In 2021, El Salvador made a bold move that stunned the world. President Nayib Bukele announced that Bitcoin is becoming fully legal tender, a decision that was not just about private individuals replenishing their reserves, but a state-level initiative. Experts had already assessed the potential of such a government decision. Now, three years later, we can look back and see the impact of this audacious policy.
The first major purchase at the state level was made a day before the sensational announcement – the country bought 400 bitcoins worth more than 18 million dollars. Since then, the part of the treasury tied to digital currency has been growing consistently. In just one year, the state stockpile grew to over 2,300 BTC, but El Salvador didn’t stop there. Over time, the country’s treasury swelled to hold 5,867 BTC. With the rising value of bitcoin, El Salvador’s profit from these assets is impressive, standing at $34.55 million, a growth of more than 25% over the past three years. El Salvador now ranks third on the list of bitcoin-holding states, trailing only the US and the UK.
At the same time, it is interesting that the country is not going to sell its bitcoin reserves – President Nayib Bukele also announced this. He said they don’t look at these reserves in terms of their value in dollars; for El Salvador, it’s one-to-one, meaning one bitcoin equals one bitcoin.
The president made another public statement on the issue of Bitcoin being accepted as legal tender. It concerned the fact that no one is forcing residents to accept cryptocurrency exclusively. The country continues to work with the American dollar; just now, the citizens of El Salvador have an alternative in the form of Bitcoin.
Residents of the country began to actively use Bitcoin as a means of payment. With the help of this exotic currency, they even buy products. However, in most cases, people use these payment instruments to pay for various online services. The statistics of the country’s most popular online casino sites and apps like 1win or Melbet speak about it quite eloquently.
We decided to check this using the example of operator 1win since the largest number of payment methods are presented here. To do this, we download 1win apk, after which we installed this application on the phone. It is worth noting that the program works well even on quite old devices, provided that they have a suitable version of Android installed. After a quick registration and getting into the personal account, it became clear that you can pay not only with bitcoins but also with USDT and other popular cryptocurrencies.
That said, the country remains a state that considers Bitcoin an important economic tool. El Salvador has launched its own website with BTC monitoring, which allows you to track this digital currency using a number of indicators. In addition, this information resource allows users to see what bitcoin reserves the state has at a particular moment in time. However, the important question of what prospects the legalization of Bitcoin and investments in it will bring from an economic point of view is still open.
Bitcoin in El Salvador: In a historic move, El Salvador became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender in September 2021; this decision aimed to foster financial inclusion within the country and leverage technology for economic growth.