The recent rise in the price of bitcoin (BTC), which reached a new all-time high last week, will benefit El Salvador’s education system. The president of the Central American nation announced that 20 schools will be remodeled “with a few million [dollars] remaining from the proceeds.”
“Now we are seeing additional benefits, the schools that we have announced and, God willing, more works will come from the proceeds of a trust that was created and a Law that was created because we ignored the opposition,” explained the president of the Central American country.
Bukele also referred to other benefits that - according to him - El Salvador has for having accepted bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender. Specifically, it referred to the possibility of receiving remittances from abroad without paying additional commissions.
The trust that Bukele refers to is a USD 150 million fund that, according to CriptoNoticias reported at the end of August, serves “to automatically and instantly convert bitcoin to dollars for Chivo Wallet users.”
This is not the first time that the Salvadoran government has announced public works with the “surplus” money from this trust, a product of the price increases of BTC. Already last month, it was reported about the construction plans of a veterinary hospital . That announcement caused some debate among those who celebrated the decision and those who felt that it was not the best destination for public money.
Both the veterinary hospital and the remodeling of schools had been promises that Nayib Bukele made to Salvadoran voters during the campaign that brought him to the presidency. Few would have imagined that bitcoin - the invention that came to separate money from the State - would be a fundamental tool for this 40-year-old politician to pay off that debt with his voters.
Salvadorans divided between joy and mistrust over “bitcoin schools”
Bukele’s recent announcement of “bitcoin schools”, as is customary in the political arena, provoked both the joy of his supporters and the rejection of his opponents.
Among those who celebrated the event is Deputy Cecilia Rivera. She explains that to this are added other achievements of the president , such as “400 [schools] in the” My New School “program” and “more than 5.1 [points of] GDP”.
On the other hand, there were those who, as did the Salvadoran communicator Luis Herrera, expressed their doubts about the president’s announcements: “The same promise he made in March 2019, with a loan from the BCI, who knows what purpose it had…”.
As new information occurs, Cryptoreportage will report progress on these announcements to verify whether or not they come to fruition, as promised by Bukele.
