Today, Tuesday 7 September 2021, is a historic day for Bitcoin and for the State of El Salvador, the law establishing bitcoin as legal tender in the country finally comes into force for all intents and purposes.
It is now understood that a few days ago the country’s Parliament passed another law establishing a $150 million public fund in bitcoin to make it easier for Salvadorans to convert BTC/USD.
Summary
Buying $30 in bitcoin in solidarity with El Salvador
The $30 idea, however, was inspired by another initiative of the Central American country’s government.
President Bukele wanted to distribute $30 in bitcoin free of charge to any Salvadoran citizen who downloads, installs and configures the official “Chivo” app to use BTC.
Si tomamos en cuenta el impulso que dará la Ley #Bitcoin, la inyección de $30 por persona en moneda deflacionaria, el fideicomiso del salario mínimo, el fideicomiso de reactivación económica y el no pago de comisiones por las remesas…
Estoy seguro que la cifra será mayor 😉 https://t.co/D1fMs36shG
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) September 1, 2021
The app is not strictly necessary, because there are many others with similar functionality, but since Chivo was made specifically to be an official government app (to use BTC with Lightning Network), the initiative to give away $30 is in fact an incentive to use it.
Taking a cue from this new Salvadoran government initiative, the global bitcoiner community is promoting a similar one.
On September 7, El Salvador will officially begin using #Bitcoin as its national currency alongside the U.S. dollar. Every cyber hornet 🐝 I know is planning to buy $30 in BTC tomorrow in solidarity with the people of #ElSalvador and their leader @nayibbukele. Will you join us?
— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) September 6, 2021
The idea is really quite simple: ask anyone who wants to participate to invest $30 today to buy bitcoin.
Bitcoin continues to grow
The main purpose of this initiative is to show solidarity with the people of El Salvador who now have a new legal tender, bitcoin, but it is also possibly an attempt to raise the value of BTC through mass purchases.
It must be said that for about a month and a half the price of bitcoin has been rising with some continuity, and only with brief corrections of limited magnitude.
On 20 July it was below $30,000, while today it is above $52,000, or almost $80 more. In the last week, it has risen 11%, with +1.5% in the last 24 hours.
In such a scenario it is perhaps difficult for today’s initiative to really boost the value of bitcoin, so it remains above all a gesture of solidarity towards El Salvador.
It is worth noting that more than 85,000 people responded to Micheal Saylor’s Twitter poll, of which almost 84% will buy $30 worth of BTC today.
Saylor has 1.5 million Twitter followers, and only just under 6% voted for the survey, but the overwhelming yes vote suggests that there could be many people who will actually buy $30 in bitcoin today.
The community in support of legal Bitcoin and El Salvador
If we imagine that there are about 100 million people in the world active in the crypto markets, and only 84% of the 6% of those people invested $30 in BTC today, that would mean a total of about $150 million in fresh capital coming into the market today, or about 5.7% of the trading volume of the BTC/USDT pair on Binance yesterday.
It is enough to consider that yesterday alone, transactions totalling almost $29 billion were recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain worldwide.
By now, the total volume of value circulating on the bitcoin market is such that $150 million should be considered marginal.