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5 Countries Will Adopt Bitcoin As Legal Tender by 2022

According to the CEO of Bitmex; Alexander Höptner, a combination of high inflation rates, hefty remittance fees, and political incentives may drive developing countries to follow El Salvador’s lead and adopt BTC as a legal tender next year. “My prediction is that by the end of next year, we’ll have at least five countries that accept Bitcoin as legal tender. All of them will be developing countries,” Höptner wrote in a recent blog post. 

He details that “What the critics fail to recognise is that developing countries like El Salvador are leading the world in embracing decentralised digital currencies and payments. They’ve had decades to analyse how the global financial system works – and doesn’t work – for their populations. They acknowledge their powerlessness to influence monetary policy decisions that can have grave consequences on their citizens.”

The most poignant of all points the Bitmex CEO made perhaps none was as clear as the following about why these developing countries will adopt Bitcoin. When “Faced with an inherently unequal financial system, those who have the most to lose by continuing the status quo are acting in their self-interest to explore alternative options like Bitcoin. It would be wrong – and hypocritical – to thumb our noses at them while continuing to benefit from that same unequal system.”

We in the Crypto community for a long time thought that the arms would start when the top countries start hoarding out of competition with one another. To think that the developing world could use Bitcoin to subvert the existing hegemony by adopting BTC early is a shakespearean-like twist. The early adoption by these countries puts them in a position such that when the Major Countries start the race to accumulate, they will never be able to out compete the smaller Countries who were early birds to the worm. 

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