2. El Salvador Makes Bitcoin Its Legal Tender
In October, El Salvador became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as its legal tender, thus enabling people to use it anywhere and everywhere, from carrying out their day-to-day purchases to paying their taxes.
Before Bitcoin, the country was using US Dollars as its national currency, but now it plans to build its economy on cryptocurrency alongside the US Dollar. This move was met with mixed reactions.
While some experts believed the country would not be able to stabilize its economy considering the volatility in the Bitcoin market, others believed it was a courageous move to get out of the clutches of the global financial system.
Besides this, in November, the President announced plans to build a Bitcoin City near a volcano. For this, he will be partnering with Blockstream to raise $1 billion in Bitcoin. The construction will begin in 2022, and the city will have restaurants, businesses from the entertainment sector, residential and commercial areas, etc.
The city is being built near a volcano to leverage Geothermal Energy for Bitcoin mining, which is an energy-intensive operation.
While people and experts are still in two minds about the success or failure of these decisions, I guess building an economy takes time, and we might just have to wait it out to see how all this unfolds. Whether El Salvador sets itself apart from the global financial system or does it destabilize the entire economy, only time will tell.
