El Salvador’s President Announces Plans to Be the First Country to Adopt Bitcoin as Legal Tender

(CNN) – El Salvador could be the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, announced the president of El Salvador Nayib Bukele in a video exhibited during the Bitcoin 2021 conference held in Miami.

“Next week I will send a bill to Congress that will convert bitcoin into legal tender,” Bukele said, according to conference organizer Bitcoin Magazine.

Bukele said El Salvador partnered with digital finance company Strike to establish the logistics of the decision.

Nayib Bukele photographed on May 29, 2021. Credit: MARVIN RECINOS / AFP via Getty Images

«More than 70% of the workforce in El Salvador does not have a bank account. They are not in the financial system, “said Strike CEO Jack Mallers. “They asked me to help them write a plan and that they saw bitcoin as a world class currency and that we needed to come up with a bitcoin plan to help these people.”

El Salvador currently uses the US dollar as its official currency.