Edward Snowden, a former computer intelligence consultant for the National Security Agency (NSA) and contractor for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), also appeared in a Documentary film (Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour a 2014 film concerning him and the NSA spying scandal) commented on Tuesday’s legalization of bitcoin in El Salvador. Tweet from Edward Snowden Twitter account.
Edward Snowden on Twitter
Snowden’s tweet quoted another from Aaron Van Wirdum, currently in El Salvador, which announced the journalist’s ability to pay for his McDonald’s breakfast with bitcoin through the Lightning Network. “But low and behold, McDonald’s printed a ticket with QR code that took me to a webpage with the Lightning invoice, and now I’m enjoying my desayuno traditional,” tweeted Aaron Van Wirdum.
In its early days, Bitcoin was seen by the mainstream mainly as a gimmicky collectible, but recently the narrative has been shifting towards the store of value and digital gold use cases. However, since El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law came into effect on Sept. 7, BTC now serves as a national currency alongside the U.S. dollar. Tuesday, El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele also revealed that his government purchased 550 bitcoins. The price of bitcoin was rising leading up to the Bitcoin Law entering into force. However, it dipped around 11:00 a.m. EST on Sept. 7, falling from above $51K to below $43K.
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Other countries may begin adopting bitcoin in El Salvador’s footsteps, as Snowden expects. Dante Mossi, the executive president of the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), said that if adopting bitcoin as legal tender goes well in El Salvador and the cost of remittances drops substantially, “other countries will probably seek that advantage and adopt it.”
Even Bank of America sees benefits in adopting bitcoin as legal tender for El Salvador. In addition, global investment bank JPMorgan said in June that the move by El Salvador could be “the beginning of a broader trend among similarly situated, smaller nations.” A successful implementation by El Salvador prepares the grounds for Bitcoin adoption to skyrocket as other nations start taking similar actions, fearful of being left behind. As Snowden later added in that tweet, “latecomers may regret hesitating.”
