El Salvador Moves Away from Bitcoin Mandate

It seems that El Salvador has finally passed a law repealing the mandatory acceptance of Bitcoin as payment. When the IMF announced that it had reached an agreement with El Salvador to end the Bitcoin requirement, and the president's Bitcoin office director wrote on X that Bitcoin remains legal tender, I initially thought either El Salvador was playing mind games with the IMF or the IMF was trying to mislead us.

But Reuters reported two days ago that the law was passed, and no official has disputed this claim yet.

Now, the IMF can return to its old narrative about Bitcoin being unbacked. After all, in today's world, money is essentially backed only by government-sanctioned force. If someone refuses to accept government currency, state actors can enforce its acceptance through coercion. But now, Bitcoin no longer has any mandatory acceptance anywhere.

Interestingly, unlike traditional currencies that would dramatically devalue after such a governmental move, Bitcoin's price has remained virtually unchanged over the past two days. It seems that people now trust cryptocurrencies more than they trust governments.

Cryptocurrencies are no longer the future - they're the present. I'm reminded of this daily when I see how many people exchange one cryptocurrency for another on rabbit.io.