Recently, Vitalik Buterin, the author of the Ethereum white paper, criticized El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele — for forcing businesses to accept Bitcoin as a form of native currency — as well as Bitcoin “maximalists” who support the President’s actions.
According to a report by The Block, the Russian-Canadian programmer took to Reddit on October 8 to share his views on President Nayib Bukele forcing businesses in El Salvador to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment. Buterin also called out “Bitcoin maximalists” for supporting the legislation that he found contrary to the ideals of freedom:
Buterin wrote in a Reddit post:
“Nothing unpopular about this opinion. Making it mandatory for businesses to accept a specific cryptocurrency is contrary to the ideals of freedom that are supposed to be so important to the crypto space.
“Additionally, this tactic of pushing BTC to millions of people in El Salvador at the same time with almost no attempt at prior education is reckless, and risks a large number of innocent people getting hacked or scammed. Shame on everyone (ok, fine, I’ll call out the main people responsible: shame on Bitcoin maximalists) who are uncritically praising him.“
According to the The Block’s report, Article 7 of El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law requires that all businesses must accept Bitcoin as a form of legal tender within the country, assuming they have the technological capability.
The legislation reads:
“Those who, by evident and notorious fact, do not have access to the technologies that allow them to carry out transactions in bitcoin are excluded from the obligation expressed in Art. 7 of this law. The State will promote the necessary training and mechanisms so that the population can access bitcoin transactions.“
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.