El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

Misleading.

Under the new rules, bitcoin is no longer considered "currency," though it remains "legal tender."

https://reason.com/2025/02/03/el-salvador-walks-back-its-bit...

They literally removed the term "moneda de curso legal", which translates as "legal tender", from Article 5.

https://x.com/monicataher/status/1884971499129610322

“The reform eliminated the word “currency” when referring to bitcoin, but says it is “legal tender.” Despite the lack of clarity, it lifts, as required by the IMF, the obligation to accept it in transactions or debt payments, a key condition for it to be “legal tender,””

Edit to add a quote from your preferred link:

“Another change makes using bitcoin entirely voluntary. (Previously, the law mandated that businesses accept bitcoin for any goods or services they provided.) Additionally, bitcoin can no longer be used to pay taxes or settle government debts.”

If I can't pay my taxes with a token of economic exchange, and people aren't required to accept my tokens of economic exchange, the only remaining sense I can make of it being “legal tender” is that it is not illegal to use it, but that's not what “legal tender” means.

this article, though appearing pretty machine translated, points out that the law removes the obligation for anyone to accept Bitcoin as payment of a debt, while not (for some reason) removing the "legal tender" language -- which is a complete contradiction.

This makes as much sense as saying that Walmart has no obligation to accept Visa cards anymore, but that they're still a "valid method of payment at Walmart" -- except of course that "Legal Tender" has an explicit legal definition (apparently even in El Salvador).

This sounds like a really badly written piece of legislation. Perhaps there are shady dealings going on where someone powerful stands to lose a lot of money (or BTC) triggered by "if it ceases to be Legal Tender", but also apparently pressure was too great to abolish that legal tender status in practice, so this ridiculously-written law was passed to attempt to have it both ways.