According to a new YouGov poll, approximately one quarter of the people living in the United States are all for making bitcoin legal tender in the country.
The Poll Shows One Quarter Are in Favor of BTC Spending
The news comes after El Salvador became the first nation to instill BTC as legal tender on September 7. The country has long been dependent on USD, the native currency of the U.S. However, the nation appears to be interested in financial independence and is now looking to bitcoin to accomplish this goal. El Salvador instilled a system known as the “Chivo” wallet that would ultimately grant all residents approximately $30 in bitcoin and get them started on spending and trading digitally.
It looks like a healthy portion of residents in the United States want to take the same route. However, one quarter is relatively small when one considers that there are approximately 360 million people living in the country. The poll suggests that only about 90 million of the citizens here have any interest in spending bitcoin the way they would standard, fiat currency.
According to the poll, about 11 percent of those taking part in the study said they “strongly approved” the idea of making bitcoin legal tender, while another 16 percent said they were “somewhat in favor.” This accounts for roughly 27 percent of the population.
However, there are still too many people against spending BTC, with approximately 11 percent of the poll takers saying they were “somewhat” against it, while another 28 percent said they were “strongly against” it. This means that close to 40 percent of the country would not use bitcoin if it went by the same rules as USD.
The age group most in favor of making the move are individuals between the ages of 25 and 34. About 20 percent of this group was strongly behind making BTC legal tender, while another 24 percent were somewhat in favor of it. The generation that was most against making bitcoin a legitimate payment tool in the United States was baby boomers.
El Salvador Has Had Some Issues to Overcome
No doubt those rallying against the idea have paid close attention to all the problems El Salvador has been dealing with since implementing the new currency rules. On the first day of legalizing the asset, El Salvador saw its entire Chivo platform crash, meaning citizens could not get access to their assets. The move resulted in a heavy drop in the bitcoin price, with one unit of BTC dropping from about $52,000 to just over $45,000 in less than 24 hours.
In addition, El Salvador has been wrought with protests from those who are not interested in using BTC and who were fine utilizing USD for their everyday needs. It’s likely we would see similar activity in the States should the same laws be implemented.
