By George Ward
El Salvador just signed a memo of understanding alongside Switzerland’s Lugano city to spread the word about Bitcoin and increase the level of crypto acceptance globally.
According to the country’s U.S. ambassador Milena Mayorga, El Salvador now has a “Bitcoin office” in Switzerland. Mayorga said that the Bitcoin office would have new Consul personnel passionate about advocating Bitcoin throughout Europe.
He made the statement on Friday during Tether’s first-ever Plan B forum in Lugano. In his words, “my country’s people and I are glad about the promising future of Bitcoin. I anticipate how this project will be beneficial in making the economy more secure and helping everyone achieve true.”
El Salvador And The Bitcoin
In September 2021, El Salvador became the first country worldwide to accept Bitcoin as a legal tender. Despite the bearish market action that Bitcoin experienced in the last few months, the country’s president is still very supportive of it.
Switzerland also followed El Salvador’s footsteps and made Bitcoin, two stablecoins legal tenders. Tether seemed to support the new partnership between the two nations as it had already congratulated them.
Paulo Arduino — CTO of Tether, said,” it is an initiative that hopes to promote the best concepts and actions as it pertains to cryptocurrency.”
Tether — a stablecoin-providing company, has already worked with El Salvador on several Bitcoin awareness programs.
This partnership between El Salvador and Switzerland happened a few days after the Public Opinion University Institute found that El Salvador is not yet attracted by the idea of Bitcoin being a legal tender.
The poll results show that two-thirds of the country’s residents negatively understand Bitcoin. In addition, only a quarter of the El Salvador population used cryptocurrency.
Salvadorans’ Cold Shoulder Towards Bitcoin
Although El Salvador was the first nation worldwide in the world to make Bitcoin a legal tender country, Salvadorans haven’t bought the idea of Bitcoin as a new part of their economy.
The Public Opinion University Institute — a part of the Jose Simeon Canas Centroamerican University, revealed that most citizens of El Salvador rejected Bitcoin as a political part of the ruling of Nayib Bukele — El Salvador’s president. The survey was carried out amongst 1,260 citizens personally to record more accurate responses.
About 61.3% of the poll ruled out an opinion not favoring Bitcoin. However, most of them scored less than 5 out of ten points. Only a few locals use crypto in El Salvador, while less than a quarter of the population have used Bitcoin at least once.