Hello everyone.
It is no secret that cryptocurrencies are changing the way things are done. For example, what cryptocurrencies have totally changed is the way payments are made, and in a world increasingly connected by technology, there is a need for a fast, reliable and secure way to pay.
And although banking or financial institutions could offer security and transparency in remittance operations from one country to another, it failed a lot in terms of commissions and speed, since it took a long time to process a payment and change currency, plus all the monetary and bureaucratic policies could take away up to 10% of the money sent.
But cryptocurrencies have changed that, in this 2022 you can now make a payment from the United States to someone who is in the Himalayas and it is effective immediately, and since there are so many exchanges in each country, the commissions are very low. So cryptocurrencies have improved the way money is transferred anywhere in the world.
And this unique quality of cryptocurrencies is what El Salvador took advantage of, since according to Official figures from the central bank of El Salvador, in 2021 alone there was an inflow of remittances to El Salvador for a value of $7,517.1 million. A significant amount of money for a country that has a high rate of immigrants in other countries.
The current commission charged in el salvador for processing remittances is 2.85% which meant that during 2021 the bank of el salvador received $214,234,500 for remittance processing commissions. and of course this is a percentage from the official bank, if we take calculations from the exchange houses external to the official bank the amount can be much higher.
That is why using cryptocurrencies is the best solution, since third parties are eliminated and everything is processed immediately. and although in el salvador there are official channels for sending remittances such as the Chivo wallet, many people refuse to use it because they still do not know the benefits, and the fall of the market does not generate much confidence.
But something surprising is that during the first 6 months of 2022, $52 million worth of remittances were processed through the goat wallet which represents an increase of 3.9% over the last 6 months of 2021. And the advantage? is that the commissions on that $52 million were very low or almost zero.
So this is what we want to promote in El Salvador, a system for sending remittances with low commissions and in a fast way, since the chivo wallet uses Lightning technology.
So the benefits of using blockchain technology are endless, and now with a bear market can be explored more openly as the use cases will increase greatly over the previous year. It is nice to see how little by little blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are becoming more relevant, let's hope this trend continues and we can see improvements every day.