At the beginning of this month, a new historical crypto law in effect. Bitcoin (BTC) became official legal tender on September 7. A historic day for El Salvador and the world of cryptocurrencies.
The government of the country hopes that the population will use the largest cryptocurrency as a means of payment on a large scale. Retailers were even obliged to deal with bitcoin payments.
Bitcoin ATMs
To further stimulate this process, the government in El Salvador has also recently installed a huge amount of bitcoin ATMs. At such vending machines, customers can buy bitcoin with cash.
El Salvador already has such a 290 of these machines installed. That is 70% of the total amount of these types of bitcoin vending machines in the entire South American continent. With this, El Salvador has also overtaken the amount in the United Kingdom.
Most were installed in the month of August. In a month’s time, El Salvador managed to put itself on the map when it comes to the number of bitcoin ATMs.
The vending machines in El Salvador work in conjunction with the chivo bitcoin wallet. This wallet has been chosen by the government to act as the official wallet for the population in El Salvador.
opposition
Although the developments in El Salvador seem very positive for the crypto community at first sight, the population in El Salvador thinks very differently about this. They don’t seem to be charmed by bitcoin and everything it stands for.
Went back a few days thousands of people took to the streets to demonstrate against the new law and the country’s president. At the same time, several of the new bitcoin ATMs were set on fire. Even a Chivo kiosk was completely destroyed.
It is clear that there is still a lot of work to be done before bitcoin is actually embraced as a means of payment by the population in El Salvador. Nevertheless, the country is making historic strides in the adoption of bitcoin and these can only be encouraged by the crypto community.