Bitcoin Forum

A Caribbean island off the northern coast of Honduras has officially recognized Bitcoin as a legal tender.
The move follows the leadof neighboring county El Salvador who sanctioned Bitcoin as a legal tender on September 7.
I see this is a great push for boost of the economic activity and foreign investment through Crypto.
Both the sale of bonds and the ability to use Bitcoin as a legal tender will be "Undergirded by World class anti-money laundering ( AML ) and Know- Your - Customer (KYC) standards to ensure regulatory Compliance.

This indeed a good move for Honduras, due to their low income and low cost of living
Another Big move while waiting for widespread Bitcoin adoption! A good move for another developing country.


https://blockworks.co/bitcoin-now-legal-tender-in-special-economic-zone-of-honduras/

Perhaps this was considered an experiment by Honduras/the island. There's quite a history of counties that are between borders or ones near them to accept the currency of both sides so this is quite an interesting development (it might be newsworthy to see other counties nearest to el Salvador doing this as the El Salvador acceptance of crypto matures).

Try to make the thread title in lower case (small letters) just like other threads' titles, probably the reason this thread is not well respond too.

Bitcoin is not made a legal tender in Honduras, it is just an island in Honduras that bitcoin is made a legal tender. It will truly just be an experiment. Countries that have fiat of their own unlike El Salvador that spend US dollars may think otherwise to adopt bitcoin as they think people of the country can start using bitcoin more and stop depending on fiat. Hondurans spend Honduran lempira which is their local currency and the government of Hondurans might panic to make bitcoin a legal tender. Let us see what will happen, it will be good if the experiment is positive.

It's on reuters.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/honduran-special-economic-zone-adopts-bitcoin-legal-tender-2022-04-07/

I guess this is the start of the domino effect made by El Salvador. Who knows if the nearby other countries that they have are also going to adopt it. Even it's not the entire country that will adopt it as a legal tender and it's just like what Honduras did.

Well, it's still a big news.

Honduras is the second poorest country in the LAC after Haiti. So do not be surprised if for a Caribbean island when the adoption of Bitcoin is trying to be applied as an experimental area. However, based on sources I read about the 2021 Honduras GDP hit by more severe poverty due to the Covid storm, 14%+ live on less than US$1.90/day. This is because the island adheres to its own economic system but in other words applies laws made based on the absorption of the national government's Economic Development and Manpower Zone law.

Clauses like this are the reason I do not get excited when governments get involved with Bitcoin. It helps Bitcoin adoption as it markets it to an entire population and the more governments do that, the more people get aware of Bitcoin. The downside is Bitcoin is run as a centralized market, where users have to submit KYC and the government's use it as a tool to track their financial tracks

Governments adopting Bitcoin is big news, but a bigger news is the citizens moving towards Bitcoin as an alternative to government backed cash. That presents a more community based approach

El Salvador's tourism ministry claims that they benefited a lot since the adoption of BTC as a legal tender so I guess it's not bad for Honduras to try it on a tourist-centric spot of the country.

That's what the "special economic zone" in the title is for. A part of the country under different economic regulation.

Honduras have legal bitcoin last four days but still not popular and have trending news so far, I think with bitcoin still drop price but good news have another country after El Savador have adopt bitcoin as legal currency transaction early. I am waiting with bigger countries want to adopt bitcoin as legal currency transaction maybe England, Netherland and several Europe countries have bigger effect when announcing bitcoin as legal currency transaction will get impact with bitcoin price pump. All fiat transaction will realize with inflation values from their money and I think one day later have way how try to adopt and make bitcoin as legal currency transaction.

It's in Próspera which is a small island of Roatán.

I don't know how this will affect the community or Bitcoin which is the announcement that has been made.  There's no doubt that this country has no gain capital tax because they're small and maybe their population there are countless.  For now, let's wait for a result on the Bitcoin price if this will have an effect, because usually when there's an adoption, the Bitcoin price commonly rises up the same on El Salvador Bitcoin legal tender adoption.

oh wow how curious this news is, less than a month ago I commented here in the forum that the BCH, the Central Bank of Honduras, clarified the doubts about rumors that the country would accept Bitcoin as legal tender.
He himself reported that

Although on the other hand regarding this, the president of Honduras Xiomanra castro considered the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender, and from what you say I see that they have begun to do so.
https://i.imgur.com/h4ny4oe.png
"Image source: Cointelegraph"


SOURCE: https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/bitcoin-is-not-regulated--honduras-central-bank-pushes-back-against-legal-tender-rumors-2790751

Every time I hear about the adoption of bitcoin by a state or province of a country as a legal currency, I am surprised how it will be accepted in provinces and not others and how it will be compatible with the law applicable to the rest of the provinces.
Of course, my question does not include the autonomous regions .

I am taking this good news as another milestone for Bitcoin even if the recognition as a legal tender is just for a small economic zone under Honduras but if proven successful am sure there can be a big push to make it officially a legal tender in the entire country. Now, am sure that many maybe looking at Honduras as just another small country just like El Salvador but considering that for Bitcoin to be recognized as such is a long and winding process...I would still consider this move as a victory for BTC. Can we expect more small countries to be the ones leading the pack for Bitcoin as a legal tender? You bet and there can be more coming maybe even within 2022.

I do not have any geographical information about that island and I hardly know Honduras, but I think that these islands are so small that they do not have legal currency and therefore depend on the currencies of other countries as legal currencies.
Therefore, we do not have to celebrate such news, but from what happened global adoption, especially from some countries, most of these countries will automatically adopt Bitcoin.

@Oluwa-btc, how about discussing one topic in one thread?

No matter how excited some are that one city has introduced Bitcoin as a legal tender, we should not exaggerate with enthusiasm and stop reading the forum in order not to open duplicate threads.

Madeira and Prospera "adopting bitcoin" (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5393558.0)

Legal tender is good but if a nation tries to force their citizens to use Bitcoin for daily payments, it would be wrong.

Bitcoin is more likely an asset for long term investment, a safe asset against inflation. However, it is volatile short term and business companies don't like it. People who have small business don't like it because they will not be able to control income and outcome for their business with Bitcoin. They would prefer to sell, buy, store their capital in fiat currency or in stable coins rather than in Bitcoin.

It is arguably but it is also a fact.

I believe you guys misunderstand the OP statement the topic says " BTC is now legal tender in a specific economic zone of Honduras" so it already stated that it's not Honduras as a whole. Besides, the region where Bitcoin was legal tender has its own political rules and regulations with the inclusion of economic.

You have a point but everything depends on the government's understanding of Bitcoin if the government understands the true purpose of Bitcoin to their economy they can still adopt Bitcoin as a payment method but Honduras Central Bank said they "cannot vouch for cryptocurrency transaction".

Bitcoin playing huge role in the Special Economic Zone.When Russia said,it would not accepted the bitcoin as a legal tender.Most of the people had started to criticise of bitcoin and other crypto currency.The pandemic itself make huge people about the crypto holding.Later with the war,the Russian had strongly accepted the bitcoin as legal tender.Only this bitcoin changed country move.

It is observed that countries who came to adopt bitcoin as a legal tender are those that have low cost of living and are certainly have small population just like El Salvador. So more likely, Honduras will succeed too like El Salvador, but i firmly believe that the leadership of the president on crypto matters the most. Otherwise, this adoption will only end up in trial and error method.

They wont really be ending up on such decision if they havent studied up about the risk which it is really dumb for a president or a leader who do make Bitcoin as a legal tender without having
these kind of considerations.Its good to see that these places had really made out such decisions even though its quite risky but they had made out such thing.
Quite understandable on how these countries do make it as a legal tender. Lets see on what countries would really be next in line with  this one.

They are also a small country and don't have much influence so don't expect prices to be affected by this news, but I feel very happy that bitcoin is more and more accepted by countries. No matter how big or small a country is, every time a country accepts bitcoin it is a real success for bitcoin and cryptos. We should be excited instead of waiting for a price increase to be disappointed. EU countries are acting unfriendly towards bitcoin so for me, I don't expect anything from them.

Prospera, special economic zone in the island of Roatán. The total population of Roatán is around 110k - 120k. Among that special economic zone Prospera will be having lesser population.

This special economic zone being created as a concept by Paul Romer to form autonomous zone with private government. Now the area is subject to the national government’s Zone for Employment and Economic Development law. As an attempt to boost investment and employment opportunities in largely uninhabited parts of the country cryptocurrency acceptance is encouraged.

As a very small population is involved the impact on the market isn't experienced much. But, the adoption is really appreciable.

Maybe I should quote a statement from the OP


But, yet, nobody is misunderstanding the OP, but emphasizing again on the fact that bitcoin was made legal tender in just an island in Honduras and how it can just be an experiment and how it might not spread to the whole of Honduras as they have fiat they are spending unlike El Salvador that do not have its own fiat but spending US dollar. If I did not begin with that, then how would I bring up such ending.

Even though the region said to have made this development of the use of bitcoin as a legal tender is alongside with other cryptos and  is just within it confined zone and not in the  entire Honduras, i begin to see the developing countries maximizing the opportunity of making bitcoin a legal tender in other to help boost their economy thereby reducing the rate of poverty an unemployment in their countries, in this regard, the adoption is limited to that region only and not the entire country and I think it yet to be a big catch but nevertheless a good start.

This is just the beginning of the gradual adoption of bitcoin worldwide. The world already knows bitcoin can't be ignored anymore but are reluctant to change. But change is constant and we've got to adapt or get left behind. We've ignored btc for far too long but not anymore

It's good that there's another place of Earth that is Bitcoin-friendly, but I think that comparing it to El Salvador isn't very accurate. What's big about El Salvador is that it's a whole country, adopting Bitcoin on all its territory. But in Honduras, it's in a special economic zone, and I think that there've been multiple places around the world where cryptos are locally adopted, and it's normally a place with a high degree of economic autonomy or a tax-free zone.
So I'm not surprised that there was no price boost, following this news, and that it went relatively unnoticed overall.

It doesn't matter where it is, even a piece of land would be fine, just one piece of land enough to build a house would be enough. Why? Because that way crypto companies could show that place as their main headquarters, it wouldn't actually be there, but the officially it would look like it's there.

It is a legal loophole, you could have just one mailbox in a building, you could literally have a whole building consisting of bunch of mailboxes inside without any rooms at all, and tens of thousands of companies could show their headquarters there this way. It would allow them to build crypto companies in a legal tender zone and would allow them to grow bigger.

It's good to see the world adopting btc and following the El Salvador path and soon more parts of the world will be following the same route.Have already heard about the rumours of Honduras finalising the bill to adopt btc and now they have come up with this news.The adoption initiative had begun from SEZ and are ther are any tax rebates to people doing that business?

Honduras has a population of over 9 million in 2020 according to the site I checked, that is not really a small population, although it is still small compared to many other countries. But what can be said that the population is small is because only an island called Próspera make bitcoin a legal tender, not the whole of Honduras. But what I noticed was that even when El Salvador accepted bitcoin as a legal, the price of bitcoin did not increase, probably because the El Salvadoran population is around 7 million people and not a country of focus like United States of America or China. Also I have noticed more price increase when whales and institutional whales are buying bitcoin than news partaining to said to be small countries bitcoin adoption.

This I agree with you. Even if a country accepts bitcoin legitimacy, we will hardly see any price increase in the market. But just one action of any whale causes the market to move in an instant. This leads me to think that there is manipulation rather than news, which means everything is precalculated and news is released just to legitimize the volatility.

Good on Honduras!

Despite being a small country with a relatively small population, they seem to know how to create a good and prosperous future for their citizens. I do not know if Honduras has been subject to much financial corruption, but with Bitcoin that will definitely see an end.

Although I am not sure about the "special economic zone" of Honduras. My understanding was that the ruling of legal tender was for the entire country? Perhaps they want to do a test zone with Bitcoin before fully expanding the law fully to the entire population?

I would guess that just one island of Honduras making bitcoin legal tender shouldn't have impacted bitcoin all that much anyway. Why did you assume that bitcoin should have been higher just because it is a legal tender. I mean if all of Honduras did, then maybe we could have talked about something else, but this isn't like that, this is just a situation where one part of Honduras did and that would not have too much of  an impact today.

Maybe in the long term we would see companies moving there for the ease of being a crypto company there, like how they are using Malta right now for example, and used other places like Bahamas, but that is a long term thing and wouldn't change it overnight.

Until now, the potential that I see in bitcoin in the future is recognized as a currency that will be done by many countries. people and even governments in many countries definitely see bitcoin as an opportunity not a threat. Countries that reject bitcoin today can be said to be in the category of lagging countries lol.