Madeira and Prospera "adopting bitcoin"

[OmegaStarScream]

The president of Madeira (an autonomous region in Portugal) just announced "adopting bitcoin" as a legal tender. Some stats about the country:

Area: 801 km²
Elevation: 1,862 m
Population: 253,945 (2019)
GDP: ~4.5$ billion

Prospera (An island in Honduras) has also announced the same thing.

Obviously, these two are not as big as El Salvador, but it's still a big step forward. Your thoughts?

The announcements were made at the Bitcoin conference a few minutes ago.

Edit: You can read more about this here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ninabambysheva/2022/04/07/two-new-territories-are-adopting-bitcoin/?sh=7fe4c5e2499a

[cr1776]

The president of Madeira (an autonomous region in Portugal) just announced adopting bitcoin as a legal tender. Some stats about the country:

Area: 801 km²
Elevation: 1,862 m
Population: 253,945 (2019)
GDP: ~4.5$ GDP

The announcement was made at the Bitcoin conference a few minutes ago. What are your thoughts?

It is a small region, but every new usage opportunity is a positive.   I see you updated with the Honduras stuff, and that is good too. 

It is good to see it in various countries because then you can have competition for freedom within countries, not just between countries.

[Ale88]

The announcement was made at the Bitcoin conference a few minutes ago. What are your thoughts?

Portugal has always been very crypto-friendly, knowing now that Madeira is doing doing the same that the city of Lugano (Switzerland) did is just great! Especially because at this point I hope those countries are using Madeira and Lugano as a test, so eventually bitcoin will be accepted on the whole territory!

[goldkingcoiner]

The president of Madeira (an autonomous region in Portugal) just announced adopting bitcoin as a legal tender. Some stats about the country:

Area: 801 km²
Elevation: 1,862 m
Population: 253,945 (2019)
GDP: ~4.5$ billion

Prospera (An island in Honduras) has also announced the same thing.

Obviously, these two are not as big as El Salvador, but it's still a big step forward. Your thoughts?

The announcements were made at the Bitcoin conference a few minutes ago.

That does seem slightly impressive and I, as a Bitcoiner am always proud and happy to see Bitcoin being adopted more and more. However 250k people is not all that impressive. I do hope bigger countries start jumping on the Bitcoin bandwagon soon. Its obvious that Bitcoin will get adopted and turned into the world currency at some point. I just want that to happen sooner than later.

Small steps to world domination I guess

[Ale88]

[Lucius]

Every journey starts with small steps, so these announcements should be seen in that context, although Bukele announced a few months ago that two more countries will do the same as El Salvador - in fact, these are two islands that would be hard to find on a map without google. I hope this is not the only good news that will come from Miami

 

[buwaytress]

Interesting, for sure, especially as the region is highly dependent on tourism (at least to my understanding). Plenty of lessons to learn already from El Salvador but I think a slow burn rollout, with pertinent thought to infrastructure and access, maybe we'll see a (better) success story.

The income tax benefit thing could be interesting for OTC auxiliaries, definitely for Localbitcoiners. Portugal itself is still a pretty easy place to do business, and it's pretty high on the ease-of-access list for freelancers and crypto peeps (comparative to rest of EU).

Edit: might be tiny but the city I come from, the capital of my island state, has a lower population. I bet it's a lot more developed.

[avikz]

These are autonomous regions so their decision doesn't stand in the eyes of law of the governing country. For example, Madeira is a part of Portugal, so the laws of Portugal applies on that region. So if Portugal makes bitcoin illegal, it will apply to Madeira as well.

But one positive is that, these regions are mostly visited by travelers of different nationalities. So such kind of adoption will make people intrigued about bitcoin and its usage. Might create some good amount of awareness if not volume.

[kryptqnick]

I think these are great decisions, and now that there's an example of El Salvador, there will be a reference point for these regions, so it will be easier for them to build the infrastructure to stimulate Bitcoin adoption. Madeira has a great Internet penetration rate (much higher than in El Salvador, it seems), but I'm not sure about Prospera (31% is the rate for Honduras, and I can't find specifications).  Perhaps such things also affect how well the adoption goes, as when fewer people use the internet and fewer places have access points for it, this can be a huge obstacle for using Bitcoin.
I don't think this news will affect the global market much, but it's a nice local thing to happen.

[coolcoinz]

I love it when warm countries adopt Bitcoin. Gives me an opportunity to choose when I finally decide to leave cold Europe for a better, friendlier climate.
I'm pretty sure other countries are watching it closely and gathering teams of analysts to tell them if it's a good idea. Big, prosperous countries will be scared of doing something like that but poor countries don't have much to lose, they might as well dip their toes.

I was thinking on celebrating when we hit 100k for BTC, so maybe I'll just do a tour around all the countries where Bitcoin is a legal tender? What do you think? 

[macson]

The president of Madeira (an autonomous region in Portugal) just announced adopting bitcoin as a legal tender. Some stats about the country:

Area: 801 km²
Elevation: 1,862 m
Population: 253,945 (2019)
GDP: ~4.5$ billion

Prospera (An island in Honduras) has also announced the same thing.

Obviously, these two are not as big as El Salvador, but it's still a big step forward. Your thoughts?

The announcements were made at the Bitcoin conference a few minutes ago.

this is good news....btw, this is my first time hearing about this country and as you said it is a small country but they have been worldwide since accepting Bitcoin as a legal tender there.  this is just the first step because, before 2022 ends, there will definitely be more countries that make bitcoin as their legal tender. 

[Smartvirus]

Small steps could bring forth big problems and vice versa for success. The vice versa of the El-Salvador adoption is what we are seeing today with other nations looking towards the bitcoin adoption. This shows that, the lab rat experiment for which the rest of the world has turned El-Salvador into and have been observing them over, is producing good results that is resulting in more and more adoptions.
When these adoptions happens, surrounding nations and nations in same genre as the adopting nation would be puzzled and tend to evaluate reasons as to why and eventually, come up with same idea. The population is some worth low and that doesn't mean all are going to be arms open to the new development but, its good enough for BTC and cryptocurrency at large. It's a good one!

[KennyR]

With small countries it is an easy thing to adopt bitcoin. It is true that small droplets make an Ocean. Here small countries adopting bitcoin as legal tender will make big change when large nations step into adoption of bitcoin as legal tender. Euro being the official currency used in Madeira there will be political pressure in the coming days. Madeira is recorded as one of the poorest region of Europe. In contrary to the same it is the second richest region of Portugal.

[aoluain]

In the case of Madeira, which is part of Portugal and is in the Eurozone its very surprising
to hear that they seem to be acting independently of both Portugal and the European central bank.

I can understand El Salvador adopting Bitcoin as an alternative to the US $ and to reduce
remittance fees for example but what I wonder does Madeira have to gain from this?

It will be interesting to see how this one progresses.

[PhoenixZephyrus]

According to a survey in 2019,

According to the results of the Survey on the Usage of Information and Communication Technologies in Households for 2019, 86.1% of the private households in the Autonomous Region of Madeira, with at least one member aged between 16 and 74, had access to the Internet at home (83.3% through broadband), an increase of 3.4 percentage points (p.p.) compared to 2018.

The proportion of persons in that age group that used the internet in the 12 months prior to the interview stood at 77.4%.

The use of Internet to make purchases or orders (electronic commerce) was carried out by 36.8% of those persons in the 12 months prior to the interview and 27.7% did so in the 3 months before to the interview.

Madeira household internet penetration statistics

This shows that the amount of people with access to internet is pretty significant compared to the % in El Salvador - which definitely caused a hindrance for them, atleast as of yet. Madeira also has a smaller area and way less population than El Salvador so implementation and raising awareness for adoption shouldn't be as hard. This definitely shows more promise, but it has to be implemented properly - otherwise it will probably end up like the current state in El Salvador, many shopkeepers have stopped using it stating that its more of an inconvenience, and people don't really see it as a viable currency because of poor implementation. Bitcoin ATMs are like kilometers away.

If all that gets fixed and properly done in Madeira, maybe we'll see much better results!

[lalabotax]

With small countries it is an easy thing to adopt bitcoin. It is true that small droplets make an Ocean. Here small countries adopting bitcoin as legal tender will make big change when large nations step into adoption of bitcoin as legal tender.

Not every small country is easy to adopt BTC. It purely depends on the perception of the government related to Bitcoin. But this news should bring a good impact, whether small country or big country, people will see it as great progress in Bitcoin adoption. People around the world will be more optimistic to buy and hold Bitcoin because they know more countries or areas or locations to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender.

[Mahanton]

Obviously, these two are not as big as El Salvador, but it's still a big step forward. Your thoughts?

The announcements were made at the Bitcoin conference a few minutes ago.

Any news about adoption or making Bitcoin as a legal tender would always be considered as a good one and thanks for sharing up on this one buddy! This news proves out that El Salvador did really make out some
initial step on which other countries or places in the globe would really make out on the same decision as they did on where making bitcoin as a legal tender.We know on whats the stance of government
when it comes to bitcoin or cryptocurrencies which is surprising that there governments on other places which do really see the other way around which is something impressive.

[stompix]

Every journey starts with small steps, so these announcements should be seen in that context, although Bukele announced a few months ago that two more countries will do the same as El Salvador - in fact, these are two islands that would be hard to find on a map without google.

Is Prospera even an island?
Wiki says it's a special economic zone on one of the islands in Honduras, a city of some 10k on paper.

But I think Madeira is a bit different, yes it's small, it is poor by EU standards but still 5x times wealthier per capita than Salvador, it's a pretty well-known destination for a lot of tourists and it got twice as many tourists as Salvador, probably a far better influence.
Plus it's still EU territory, it has a representative in the EU discussions as well as two MEPs, it is inside the VAT area and the Schengen, pretty good.  

At least we have something finally!

These are autonomous regions so their decision doesn't stand in the eyes of law of the governing country. For example, Madeira is a part of Portugal, so the laws of Portugal applies on that region. So if Portugal makes bitcoin illegal, it will apply to Madeira as well.

Not really that simple, as far as I've seen from their Consitution they have complete autonomy on administration as well as taxes and quite some interesting legislative powers till they hit the limit of national unity. Portugal is not that anti-crypto at all, they use the Euro so there is no pressure in that direction either that would have come if they would have used a national currency, so I doubt they will say much.

That free zone might be a thorn, I see there are some decisions about breaking EU state aid rules, but that's a different thing, not concerning BTC

[Ale88]

In the case of Madeira, which is part of Portugal and is in the Eurozone its very surprising
to hear that they seem to be acting independently of both Portugal and the European central bank.

Portugal itself is already extremely crypto-friendly, there are several people who moved to Portugal because unless you're a professional trader (or a company) you don't pay any tax on your gains. But of course what is happening is on another level. Portuguese government is pretty smart.

[Lucius]

Is Prospera even an island?
Wiki says it's a special economic zone on one of the islands in Honduras, a city of some 10k on paper.

You're right, it's not even an island, but according to Wiki it's a private city and a special economic zone on the island of Roatán.

Próspera is a private charter city and special economic zone on the island of Roatán in the Central American state of Honduras. The city is based on a concept by American economist Paul Romer and is intended to form autonomous zone with private government and its own fiscal, regulatory and legal architecture, though he has since retracted from the project due to transparency concerns.

But I think Madeira is a bit different, yes it's small, it is poor by EU standards but still 5x times wealthier per capita than Salvador, it's a pretty well-known destination for a lot of tourists and it got twice as many tourists as Salvador, probably a far better influence.
Plus it's still EU territory, it has a representative in the EU discussions as well as two MEPs, it is inside the VAT area and the Schengen, pretty good.  

At least we have something finally!

Finally, we in the EU will have the opportunity to go on holiday and pay for everything with Bitcoin, and not only is it relatively close to us, but it is (hopefully) much better in terms of lower crime rates and security in general. I can already see some BTT members gathering on the island, and some may move permanently if conditions are favorable