![Earlier this month, El Salvador became the world's first nation to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, with President Nayib Bukele touting the cryptocurrency’s potential as a remittance currency for Salvadorans who are overseas and sending money home [File: Jose Cabezas/Reuters]](/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/bitcoinnnn.jpg?resize=570%2C380)
El Salvador’s finance minister said that he had clarified with IMF that the country had no plans to abandon the dollar.
Crypto
![Cryptocurrencies have been under pressure in recent weeks, with Bitcoin losing about 30 percent since mid-April, when it hit a record of almost $65,000 [File: Bloomberg]](/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/372465730.jpg?resize=570%2C380)
Bitcoin got a boost on Monday after veteran hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones re-endorsed it in a TV interview.
![Elon Musk's comments have whipsawed Bitcoin and other digital currencies in the past few months [File: Maja Hitij/Getty Images]](/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/372449061.jpg?resize=570%2C380)
Musk’s latest tweet on potentially allowing Bitcoin transactions for Tesla sent the currency surging nearly 10 percent.
![Child labour is on the rise for the first time in nearly two decades, and the coronavirus crisis threatens to upend progress made to get kids into school, the United Nations warned this week [File: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters]](/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/child.jpg?resize=570%2C380)
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![The small Salvadoran beach town of El Zonte has already made cryptocurrency part of daily life, and now the rest of the country will join the experiment thanks to a new law making Bitcoin legal tender [File: Salvador Melendez/AP Photo]](/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/AP21161064995104.jpg?resize=270%2C180)
El Salvador uses the dollar as its currency and its monetary policy is wedded to the US even as relations falter.
![Mining uses massive amounts of energy as rigs comprised of powerful computers race to verify transactions in exchange for more Bitcoins [File: Bloomberg]](/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/372401956.jpg?resize=270%2C180)
The energy used to mine cryptocurrencies is comparable to that of many developed countries.
![Keywords searches for online trading platforms including Binance, OKEx and Huobi on popular internet services such as Baidu, Sogo, Zhihu and Weibo are yielding no results [File: Tiffany Hagler-Geard/Bloomberg]](/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/368634621.jpg?resize=270%2C180)
Chinese users are currently unable to search for popular cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance, OKEx and Huobi.
![Bitcoin has dropped about $30,000 from its April record, roiled by a rebuke from billionaire Elon Musk over the energy it requires as well as a renewed regulatory crackdown in China [Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters]](/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/bbbbbbbbbittt.jpg?resize=270%2C180)
Another painful week for Bitcoin could signal more woes ahead for the world’s biggest cryptocurrency.
![The cryptocurrency market grew to more than $2.5tn in mid-May 2020, according to the CoinMarketCap page [File:Reuters]](/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/2021-06-07T111653Z_1711476615_RC2KVN9NYXOG_RTRMADP_3_CRYPTO-CURRENCIES.jpg?resize=270%2C180)
A majority of 62 out of 84 lawmakers approved the bill, which President Bukele proposed last week.
![Industry analysts estimate there are 15 million crypto investors in India [File: Luke MacGregor/Bloomberg]](/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/323810100.jpg?resize=270%2C180)
This comes at a time when the Indian government is mulling a bill to ban cryptocurrencies.
El Salvador announces plans to make Bitcoin legal tender, but other countries are concerned about cryptocurrencies.
![The United States recovered almost all the Bitcoin ransom paid to the perpetrators of the cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline last month in a sign that law enforcement is capable of pursuing online criminals even when they operate outside the nation’s borders [File: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg]](/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/372310796.jpg?resize=270%2C180)
Recovery of most of ransom paid to Colonial Pipeline hackers undermines case that Bitcoin is beyond government control.
![Asked how much worse it would have been if Colonial Pipeline hadn't paid the hackers' ransom to get its data back, CEO Joseph Blount told United States lawmakers it was 'an unknown we probably don't want to know' [File: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Pool via AP]](/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/AP21159537300393.jpg?resize=270%2C180)
Colonial Pipeline officials have said they saw the $4.4m ransom payment as necessary to restart halted US operations.
![United States space agency NASA announced plans for two missions to Venus, known as Earth's 'sister planet', between 2028 and 2030, the first in decades [File: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters]](/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/091deed747484f4680f443d45e717cba_18.jpeg?resize=270%2C180)
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We gather the numbers to know from the week’s biggest economic news stories so you can impress your friends.