Bitcoin is breathing life into the hard-hit rural village of El Salvador where the unbanked individuals are paying in Bitcoin for essentials while dealing with the coronavirus struggles.
The very reason Bitcoin was created was to overthrow the global monetary system’s monarchy and reach out to people who have no means to access it – the unbanked. The unbanked population is present in every corner of the world, be it the mighty superpowers like the United States and China or much less significant economies like El Salvador.
El Salvador embraces Bitcoin
The only difference is, the US and China refuse to change their hostile perception toward Bitcoin, whereas El Salvador embraces it wholeheartedly. Here, the revolutionary Bitcoin Beach project that started last year is finally gaining momentum as people are turning to Bitcoin for purchasing their everyday essentials.
The already flailing economy of this tiny Central American country faced a severe setback with the coronavirus outbreak. The economy is almost on the verge of collapsing as more than half of the country’s population works in informal sectors. With severe lockdown restrictions in place, there hardly any savings left, let alone having a bank account.
Bitcoin – A ray of hope for the unbanked
In times like these, Bitcoin initiatives such as the Bitcoin beach are lending a helping hand to the unbanked people living in a rural village along the coastlines of this Latin American country. A video that went viral soon after it was posted on Monday shows unbanked people of this Bitcoin beach buying items like eggs with Bitcoin.
Michael Peterson, the proud founder of the Bitcoin beach project, explained that the initiative aims at forming a Bitcoin ecosystem involving the unbanked people in the country and help them transform their lives with real use cases of Bitcoin.
These payments are being made peer-to-peer explicitly using just the smartphones, with no bank accounts, credit cards, or any other traditional banking services involved – a truly revolutionary concept and a crucial turning point for Bitcoin considering it was the very reason it was formed in the first place.
Featured Image by Flickr
