Popular cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex has announced it will be donating approximately 36 bitcoin units as well as $600,000 in Tether funds to the Central American nation of El Salvador. The company says this is all part of its ongoing efforts to support the nation.
El Salvador Is Getting BTC from Bitfinex
El Salvador has long been a bitcoin-loving nation. The country was the first to declare bitcoin legal tender in September of last year, claiming it was doing so to make remittance payments easier and that it was looking to become less dependent on the U.S. dollar.
The nation experienced a lot of barricades from institutions such as the World Bank. The enterprise stated it would not help El Salvador achieve its bitcoin dreams given that representatives felt crypto was too volatile to be taken seriously. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has also asked El Salvador to reject all things BTC.
The funds that Bitfinex is giving will be distributed evenly to various towns and cities within the country. Many of these areas are prone to street gangs that extort money from local business owners. As a result, their economies have tanked, and the crypto exchange wants to help them attain a certain level of financial stability.
Paolo Ardoino – the CTO Of Bitfinex – explained in a recent interview:
By providing bitcoin and Tether to local communities in El Salvador, we will provide vital support to small businesses while also countering the effects of gang violence that has swept across the country.
El Salvador has recently been hit hard by the bitcoin crash. The world’s number one digital currency by market cap was trading at a new all-time high of approximately $68,000 per unit in the final weeks of November of 2021, though now it is struggling just to maintain a position at $19,000 or $20,000. The asset has lost more than 70 percent of its value in about nine months and the crypto space has lost more than $2 trillion in overall valuation.
A Long History with the Coin
But this isn’t stopping El Salvador from staying involved. After releasing a tweet suggesting the country was losing interest in the asset due to the ongoing drops, Nayib Bukele – the president of El Salvador – quickly bought more of the world’s primary crypto asset and added a whole lot more to the nation’s stash, suggesting the tweet was something of a fluke.
El Salvador also wanted to give everyday citizens opportunities to invest in and spend their bitcoin units. Thus, the country initiated what’s known as the Chivo wallet system, with “chivo” being a slang term for “cool.” The wallet system has encountered its fair share of technical issues, though for the most part, the system has been successful in bringing citizens together in the name of BTC.
