Bitcoin (BTC) has been made legal tender in El Salvador on September 7. This would allow the country to move away from traditional financial companies and start offering crypto-related services to citizens.
But there are other positive aspects about the recent implementation of BTC in El Salvador. People would stop paying $400 million in fees for remittances to centralized finance firms such as MoneyGram or Western Union, among others.
El Salvador Makes Bitcoin Legal Tender
El Salvador has made Bitcoin legal tender just a few days ago. This has allowed the country to be in every single news portal around the world. People are now able to pay with the largest cryptocurrency in every single shop or store in the country.
However, users are now searching for a bitcoin forex broker to trade and handle their virtual currencies. There are many options available, most of them offer different solutions. This is why individuals that want to handle BTC should search for the best bitcoin forex broker in the market.
We have also seen how a large number of crypto Twitter figures have been making different purchases in El Salvador. For example, they made BTC lightning transfers in some of the most known food chains in the world.
The decision of El Salvador to make Bitcoin legal tender could expand to other countries in the region and even to other continents. It is just a matter of time to see how countries start moving away from fiat currencies and search for new ways to engage with the cryptocurrency market.
Savings for Families
It is also worth mentioning that Bitcoin is also helping families from El Salvador. Why? Because El Salvador is highly dependent on remittances from citizens living abroad. This has created a situation in which several companies such as MoneyGram or Western Union were taking large amounts of fees for people to send money back to El Salvador.
Some reports show that there has been $6 billion worth of remittances received by local families in the country. This is almost 23% of the country’s GDP. Most of these payments were usually processed through companies such as MoneyGram, which imposed high fees on those transfers.
As crypto analyst Willy Woo explains, both WU and MoneyGram were able to gather 1.5% of El Salvador’s GDP thanks to remittance fees. This has been a major constrain on growth over the last decades. With Bitcoin, these fees are now reduced and almost eliminated as individuals can now receive Lightning Network transactions and spend the funds in the country.
