The price of Bitcoin rose 5% overnight after El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced that the country will start to accept the cryptocurrency as legal tender on September 7 and that its citizens will be eligible to receive $30 in Bitcoin at that time.
That announcement helped stem the bleeding for Bitcoin, the price of which fell more than 10% earlier this week after several provinces in China started to shut down cryptocurrency mining operations to enforce new government restrictions.
Those shutdowns contributed to Bitcoin’s continued decline in value. The cryptocurrency was worth more than $64,000 per coin in April, but even after the rally that followed Bukele’s announcement, it’s currently trading at just $32,939.
Where the Chinese government has become increasingly restrictive towards Bitcoin, the El Salvadorian government embraced it, with its Congress voting in favor of Bukele’s proposal to accept the cryptocurrency as legal tender earlier this month.
Bukele doesn’t plan to stop there. He also said that he’s asked the state-owned LaGeo electric company to build a volcano-powered Bitcoin mining operation in an effort to offer a sustainable, emissions-free way to mine the cryptocurrency.
The plan to distribute $30 in Bitcoin might prove more controversial than El Salvador’s other crypto-related efforts, however, because it requires people to sign up for a new wallet called Chivo that relies on facial recognition software.
It also isn’t clear how El Salvador’s transition to Bitcoin is expected to work. Technically if it’s legal tender businesses will have to accept it, but according to a regional report, Bukele has said there will be exceptions to that rule.
But it seems like Bukele—and therefore El Salvador—will continue to operate in favor of Bitcoin even as other countries look to restrict it. That might not be enough to make up for losing China, but hey, at least volcanoes are involved.
