legalize Bitcoin in the Central American Nation. He touted the premier cryptocurrency’s potential to help Salvadorans living abroad send remittances home.
In a video shown at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Bukele said, “In the short term, this will generate jobs and help provide financial inclusion to thousands outside the formal economy.”
Mobile payment apps like Strike, which was launched in March, welcomed the legislation and stated that they are working with the country to incorporate Bitcoin into their app.
Bukele also took to Twitter to promote financial inclusion, “a moral imperative” and path to growing El Salvador’s economy by providing access to credit, savings, investment, and secure transactions.
Regarding remittances, Bukele said that a large part of the money (around 6 billion dollars) is lost to intermediaries. He believes that 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.
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