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Bitcoin’s value has retreated from its all-time high of roughly $70,000 per bitcoin, but lately it is trading at $37,000 per bitcoin, almost exactly the same point as when El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele announced that the country would adopt bitcoin as legal tender in June 2021.
Now, as the bitcoin and cryptocurrency market braces for a $48 trillion earthquake, outspoken libertarian Javier Milei’s victory in Argentina’s presidential election has sparked the wild hypothesis that the country could simply follow in El Salvador’s footsteps, “pushing” bitcoin.
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“[It] could be sooner than you think,” Samson Mow, chief executive of bitcoin technology company Jan3 and an advisor to El Salvador during its adoption of bitcoin, posted to X, adding: “Another nation-state” will be adopting bitcoin “very soon.” Mow has previously said Mexico is “on the list” of countries that could adopt bitcoin.
Bitcoin developer and the chief technology officer of wallet app Casa, Jameson Lopp, asked via X: “Is this the next domino to fall for nation-state adoption of bitcoin?”
Bitcoin’s value surged following Milei’s victory, reaching its level since May 2022.
Milei, who has vowed to “blow up” the country’s political establishment, dissolve Argentina’s central bank and dollarize the economy in the face of catastrophic hyperinflation, said earlier this year that bitcoin represented the “return of cash to its original creator, the sector. “””.
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Bitcoin’s value has rallied this year.
Milei “could pave the way for greater acceptance and integration of cryptocurrencies into the Argentine economy, providing a forward-looking solution to long-standing inflation and currency instability disruptions,” Bitcoin researchers and crypto asset manager Grayscale wrote in a note, adding that he “sees bitcoin as a tool to combat inefficiencies and corruption in centralized monetary systems” and an “alternative to the classical economic structures. “
Other bitcoin and crypto watchers predicted Milei’s election will be “positive” for the bitcoin price and could “supercharge” adoption.
“Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies were already solving a challenge for Argentines, however, Milei’s presidency can simply use and relevance to Argentina,” Mauricio Di Bartolomeo, co-founder of crypto firm Ledn, told The Block.
“Milei plans to dollarize the Argentine economy by killing the peso and shutting down the Argentine Central Bank. It also plans to get rid of “legal tender” laws, meaning that Argentines will be free to acquire whatever currency (or virtual asset) they want. We want to take care of their daily use.
“Milei’s victory is a positive thing for Bitcoin’s value in the long run,” Ruslan Lienkha, lead market director at YouHodler, told The Block.