Cathie Wood of Ark Invest believes El Salvador is on the right path when it comes to bitcoin innovation. She is very excited about all the fantastic progress the country has made in terms of BTC adoption, and she’s confident things will only get better from here for residents of the nation.
Cathie Wood on El Salvador: The Country Has the Right Idea
Wood stated that one of the big things El Salvador has done well is open the doors of an industry that at one time, was very exclusive. She is confident that providing people in El Salvador with a quick and easy route to bitcoin and digital currency is going to benefit a lot of people and make their lives considerably better. She says that Nayib Bukele – the president of El Salvador – has given these residents financial opportunities that they otherwise never would have had.
She mentioned:
The president in El Salvador is giving $30 of bitcoin to every eligible adult, and what we’ve seen there is that, roughly, whereas only 1.2 million people have access to financial services, three million people now have access to new banking services and new financial services thanks to blockchain technology, so in my book, the more we can allocate capital to innovation, the better we can make people’s lives around the world.
El Salvador took a real chance last summer when it announced that it was looking to become the first country in the world to declare bitcoin legal tender. In other words, customers could walk into any store, company, or retail outlet and use bitcoin to purchase goods and services alongside USD, which is the fiat currency that the nation has long been dependent on.
Bukele is confident that bitcoin use will allow the country to escape its long dependency on USD. He is also confident that it will somehow make remittance payments easier. Right now, most people in El Salvador work abroad. They work in regions like the U.S. and send money home to their families. As it stands, when doing so through standard fiat methods, they wind up losing a lot of their funds to fees.
A Rough and Rocky Start
However, he believes that bitcoin has lower fees and will thus allow customers’ families to retain more of the money that is being sent to them.
El Salvador has had something of a rocky journey when it comes to implementing its bitcoin agenda. For example, the nation experienced some stubbornness from the World Bank, which has stated in the past that it would not be assisting El Salvador given that it felt bitcoin was too volatile as a currency and thus could not be taken seriously. The country has also dealt with technical problems with its Chivo bitcoin wallet system and protests from residents in the nation’s capital.
