Following yesterday’s entry into force of the law making Bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador, even McDonald’s and Starbucks have decided to accept BTC as a means of payment.
Summary
Starbucks opens to cryptocurrency payments
This was revealed in a tweet by Aaron van Wirdum, who made a purchase paying in BTC.
Just walked into a McDonald's in San Salvador to see if I could pay for my breakfast with bitcoin, tbh fully expecting to be told no.
But low and behold, they printed a ticket with QR that took me to a webpage with Lightning invoice, and now I'm enjoying my desayuno traditional! pic.twitter.com/NYCkMNbv7U
— Aaron van Wirdum (@AaronvanW) September 7, 2021
Starbucks has activated payments in Bitcoin, as shown in another video posted on Twitter.
Starbucks accepting #bitcoin as payment in El Salvador 🧡pic.twitter.com/FIUXo8OKVp
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) September 7, 2021
As for McDonald’s, scanning the QRcode revealed that it uses the OpenNode platform to accept BTC payments, which is in fact already available worldwide. If desired, the famous restaurant chain could be ready to extend the service to other parts of the world.
Bitcoin price not affected by El Salvador news
Despite the fact that yesterday was a truly historic day for Bitcoin, the price has fallen a lot after touching $53,000 on Monday.
To be fair, this is not the first time that when a long-awaited event takes place, such as the final entry into force of the law establishing bitcoin as legal tender in a state for the first time ever, the price then falls.
It had already happened on 16 April after the listing of Coinbase or even on 18 December 2017 after the placement of the first bitcoin futures on the Chicago Stock Exchange.
The Bitcoin sell-off according to eToro
According to eToro’s crypto analyst Simon Peters, yesterday’s sell-off would not yet be worrying, not least because it came after crossing the psychological $50,000 threshold twice in the space of two weeks.
Peters said:
“Rather than pointing to any major downturn in bitcoin’s fundamentals, today’s drop from $52,000 to below $46,000 is undoubtedly linked to the news from El Salvador, which today became the first country to accept the cryptoasset as legal tender”.
Even though small retail investors yesterday exerted upward pressure on the price of BTC through their initiative to buy $30 in Bitcoin in solidarity with El Salvador, the whales instead apparently took advantage to take profits.
“Whilst technical snags in El Salvador’s adoption may also have spurred some investor anxiety, the price is already showing signs of recovery and may well bounce back sooner than expected. The next few hours should confirm the scope of the damage – and whether this was merely a minor blip”, Peters added later.
It is worth noting that also in 2017, just before mid-September, a strong correction took place in the middle of the bullrun, which brought the price of Bitcoin in a few days from almost $4,900 to $3,100, a 36% drop in 13 days.
Again, this was most likely profit-taking after the strong gains in August, although FUD from China and some familiar faces in the major US financial institutions also played a role.
By 15 September the bullrun had recovered and had risen by 350% by the end of the year.
