Because Tether and USDT are censorable by their parent companies (ie, these tokens can be blacklisted by the Ethereum Virtual Machine), and they are also tied to the monetary policy of the United States.

It definitely makes sense for them to use Tether/USDT for sure, I agree there. But making Bitcoin a legal currency is also a political and economic statement that goes far beyond simply facilitating digital payments.

They ARE using USDT. Strike, the platform being used, automatically converts everything to Tethers.

There's hardly anything truly "bitcoin" about El Salvador's system.

Not sure what's the current status on this but they were planning on moving from Tether to cooperation with El Salvador banks.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/06/21/strike-is-phasi...

El Salvador doesn't have its own currency, it already uses the USD as legal tender, plus their crypto system is backed by USDT.

This has been suggested as one of the many reasons Bukele is so keen on Bitcoin/Chivo: he can't print USD, but having control of the national wallet system gives him countless avenues to manipulate the system.

I don't think that's accurate. Where have you read that they are using USDT?

Moving things to bitcoin with government registered wallets makes tracking a lot easier. Should make basic things like taxes and tariffs easier to enforce. Could possibly do a lot to shrink the under the table grey market in El Salvador.

Of course it could also allow the government to do worse things like backdoor wallets and confiscate crypto.

> Moving things to bitcoin with government registered wallets makes tracking a lot easier. Should make basic things like taxes and tariffs easier to enforce.

There are lots if wallets not registered with the El Salvador government, and it will be impossible for the government to distinguish those that are genuinely foreign from unregistered wallets used by people ot for purposes nominally subject to El Salvador’s laws.

So, no, it won't make tracking any easier, nor wil it make taxes and tariffs easier to enforce generally.

My understanding (and admittedly I haven't read closely) is that this is a move to supporting transaction in BTC using an existing Salvadoran electronic payment system. In that case, it probably does reliably give increased visibility compared to cash payment.

Stable coins scare the hell out of me. Yes, they are stable, but for that convenience you get a non-zero chance that they will instantly go to zero.