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El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

(ticotimes.net)
927 points smallerfish | 1 comments | 04 Feb 25 00:00 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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ptero ◴[04 Feb 25 00:17 UTC] No.42925410[source]▶
That's heavy editorializing:

El Salvador keeps buying the Bitcoin for its strategic reserve. Businesses and citizens can keep using it.

But for getting an IMF loan, IMF (which, to put it mildly, doesn't like Bitcoin) required the end to Bitcoin legal tender status.

Now the businesses are free to accept it or not instead of being required to accept it. That's all. The government plans to keep buying and using it.

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p_j_w ◴[04 Feb 25 00:38 UTC] No.42925665[source]▶
>Now the businesses are free to accept it or not instead of being required to accept it. That's all.

Right, so it's no longer legal tender.

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antihipocrat ◴[04 Feb 25 01:11 UTC] No.42926035[source]▶
Legal tender does not have to be a mandatory means of exchange.
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abduhl ◴[04 Feb 25 04:10 UTC] No.42927812[source]▶
That is actually the defining characteristic of legal tender: “money that is legally valid for the payment of debts and that must be accepted for that purpose when offered”

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/legal%20tender

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1. rsynnott ◴[04 Feb 25 11:50 UTC] No.42931192{3}[source]▶
Its status in El Salvador was actually a bit more than _just_ legal tender; merchants were _required_ to accept it.

For instance, the euro is legal tender in the eurozone. I can pay a tax bill or a bank loan with 10cent coins, and technically they have to accept that (though note that some countries do have special rules around whether small change is legal tender). However, a merchant is not required to take my wheelbarrow full of 10cent coins in exchange for goods and services; no debt exists before the purchase.

El Salvador was forcing the merchant to take the wheelbarrow.