Scepticism grows in El Salvador over pioneering Bitcoin gamble

Country will be first to adopt cryptocurrency as legal tender next month – but economists are sounding warnings over risks

Litha MarĂ­a de Los Angeles slaps two cheese-filled pupusas – the El Salvadoran cornmeal flatbread – on the griddle. With a camera click on the QR code, she receives her payment: four hundred-thousandths of a Bitcoin. Then, as the rain pelts the corrugated iron roof and a gust of wind lifts the blue plastic table cloths, the power cuts out.

A tumultuous few weeks awaits El Salvador as it prepares to become the first country to adopt Bitcoin, the world’s most popular decentralised digital currency, as legal tender on 7 September. With that deadline looming, a host of challenges – technological, financial and criminal – threaten to sink the plan of the president, Nayib Bukele, to ride the Central American economy out of its current choppy waters on the back of a cryptocurrency wave.

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source https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/30/scepticism-grows-in-el-salvador-over-pioneering-bitcoin-gamble

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