Financial Inclusion and Bitcoin- What This Means For The People of El Salvador

The ability to access an open financial economy for citizens in countries like El Salvador is becoming a reality. Bitcoin and similar technologies like xrp have enabled individuals the ability to transact freely outside of the confines of traditional banks. 

These traditional banks for countless years have controlled, manipulated and exploited its native monetary systems in order to maintain their power. 

Fortunately for you and I Cryptocurrencies and related decentralized technologies offer a choice. A choice that circumvents a controlled traditional financial system. 

Bitcoin offers p2p (person to person) transactions (from your cellphone) that cost customers pennies on the dollar to send money globally without the need for a third party like banks or remittance companies that would normally “facilitate” the money transfers while tacking on significant fees-

Fees that on average cost customers between 7-12% of the amount of money they’re sending. 

7 to 12% ?! 

This makes absolutely no sense. Why are the fees so high?  You’re just moving numbers in a computer?! The fact is there is no reason for the fees other than greed. 

Now you can imagine for people sending money back to family members in countries like El Salvador. That 7-12% fee is a very high price to pay in order to send the money back to family members.  

It would be accurate to say that in that situation every single penny counts.

Now To put those “fee” percentages in better perspective they are worth $100’s of millions of dollars on an annual basis that go to banks or third party remittance companies such as a moneygram or a western union. Naturally these platforms do not like Bitcoin and other related fintech technologies because a significant percentage of their business is being lost to the tech. 

For example 

Recently the president of El Salvador came out publicly and stated that these aforementioned platforms could lose up to $400 Million dollars a year due to the country’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender. This is a huge blow to the remittance industry. 

Also In 2020 El Salvador received $6 billion dollars in remittances and As Bitcoin adoption grows - more and more users will dump companies like moneygram and go with more inexpensive choices such as btc or xrp for remittances. 

Only time will tell what the future will hold  as we see more and more countries adopt Bitcoin and possibly other forms of crypto currencies as legal tender. 

Remember that Innovation drives competition. That innovation has arrived. 

And It’s name is Bitcoin. 

Jk.