President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador confirmed in a highly anticipated interview with Bitcoin supporter and denim enthusiast Peter McCormack that this tropical country has not adopted alternative cryptocurrencies as legal tender.
Bukele explained that having two official currencies (Bitcoin and USD) is hard enough:
“It will be impossible to have ten legal tenders…Having two legal tenders is quite a challenge… So, for legal tender, it’s only gonna be Bitcoin and the USD.”
However, El Salvador will not ban altcoins. In addition, Bukele emphasized that other cryptocurrency projects in the country can freely do business:
“We are open for business now.”
Cardano’s CEO: My Team Might Do a State Visit to El Salvador
On the 16th of June, Lex Fridman podcast, Cardano founder and IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson stated that El Salvador’s entry into the bitcoin field cannot be ignored, adding that his team could potentially pay the country a state visit:
“We know the president’s brother. We’ve had some conversations. Maybe, we will go there in the next few months, and see what’s going on there, and do a state visit to talk to the president.”
According to Hoskinson, while it is too early to speculate, Cardano has been negotiating with officials and parties in El Salvador and could meet with Nayib Bukele. He added,
“They’ve definitely expressed interest in digitizing the country and going beyond just legalizing Bitcoin. So, we’ll get a better sense of it in the next 2-4 weeks.”
If these conversations and discussions lead to something more specific and quantifiable, it will be a big deal for Cardano and its ecosystem. Indeed, it is, especially as Cardano will work with the Ethiopian government to use a blockchain-based student and teacher ID system for purposes like checking grades. The project will use ATALA Prism, an identity solution based on Cardano.
As previously reported, Matt Hamilton, Head of Developer Relations at Ripple, recently mentioned that El Salvador’s digital crypto wallet partner Strike is taking notes of an on-demand XRP-driven liquidity solution.