Which countries do you think this year will adopt Bitcoin as a Legal tender?

[elevates]

We all know that El Salvador and the Central African Republic (CAR) have already adopted Bitcoin as a legal tender. Out of these two El Salvador has shown significant improvement in their economy. They recently shared with the world that they have paid back $800m sovereign debt. Every mainstream media outlets controlled or financed by the big financial institution were against them when they adopted Bitcoin as a legal tender.

Till last year almost every mainstream media outlet had predicted that they would default on their $800m sovereign debt but that did not happen and now many other countries that are presently going through an economic crisis would be interested follow on their footpath. Do you then think that other countries would adopt Bitcoin? If yes, then which country would likely do it this year?

As for me, I think this small country Tonga islands might adopt Bitcoin. They have already shown interest in Bitcoin as they would like to mine it using the green energy which BTW, they have in abundance and another reason is that the population in Tonga is not that big for large energy consumption. They are interested in training and providing Bitcoin mining equipment to every resident in their country where the population is just 106,858.  

Please do share the reason and the sources you have gathered while replying to this topic. If Possible

[mk4]

Your guess might just be as good as mine, but one thing's for sure — it wouldn't be a major country like the US/UK/etc. A smaller country like Tonga(like you said) has a lot more incentive to take such risks compared to huge established countries.

[Getmon]

Previously, Paraguay was the most likely candidate to follow El Salvador and CAR. Last year, their senate gave it a chance to be regulated; however, their president vetoed it, sending it back to their legislature. In addition, in December of the previous year, it failed to obtain the necessary votes in a potential second effort. Anyhow, there were only short of five votes in the voting. Therefore, it is possible that new additional pushes will occur this year. Regardless, Latin America and any other smaller nations from different continents could become the new countries to adopt bitcoin as a legal tender.

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/12/06/paraguay-votes-down-crypto-regulatory-bill-in-a-blow-to-crypto-mining-industry/

[ilovealtcoins]

I don't have any information on which countries are getting friendly and considering accepting bitcoin as a legal tender in the near future. But if any country continues to accept bitcoin as legal tender, I think it will be the 3rd country with a difficult economy. The first two countries to accept bitcoin are in a similar situation. Don't expect that some developed countries will do this.

[Lucius]

We all know that El Salvador and the Central African Republic (CAR) have already adopted Bitcoin as a legal tender. Out of these two El Salvador has shown significant improvement in their economy. They recently shared with the world that they have paid back $800m sovereign debt. Every mainstream media outlets controlled or financed by the big financial institution were against them when they adopted Bitcoin as a legal tender.

What does the fact that Bitcoin is legal tender in El Salvador have to do with the alleged improvement of their economy? As far as I know, that country has not sold a single Bitcoin, and still continues to buy them - while at the same time statistics show that only 21% of people used Bitcoin during 2022.

Maybe some things will be clearer to you if you read the following information :

The UCA (university institute of public opinion) has just released a survey where Salvadorians evaluate 2022. The survey was carried out against 1.273 people, conducting personal interviews in random houses in accordance to sought quotas by type of area (rural, urban), department (state), sex and age. It sounds conceptually correct from my point of view.

The survey includes a specific set of questions on bitcoin, reflected in the first link provided below between pages 42 and 53, and summarized in the second link’s infographic. The data seems to allow us to derive that:

-   Salvadorians believe, in their majority (81,7%), that their family economic situation has not improved thanks to bitcoin being legal tender. There is also a decrease in those that perceive an improvement, going down from 9,9% in 2021 to 5,7% in 2022.

-   Only 5,1% considers the general population to be the main (emphasis on main) beneficiary of bitcoin becoming legal tender, whilst over 60% point to the rich/foreign investors/government-president as those being the main beneficiaries.

-   74% (*) have not used bitcoin during 2022 (there’s also another 5% that have never used it). 21% declare having used it in 2022. Out of these users, 31,2% have only used it once, 33,8% between 2 and 4 times, and 35% 5 or more times.

(*) I guess that there are a lot of people that benefited from the initial 30$ in bitcoin for downloading the Chivo wallet, and that therefore are considered ex-users (thus not engrossing the "never used it" segment).

I don't consider 21% of people declaring to have used bitcoin during 2022 a failure, though is we go for those that have used it more than once, the figure drops to 14,5%. Nevertheless, taking into account that it is legal tender there, the heavy user segment is pretty low, meaning that there is still a large gap to cover in terms of practical recurrent usage.
The stat lacks a historical perspective of the evolution of the frequency of usage, which is something I hope they keep and compare vs 2023 data next year.

See (in Spanish, but with charts):
https://uca.edu.sv/iudop/wp-content/uploads/PPT-Ev-Anio-2022.pdf
https://uca.edu.sv/iudop/wp-content/uploads/Opinion-publica-sobre-el-bitcoin-en-el-anio-2022.pdf

As for me, I think this small country Tonga islands might adopt Bitcoin. They have already  as they would like to mine it using the green energy which BTW, they have in abundance and another reason is that the population in Tonga is not that big for large energy consumption. They are interested in training and providing Bitcoin mining equipment to every resident in their country where the population is just 106,858.  

Do not live in delusions, because it is not the idea of the government of Tonga, but of a politician who is a former member of parliament and as far as I know does not speak officially on behalf of the government of that island. Even if his wishes come true, it won't even be news that will mean anything - because Bitcoin as a legal tender does not mean much.

[coupable]

If there are countries that will work to adopt Bitcoin as legal currency, they certainly will not follow the example of El Salvador or Central Africa. The two experiments do not achieve the expected success to this day. Or this can be explained by the fact that the adoption of Bitcoin cannot succeed in countries with weak economies. This is in addition to the Ftx disaster, which forced many countries that showed enthusiasm for crypto to reconsider all future plans related to crypto regulation.
In the same concept, there are expectations that some African countries will announce the legalization of Bitcoin as a recognized currency.
The governor of the Central Bank of Morocco had announced that the bank had completed the preparation of a draft law to legalize cryptocurrencies, and that the project had been discussed with international parties such as the World Bank. The project is currently being presented to financial institutions in Morocco for consideration and to propose appropriate amendments before issuing the final version of it. There is no clear date set, but the project is expected to be launched at the beginning of next summer.

[teosanru]

I think it's hard to predict which country will go through such a proposal no one even expected El Salvador would do such a thing before they actually did it. I believe it not only depends on country's own will to do that but the will of countries which support that country as it is often seen that small nations are at mercy of the big nations for some or the other resources, any country under influence of any such big nation is never going to make such a proposal.

[pawel7777]

I wouldn't expect a massive number of new countries to declare Bitcoin as a legal tender, especially not any from the top-developed ones, but I won't be surprised if we see a growing number of countries deciding to keep some small portion of their reserves in bitcoin.
When thinking about it, it actually makes no sense not to hold at least a little bit. The risks of price fluctuations could be lower than potential benefit in the scenario that BTC becomes a world's reserve currency, which is unlikely but not impossible, or when it just massively appreciate in value. But for that to happen, there would have to be some sort of an international, trusted fund acting as custodian, as having public officials responsible for keeping private keys doesn't sound like a good idea.

[Flexystar]

Right on time, just today only I shared a news about Indonesia and their Trade agencies looking after the Crypto exchange launch as early as June 2023. Basically it is going to be Crypto Exchanger owned by the Indonesian government thus making their government closer to adoption of the bitcoin/crypto currencies. This is definitely one and the same thing because they are directly allowing their nationals to use the crypto currencies along with the share market assets.

I think we can safely add Indonesia as one of the country which will have their Legal tender passed on for the adoption of bitcoin this year.

FYI: they are already working on five different exchanges and they have financial bodies acting as escrow for the same making sure crypto exchanges run smoothly within the country.

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5437925.0
or direct: Indonesia targets launch of its national crypto exchange by June

[dimonstration]

Right on time, just today only I shared a news about Indonesia and their Trade agencies looking after the Crypto exchange launch as early as June 2023. Basically it is going to be Crypto Exchanger owned by the Indonesian government thus making their government closer to adoption of the bitcoin/crypto currencies. This is definitely one and the same thing because they are directly allowing their nationals to use the crypto currencies along with the share market assets.

I think we can safely add Indonesia as one of the country which will have their Legal tender passed on for the adoption of bitcoin this year.

FYI: they are already working on five different exchanges and they have financial bodies acting as escrow for the same making sure crypto exchanges run smoothly within the country.

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5437925.0
or direct: Indonesia targets launch of its national crypto exchange by June

There is a similarity but having an exchange owned by the government is a different compared to Bitcoin as legal tender. It’s more on centralizing crypto exchange rather than using Bitcoin as legal tender they will need to construct a law that will allow Bitcoin to be use as currency to pay for goods while they are just aiming right now for an Exchange. This can’t be categorized as step towards Bitcoin as legal tender and Indonesia is still not showing a sign for this bold move.

Indonesia is not a small country like El Salvador. I doubt that they will do this kind of bold move instantly this year.

[Husires]

We all know that El Salvador and the Central African Republic (CAR) have already adopted Bitcoin as a legal tender. Out of these two El Salvador has shown significant improvement in their economy. They recently shared with the world that they have paid back $800m sovereign debt.

There is no indication that Bitcoin was the reason behind El Salvador's payment of its debts, and therefore what this news confirms is the strength of the economy in El Salvador.
I do not have information about that island and I do not know the number of its population, but according to some sources, the population is 108,020, while the literacy rate is 98%, which means that they are an educated nation, and therefore bitcoin mining will not be a problem with a very small average population.

I don't know about bitcoin mining, the state relies on diesel to produce electricity.

[Captain Corporate]

Definitely not Turkey, we are still trying to achieve some sort of law that is completely covers all sides of it, and since its a developing world and there are more and more new things every year, law is far behind of it all at all times which causes a lot of trouble. To be fair USA is like this as well, it doesn't have enough laws and regulations about it, because the whole thing to put a law in motion takes months at least, if not years and crypto developers a lot faster than that. Which is why I honestly believe that we are not going to see any big nations like ours could do it, it will probably be a much smaller nation, a population that is under 5-10 million for sure.

[stompix]

They have already shown interest in Bitcoin as they would like to mine it using the green energy which BTW, they have in abundance and another reason is that the population in Tonga is not that big for large energy consumption. They are interested in training and providing Bitcoin mining equipment to every resident in their country where the population is just 106,858.  

Browse the project a little!

Output 2: Grid-connected renewable energy generation on ‘Eua and Vava’u islands
– Installing the on-grid solar PV plants with total capacity of 650 kW
Output 3: Renewable-based hybrid systems and mini-grids on outer-Islands -
Installing mini-grid renewable-based hybrid systems consisting of 501 kW solar PV

They are installing 1.15 MW of solar panels with a 19.9 MWh and 4.3 MWh  BESS system, so, if you think there would be any meaningful mining done at a large scale with that you're definitely mistaken! Tonga is trying to achieve with all that a 50% green energy and you think they will use it to mine bitcoin?

Ps, I don't know who wrote that article from Cointelegraph, but a guy that can't differentiate MW from MWh probably shouldn't write about energy and electricity.

We all know that El Salvador and the Central African Republic (CAR) have already adopted Bitcoin as a legal tender. Out of these two El Salvador has shown significant improvement in their economy. They recently shared with the world that they have paid back $800m sovereign debt.

Cross post from the Salvador topic:

And not a word on the $450m they took in a loan with Central American Bank for Economic Integration and the other $100m they took from the Inter-American Development Bank to pay $604 million in bond maturity.

The magical payment was made by just taking a loan from a different bank! But, those are tiny details, it doesn't really matter, right?  

[tiCeR]

Your guess might just be as good as mine, but one thing's for sure — it wouldn't be a major country like the US/UK/etc. A smaller country like Tonga(like you said) has a lot more incentive to take such risks compared to huge established countries.

I believe IF a larger economy or country like the US/UK/etc. is really going to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, that would happen in tandem with the introduction of smart laws that work in favor of the government in terms of tax collection optimization and overall insight into and control of financial activities, especially cross border activities. I don't see any of the major economies to just make Bitcoin legal tender without any accompanying laws or regulations. So I would say it is not just all about seeing "Bitcoin becoming legal tender" in isolation. Smaller economies might have a reason to take a gamble, like a real gamble when actually Bitcoin could make them rich at some point. That doesn't apply to the larger economies.

If you take the example of Tonga, their GDP was less than 500 million USD in 2021. Due to a massive bet on Bitcoin they could actually exceed their annual GDP during a decent Bitcoin bull run.

In such countries the goals concerning Bitcoin are usually completely different from those of well established economies. The well established economies want surveillance and control. Worse established economies might consider Bitcoin a good bet at this point from a wealth perspective.

Very difficult to tell who owns what, who knows what, who wants what and who might already be planning something big.

If I was the US government, wouldn't it be smart to first amass a ton of Bitcoin and then at some point in time declare it legal tender? That would certainly have a massive impact on the price.

Many things to consider and certainly an interesting question to think about. 

[uneng]

Rumours of Tonga adopting bitcoin as legal tender come since the beginning of 2022. And there also rumours from a senator in the state of Arizona, USA, who is trying to push bitcoin adoption as legal tender as well. On the other hand, in St. Maarten's country, which is part of the Kingdom of Netherlands, there are plans on the parliament to adopt Tron as legal tender.

As we can see there are initiatives regards crypto adoptions in different minor countries and independent states of bigger nations, like US. However, we don't know yet how much support these initiatives have locally. The side who speaks against crypto adoption might be still more influent, especially after El Salvador adopted the measure, but saw bitcoin melting down, while the country continued acquiring more and more bitcoins. So far El Salvador is in loss on their btc investments and will be only able to recover it once btc returns to the 40,000$'s price range.

[Furious 7]

Previously there were still many who were sure about Paraguay which would follow, but this seemed to have disappeared from monitoring and the news at this time seemed to have been swallowed up by the earth. but no one really knows about it, that's for sure, for now it's impossible for large countries to adopt bitcoin because this will obviously shake things up, but that doesn't mean there won't be, it's just that it's possible for small countries, I think there will still be at least 1 or even more.

[Artemis3]

Paraguay is currently no go. Maybe one of the neighbors of El Salvador...

[mendace]

It is difficult to predict which country might adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender next. Adoption of Bitcoin as a legal tender is a complex and controversial issue that involves many factors such as political, economic, and technological factors.

As for Tonga, while they have shown interest in Bitcoin mining using green energy, there is no official announcement or confirmed sources indicating that they are considering adopting Bitcoin as a legal tender. It is important to keep in mind that adopting Bitcoin as a legal tender involves significant regulatory and infrastructure changes, and the decision would likely be made after careful consideration and consultation with relevant stakeholders.

[tbct_mt2]

Countries Which Allow Cryptocurrency As Legal Tender
Which Country Will Make Crypto Legal Tender Next?

Making Bitcoin legal tender in a whole nation means a big thing legally. Big countries with healthy finance will not have interest in making this. In contrast, small nations especially with their economic problems usually have more interests in such a big legal step.

If you want to guess what countries will enforce Bitcoin legal tender after El Salvador and Central African Republic, you must consider their economic and maybe social status. If the status is bad, it is higher chance to see legal tender in that nation.

[virasog]

Your guess might just be as good as mine, but one thing's for sure — it wouldn't be a major country like the US/UK/etc. A smaller country like Tonga(like you said) has a lot more incentive to take such risks compared to huge established countries.

I think the countries who have taken debt from the USA and are unable to pay the debt may adopt bitcoin much faster than the countries who are economically strong.

But then we see that a rich country like UAE / Dubai also support bitcoin which means that there is no hard and fast rule of which country can adopt bitcoin and which cannot.