By law everyone is required to receive payments in BTC, but the government will absorb the risk. The country’s surplus geothermal energy may interest mining farms.
“The Development Bank of El Salvador will administer a trust fund of USD 150 million that it will use to assume the risk that citizens may run when they operate with bitcoin.” This was stated by the president of this nation, Nayib Bukele, when he participated in a conversation on Twitter Spaces, minutes before the Legislative Assembly approved the so-called Bitcoin Law with a qualified majority.
The Law that converts bitcoin (BTC) into legal tender in the Central American country was approved by a qualified majority during the early hours of Wednesday, June 9. The regulations take effect immediately, although the government will grant 90 days for the infrastructure to be installed.
From now on, it will be mandatory for all economic agents to accept bitcoin as a form of payment when it is offered to them by whoever acquires a good or service. However, whoever prefers will be able to instantly change funds from bitcoin to dollar.
For example, if a lady who sells food in the market does not want to keep the bitcoins she received as a result of her sales, then the fund will buy her BTC, absorbing the risk. Therefore, the objective of the trust fund will be to protect people who do not want to take the risk, even if by law they are obliged to receive payments in this cryptocurrency. So they will pass that risk on to the government.
El Salvador’s volcanic energy is available to mine bitcoin
When Bukele was asked if the government would promote bitcoin mining in Salvadoran territory, he said that in effect the possibility of promoting mining with geothermal energy obtained from volcanoes is being studied . This is an abundant source of natural and renewable energy available to El Salvador. In fact, the country currently uses it to cover a quarter of its electricity demand.
We have plants that keep our country clean [with low carbon dioxide emissions]. For 50 years we have used the energy of volcanoes to generate electricity. And at this moment we are evaluating that we lose a lot of energy when transporting it from geothermal plants to cities.
That is why we want to promote bitcoin mining outside these plants. So whoever is interested in setting up a mining farm will receive cheap, clean, 100% renewable energy with no carbon footprint. Although I must clarify that this is just an idea, for now.
A historic day
As reported by CriptoNoticias, less than a week ago Nayib Bukele announced that his country would adopt bitcoin as legal tender. Since then, all eyes have been on El Salvador. In fact, more than 22,000 people connected to the Twitter Spaces conversation opened by Nic Carter, where Caitling Long, Anthony Pompliano and other well-known bitcoiners also participated.
I wasn’t even expecting to join this chat room, but I saw that everyone was tweeting about it and I said well you should listen to this and then someone said: oh one of the people who is listening is the president of El Salvador and in a moment I saw about 6,000 people, the presence in the room jumped to 22,000, so I see this and I don’t know how far it can go, but I know that it gets better and better and to the same extent it will be very important for many people. I don’t know the limits of this, but things are just happening and we are learning minute by minute.
At that time, it was the early hours of June 9, 2021, the day El Salvador became the first nation in the world to give bitcoin legality within its territory.