Will a second country adopt Bitcoin as legal tender in 2022?

Welcome to Forkast Forecasts 2022. In this series, leaders, innovators and visionaries in blockchain-related fields tell Forkast.News their predictions for the year ahead.

Anita Posch

Anita Posch is a Bitcoin educator and author of (L)earn Bitcoin: Become Financially Sovryn. Posch is also the host of podcast series The Anita Posch Show, where she documents Bitcoin developments with thought leaders and experts from the Bitcoin community. She is the former president of Digital Asset Association Austria, and is a board member at Bitcoin Austria Association. 

Top trend for 2021:

Bitcoin layer-2 protocol Lightning network strikes it big

“The Lightning Network capacity has increased exponentially in the last year. Now, there are about 3,000 Bitcoin in the Lightning Network, which means the liquidity of Bitcoin has increased a lot because the Lightning Network allows small and fast transactions for really almost no cost. This is very important for emerging countries like El Salvador, for instance, or countries in Africa or other Latin American countries because people don’t have high income. And so, they can only basically use the Lightning Network because Bitcoin on the blockchain itself sometimes has higher transaction fees.”

Predictions for 2022

#PayMeInBitcoin

“There are already many tools for content creators now to be able to earn Bitcoin over Lightning. We will see a huge number of new revenue models and possibilities for content creators on the internet, which also are open for people globally. So this means I foresee the possibility for people in Africa or Latin America, Asia to become, basically, online workers and earn Bitcoin directly.”

Bitcoin as legal tender

“Maybe Panama, Ecuador — they all have the U.S. dollar — they might start adopting Bitcoin as neutral money for their own sovereignty. So with Bitcoin, not only individuals like you and me can gain more self-sovereignty, also nation states can gain more self sovereignty, and that’s what El Salvador is trying to do at the moment.”

Inflation powers Bitcoin adoption

“Everybody is telling us, ‘Oh, inflation is transitory.’ And suddenly they have to say, ‘No, it’s not transitory. It will grow and we’ll need to do something against it.’… I fear that we will see higher inflation. But on the other hand, people learn about this now and maybe choose Bitcoin because there can never be money-supply inflation in Bitcoin.”