The Panamian government introduced a bill to legalize cryptos like Bitcoin and Ethereum after El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as a legal tender. The purpose of this bill is, apparently, to make Panama “compatible with the block chain, crypto assets and the internet”.
The news for it were broken on Twitter by a Congressman Gabriel Silva, who is known as a strong proponent of blockchain technology as well as the use of cryptocurrency in everyday life. In his opinion, such legislation has the potential to create thousands of jobs, new investment resources and make government finances more transparent.
According to the draft of this bill, Panama will recognize all cryptocurrency assets (like Bitcoin, for example) as an alternative global payment method for “any civil or commercial operation not prohibited by the legal system of the Republic of Panama.”
The authors of the bill also insist that cryptos will facilitate fast and cheap transactions “regardless of the distance between parties and the transaction volume.”
All that said, there is one major difference between the El Salvadorian bill and the Panamian legislation – while the former does make the use of cryptocurrencies obligatory, the latter does not do that.
Hopefully this approach would make it easier for the locals to use them, I know that the mandatory nature of the El Salvadorian legislation has caused some controversy within the country.
