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El Salvador, wracked with gang violence, has a reputation for being the deadliest place on the planet that isn’t an actual war zone.

Driving the news: It’s also newly hot in the crypto world, after President Nayib Bukele announced (and swiftly enacted) a law saying his country would accept bitcoin as legal tender.

Context: El Salvador hasn’t had its own currency since 2000, when it switched to the dollar. It therefore loses no sovereignty or seignorage by adopting a second external currency as legal tender.

  • The law makes any capital gains from investing in bitcoin tax-free, which Bukele hopes will attract some of the crypto industry to his country.

Between the lines: Bukele’s authoritarian and anti-democratic tendencies are probably stronger than his grasp of economic concepts like the distinction between stocks and flows.

How it works: The Salvadoran government intends to set up a trust at the Development Bank of El Salvador “to instantly convert bitcoin to U.S. dollars.”

  • The risk here is that El Salvador, either by accident or design, will become a commission-free laundromat for any criminals wanting to turn dirty bitcoin into clean dollars.
  • Bukele has frequently been accused of working closely with the MS13 gang in particular.

Be smart: Bukele has framed this move as helping facilitate remittance flows into the country. But bitcoin has not played an important role in remittances anywhere.

  • As cryptocurrency consultant Eloisa Marchesoni told Fortune, Bukele’s idea, given bitcoin volatility and gas fees, “does not make sense at all.”

Our thought bubble via Coindesk's Nikhilesh De: Most other countries are letting businesses make their own decisions around whether they want to handle bitcoin. Others prevent them from touching the cryptocurrency. El Salvador is bucking the trend by trying to force businesses to accept the cryptocurrency.

  • Few countries — even those without their own currency — are expected to follow suit.

The bottom line: El Salvador’s move does nothing to reassure observers who worry that bitcoin’s prime real-world use case is crime.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.