Just a few days ago, I wrote about how El Salvador was going to submit a proposal to make Bitcoin legal tender in their country. Well, yesterday, that was what exactly happened. The bill was put forth in congress, debated and voted upon.
Not surprisingly, the bill was passed into law, and Bitcoin is now officially legal tender, and El Salvador is the world’s first country to adopt it. Several other South American nations are actively looking into it, so I think this narrative will definitely continue into the year.
But that’s not the point of this article today.
Today, I wanted to share more about how I was able to be witness to the event via Twitter Spaces, an audio only chatroom feature of Twitter, very similar to Clubhouse.
What is Twitter Spaces?
Spaces is a live audio conversations feature introduced by Twitter last year, to combat the then growing popularity of Clubhouse.
Anyone with over 600 followers on Twitter can host a space, and invite other twitter users in to chat. You can add up to 10 speakers, while the rest of the audience will be on listen-only mode. Although listeners can also raise their hands to speak, and if there are already 10 users on speaker mode, the host can choose to replace the new speaker with an existing one, keeping the rotating roster of speakers to 10.
How did the President of El Salvador came to speak on Twitter Spaces?
This was really an exercise in serendipity, and I think even Hollywood writers would have trouble coming up with this.
The Twitter space was hosted by @nic__carter on a whim, to see who would be available to discuss about the upcoming El Salvadorian bill to use Bitcoin as legal tender.
I wasn’t around to catch the start of the chat, but joined in midway to listen in to what other people’s perceptions were, of this bill.
On the other side of the world, in El Salvador, government officials were at the same time, prepping to debate and vote on the bill in Congress.
Karim Bukele enters the chat
Things were going as you would expect a random Twitter Space to be, different people presenting their views on how the Bitcoin narrative would evolve, interspersed with dinner conversations and jokes.
When suddenly, Karim Bukele, brother of the President Nayib Bukele, entered the chat.
It was a surreal moment. He was at the time present in Congress, waiting on Parliament to vote on the bill, and came on Twitter Spaces to provide some commentary. Soon after, some members of the chat started asking if he could entice Nayib Bukele himself to come in to say a few words.
Nayib Bukele enters the chat
Sure enough, within a few minutes, he got hold of the President, and Nayib made some time (while the opposition members of Parliament was speaking) to spend more than a few minutes speaking broadly about his decision, policies and some of the more fundamental motives driving this bill.
He fielded questions from the roster of speakers including Anthony Pompliano, Nic Carter, Caitlin Long and Peter McCormack. He spoke freely and candidly about the logistics of implementation.
The chat soon ballooned from roughly 3K members when I first listened in, to a peak of 22K, attracting a who’s who of crypto into the chat.
The chat was ongoing even as the votes were being cast and tallied, and we were informed in real time by Karim Bukele of the super majority votes that were cast in favour of the bill.
How it felt to be part of this historic event
The entire episode was so surreal to me. The fact that a historic event was taking place live, and we were all able to participate, and listen in to the President’s views and comments, without it being filtered through the lens and narrative of any media.
It was just us, a bunch of crypto enthusiasts, with Nayib Bukele, shooting the shit.
In that moment, Twitter Spaces become the stage for a global press conference with the President taking questions from ordinary vested citizens. A moment in which I shared the same space with Mark Cuban, Jack Dorsey and the President of El Salvador.
Jack Dorsey, himself a huge Bitcoin proponent, must be proud that this historical moment in Bitcoin’s history unfolded live on his platform.
If you want to listen to how it all went down, Nic’s got the link to it.
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