El Salvador will begin buying one Bitcoin a day from today (November 18), as per Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. The announcement comes at a time when the crypto world is already facing unprecedented challenges after the failure of crypto exchange FTX and its consequent bankruptcy filing in the US court. After becoming the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as an official and legal tender in September 2021, El Salvador has already purchased about 2,381 Bitcoins for its treasury.
Taking to Twitter on Thursday, Bukele announced that his country will start buying one Bitcoin every day starting today. He said, "We are buying one Bitcoin every day starting tomorrow (Friday)."
After his announcement on Twitter, the founder of the Tron cryptocurrency network and Grenada's ambassador, Justin Sun, said, "We echo Nayib Bukele’s initiative in buying Bitcoin daily. We will also buy one Bitcoin every day starting tomorrow."
Bukele seems undeterred by the recent meltdown and failure of the crypto exchange FTX. He has been a strong supporter and proponent of cryptocurrencies, which led to his earlier decision of making it a national legal tender.
However, he was at the receiving end of a lot of international criticism for doing so. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) also warned El Salvador for making Bitcoin legal tender. It asked him to first start a strict regulation of the country’s e-wallet. The IMF had also claimed that the costs of announcing Bitcoin as legal tender exceeded its potential benefits.
But, El Salvador’s government went on with its decision to make Bitcoin the national legal tender.
The two most valuable cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), appeared to be stable, hovering around $16,000 and $1,200, respectively. As per CoinMarketCap, the Bitcoin price stood at $16,821.47 on early Friday morning. At the time of writing, the global crypto market cap stood at $836.86 billion, registering a 24-hour jump of 1.52 percent.
Disclaimer: Crypto products and NFTs are unregulated and can be highly risky. There may be no regulatory recourse for any loss from such transactions. Cryptocurrency is not a legal tender and is subject to market risks. Readers are advised to seek expert advice and read offer document(s) along with related important literature on the subject carefully before making any kind of investment whatsoever. Cryptocurrency market predictions are speculative and any investment made shall be at the sole cost and risk of the readers.