Love Me Tender

Lawmakers in the Central African Republic (CAR) unanimously voted to adopt bitcoin as legal tender yesterday, becoming the second nation in the world to do so behind El Salvador.

🪙🇨🇫 Driving the move... “The president supports this bill because it will improve the conditions of Central African citizens,” President Faustin-Archange Touadera's chief of staff told Reuters without elaborating. In a statement, he called it “a decisive step toward opening up new opportunities for our country.”

• Since gaining independence from France in 1960, the CAR has experienced few moments of peace, per Agence France-Presse; the country is in the midst of a 9-year civil war and currently ranks 188 out of 189 countries in the UN's Human Development Index, a benchmark of prosperity.

✋ Yes, but... Of the nearly 5 million people living in the country, roughly 11% have access to the internet, which is necessary to access crypto.

• Two of the CAR’s former prime ministers reportedly sent a letter last week expressing concern about adopting bitcoin without guidance from the Bank of Central African States (BEAC), calling it a "serious offense."
• The CAR is one of six countries that uses the CFA franc, a regional currency governed by the BEAC.

🌎 Zoom out: El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender last year, but adoption has been slow. A report published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that “bitcoin is not widely used as a medium of exchange” within the Central American country.