Vitalik Buterin Calls Mandatory Bitcoin Use In El Salvador Against Crypto Freedom Ideals

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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin criticized the forced adoption of bitcoin in El Salvador in a comment he made to a Reddit forum on Friday.

Writing in a forum titled Unpopular Opinion: The President of El Salvador, Mr. Nayab Bukele Should Not Be Congratulated by the Crypto Community, Buterin, under his Reddit username of vbuterin, said there was nothing unpopular about this opinion, noting that making it mandatory for companies to accept a specific cryptocurrency is contrary to the ideals of freedom that are said to be so important to the crypto space.

Buterins’ remarks appear to refer to Article 7 of Salvadoran Bitcoin law passed in June, which stipulated that bitcoin must be accepted as a method of payment by every economic agent.

However, in July, amid opposition to the compulsory use of bitcoin, Bukele wrote in a Twitter thread that the use of bitcoin as legal tender was going to be completely optional and that the government would not oblige any of the residents of the country to receive bitcoin as a form of payment.

Read more: Why El Salvador botches its Bitcoin experiment

If someone wants to continue carrying money, not receiving a login bonus, not winning clients who have bitcoin, not growing their business, and paying a remittance commission, they can continue to do it, Bukele wrote at the time.

While Bukeles’ bitcoin comments are not mandatory, residents remain confused about the details of the new law. One thing is what the president says, and another is what the law establishes, a Salvadoran trader recently told CoinDesk.

According to a survey by the Salvadoran Foundation for Economic and Social Development (Fusades) released this week, more than 93% of Salvadoran businesses said they had not made any bitcoin transactions during the last week of September.

In his comments on Reddit, Buterin added that the tactic of pushing BTC to millions of people in El Salvador at the same time without almost any attempt at prior education is reckless and risks having a large number of innocent people hacked or scammed. Shame on everyone (okay, alright, I’ll call the top officials: shame on Bitcoin’s maximalists) who praise it uncritically.

The story continues

In response to a comment theorizing that Bukele might support the use of bitcoin in El Salvador because he bought the cryptocurrency at a low price and wanted it to rise, Buterin came up with what he called a simpler hypothesis. and more stupid.

Both for political reasons and because he is a human being like the rest of us, he loves to be praised by people he considers powerful (i.e. Americans), a writes Buterin.

Read more: El Salvador mines the first bitcoin with volcanic energy

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