No, California is not adopting bitcoin

A Saturday news broadcast on X and YouTube by BitcoinNews.com claimed that the fifth largest economy in the world has adopted bitcoin. It had not.

The livestream headline and much of its commentary dangled the inference that California had somehow just ‘adopted’ bitcoin as other governments like El Salvador had ‘adopted’ bitcoin. Many were fooled.

The broadcast misleadingly suggested that an obscure announcement by the City of Santa Monica meant that the entire State of California – which is the world’s fifth largest economy by some metrics – had ‘adopted’ bitcoin.

Read more: Fake news again! This time it’s Kamala Harris and ‘unrealized crypto gains’

No, it did not. California did not change any policy regarding bitcoin over the weekend. What actually happened is that on July 10, one city in California opened an office in partnership with a non-profit foundation. That office is called the Santa Monica Bitcoin Office. The city allocated $0 to its budget.

Screenshot of the announcement from the City of Santa Monica.

That is all that happened. A city opened an office six weeks ago and allocated it a budget of $0.

On this so-called ‘news,’ BitcoinNews.com simulcasted a headline Saturday claiming that the fifth largest economy in the world had adopted bitcoin.

Please, please, will anyone else adopt bitcoin?

For years, Bitcoiners have been desperate for news of another government besides El Salvador adopting bitcoin. Despite their sincere efforts and entire organizations dedicated to nation-state bitcoin adoption, no other nation has legalized bitcoin as legal tender.

Briefly, the Central African Republic seemed like it might be the second nation to adopt bitcoin, but it then backtracked. Anyway, its initial announcement was more about its own Initial Coin Offering (ICO), Sango, which flopped.

Generally speaking, fake news is proliferating more rapidly in recent months on Elon Musk’s X as reduced staff, cheap AI tools, and shifting social norms make posting partially-true headlines more popular.

Indeed, this month alone, Protos has already covered fake policy news about the Democratic party, CZ’s fake release from Bureau of Prisons custody, a fake unrealized capital gains tax, the fake nomination of Gary Gensler for US Treasury Secretary, and a conspiracy theory that Solana is a CIA asset.

As ever, Protos will continue to track false news stories impacting crypto audiences.

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