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An opinion survey conducted by Gallup found that El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele has received an approval rating of 85 percent. He is the most highly regarded Latin American leader among 11 Latin American countries ranging from Mexico to Peru, according to polls. In September 2021, the Central American country of El Salvador declared Bitcoin to be legal money. With the tactic of buying the drop, the nation has significantly expanded its Bitcoin holdings.

What do you think of this development?

Here's a link to the news - https://elsalvadorinfo.net/nayib-bukele-approval-rate/, for those who want to review it.

It is a political development which affects Bukele and his ambitions, it's not directly related to Bitcoin and shouldn't be in Bitcoin discussion board.
You can post this in Politics & Society (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=34.0) board.

All global issues of monetary circulation in the country are largely political. But this is a direct question that concerns the circulation of bitcoins in our world. President Salvador Bukele gained popularity in his country and the world thanks to his desire to boost his country's economy and make his people wealthier. He took a big risk, recognizing bitcoin in fact not only as a means of payment, but also as a national currency, which no one had done before him. With this act, he violated the world financial order and caused discontent among international financial authorities. We wish good luck to this pioneer.

An italian podcaster spent more than one month in El Salvador spending only bitcoin: no usd, no credit cards, only bitcoin, both onchain and LN.
He said that the average people in El Salvador know very little about bitcoin, so I guess this astonishing level of popularity is due to other reasons than our mutual orange friend.

This is the base publication that gives credit to the said 85% approval of Bukele amongst his citizens (in Spanish):
https://www.cidgallup.com/uploads/publication/publication_files/publication_1646943838000.pdf

Honestly, it seems like an exceedingly basic survey, where around 1.200 people were called on the phone between January and February of this year, and asked whether they approved their president’s management. This was performed in multiple latam countries.

The exact question is not reflected in the above document, but it doesn’t seem to go beyond asking for a yes/no type answer, with no shades of grey, nor apparent subsequent breakdown by different concepts (economy, security, bitcoin law, etc.).

In my opinion, the popularity of the President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele is due to the economic growth that his government has promoted. The statistics are positive as shown by the World Bank.
As long as the government responds to the needs of his people, they will support his mandate.
El Salvador has a powerful economic potential in addition to leading the world in having bitcoin as legal tender.
If the majority of the population is not educated to use it in their daily lives, they will gradually become involved in technology.

Heard something similar as well — that the Bitcoin-aware people are still mostly concentrated to the Playa El Zonte(a.k.a. Bitcoin Beach) area. Quite weird though knowing that the government pretty much airdropped bitcoin to the peeps.

Getting 85% approval, this is a very extraordinary achievement, slowly but surely Nayeb bukele was able to build their community's trust, even though at the beginning he made his decision to legalize bitcoin, and wanted to make bitcoin a legal currency, and make bitcoin a transaction tool, many were challenged by their own people, and also received threats from various countries, but finally nayeb bukele managed to restore the trust of their people, with hard work and responsibility as head of government, nayeb bukele is now the pride of their people, even other Latin American countries participated in giving appreciation to nayeb bukele.

I wouldn’t bet that those surveys are polled in a much more sophisticated ways I’m other part of the world: approval ratings are usually yea/nay type of polls.


Bitcoin is difficult. Not only is an interdisciplinary subject, but also involves many different aspects of life.

This  is now the most difficult part comes for El Salvador: “bitcoin education”. Orange pilling their own population.

I never heard a lot of negative opinions on this president and he is not accused of being a dictator like Putin. I can conclude that he is governing according to the laws and regulations of the country he is sworn to serve and protect...and maybe he is also doing a lot of progress in the economic side of things plus I think El Salvador has never been decimated that much with the pandemic. And we have to understand with that his high approval rating, we can be assured that he will not be feeling the pressure not to continue making BTC as a legal tender...and this is so vital especially since he is just like any normal politician in office. Not wholly but partly, his move making BTC as a legal tender can be a factor for his immense popularity but if he can make this decision to benefit the people like more jobs and more developments then people will really love him and Bitcoin more.

Yay, you can’t do that in other countries. The reason why he was able to do that is because of the fact that Bitcoin has been declared a legal tender in El Salvador. If it wasn’t declared a legal tender, he wouldn’t be able to spend it easily. As long as it was declared a legal asset it is possible that a lot of people would get to hear and know about it in the country, because it is now the same thing as fiat in the country.

In my country you can’t spend Bitcoin at any store, you won’t even see any store accepting at all. if you check online you would be able to find someone who is accepting Bitcoin, but offline? You’re not going to find anyone at all.

I read the document and I'm not sure that those people were actually interviewed on the phone rather than they were adults that own(ed) a mobile phone: "muestra representativa de la población adulta con teléfono celular". That's the way I understand that part. Anyway I never believe the polls, 85% looks way too high. I'm also impressed by the 47% of Mexico, AMLO is a total joke, how half the population could be happy is a mystery, unless of course these polls are totally made up ::)

Salvador Bukele is known to have liberal views on Bitcoin and crypto. He has the ambition to help grow the country's economy and make people wealthier. Also, he has made great contributions to the massive adoption of crypto worldwide. If I were a citizen there, I'd vote for him, too.

That’s because they logically needed a phone in order to be called and interviewed on the phone  ;)…

The technical data on the survey methodology stated that (translated):
(i.e. phone call interview)

Searching a bit around, with the inconvenience of having to do so in English rather than Spanish seems like Mauricio Funes managed to get 72%  in the same Gallup ordered poll, while Statista show some real weird numbers (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1059842/presidents-approval-rate-el-salvador/). If Honduras (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1060051/presidents-approval-rate-honduras/) gets an average of 50% something is definitely wrong there.

But for Buekele probably the decrease in murder rates and violence after his truce or bribery to the gangs ruining the country is more likely to be the cause of an uptrend in approval. There is way too little that people could have gained to date from bitcoin adoption to make them that happy, long term this might be a reason but not over just 6 months.

You seem to connect this only with Bitcoin, but he may very well be doing a great job and receiving the support of his people regardless of that fact. He has also managed to buy favor with a lot of people through giving away such free sums of money (paid for by the tax payer) and as we've seen all over - sometimes the people who are most media savvy can also be terrible leaders. He also bought into Bitcoin before the drop, so it'd be interesting to see how much money was lost or what the value of the original holding is compared to the purchase price - only then can you make a sensible judgement on this. Let's hope this is a truly democratic poll instead of stage engineered.

I say that we shouldn't trust surveys at all, it's not like they've interviewed the whole population of El Salvador and not to mention that surveys create an illusion that something's perfect not to mention sometimes they're even manipulated. I wouldn't look at those polls, better to look at economic reports or the real status of the country by seeing what's really happening there.

When Bitcoin was accepted as a legal payment method in El Salvador, people were doing piquets against it and crashed ATMs. They were completely against that and against Bitcoin city in El Salvador. And now 85% of them are for Bukele. With such support, Bukele is going to buy another hundred of BTC and crash its price again :D

I wouldn't link this approval to BTC as legal money. Bukele is a populist (and oriented to the right) that has maintained more or less the same rate of approval throughout his mandate. If anything, he has faced more criticism after his BTC policy than before. And has the situation of the average citizen really improved that much since that policy was implemented? That would really be crucial for it to be viewed as a sucess.

That's very high approval rating for a President, it means that he has the full support of almost the population. And with this, hopefully he can developed El Salvador to be one of a tourist spot and then continue with his projects.

This is good news specially for bitcoin, perhaps he could be emulate by other Latin American President because of his friendly stance and maybe this could be a platform for aspiring President too, to become pro-Bitcoin.

I didn't notice the table on the bottom, you're right, but the article is not well written: I speak Spanish and I have Spanish mother tongue in my family, I asked and they understood it the same way I did. So now I'm even more surprised that there actually are people who accept to answer to political polls on the phone...

It’s really good that they are buying the drop. They are going to benefit from this in the years to come, bitcoin is a good asset for this country to hold and I believe in the future when the value of Bitcoin increases they are going to make a huge profit from it as they are investing at lower price now.

A lot of analysts believes that the next ATH price is going to be as high as $100,000 and would even cross that price. It’s going to be double of what they have now. I believe that Bukele is doing a really good job in the country which is why he has been given an 85% approval rating.

Some of the information on the internet and social media does not match the reality. If the people of El Salvador knew little about bitcoin, the adoption would not be complete. A few months ago when EL Salvador started adopting bitcoin there were a lot of pros and cons, there was a lot of controversy that led to a demo.
However, Nayib stuck to the decision to use bitcoin and continued to develop it until he founded a bitcoin mining company using volcanic mountain energy and is currently going to develop Bitcoin City.

The problem with people of El Salvador adopting Bitcoin is that for one to do it, he/she needs to be tech savvy. You can't use Bitcoin if you at least never used a mobile phone. I'm not saying that no one in El Salvador doesn't use a mobile phone and I'm sure that in big cities that number is pretty big. But people in rural areas have probably heard about Bitcoin but haven't used it. According to this report (https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2021-el-salvador) (I don't know how trust worthy it is), only half of El Salvador's population uses Internet.

And do you think that the situation in the first world's big cities is different? I don't think so. Probably the only difference is that people did hear about bitcoin, but I don't think many of them actually used it. Knowing the existence of something doesn't automatically mean that you also use it. Right now I feel that the majority of people are ok using Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc, not (yet) bitcoin.

Bitcoin payment UX is still cumbersome, to some extent, notwithstanding the message LN proponents want us to believe.
Or at least is still worst than many credit card users are willing to accept.

But hey, we are still early, and LN has made gargantuan steps toward a flawless experience as credit card's one.
Which, now have a smooth front end, but still are lagging in the back end with the exact same mechanics used 40 years ago..

I do not think that the requirement to be tech savy is as high as people claim it to be. I get that 80+ year old people may not do it, but my 70+ year old dad could setup his own smart watch, if he can do that, I am sure that putting some money into coinbase and getting some coins with it shouldn't really be that hard.

I will give it a go and ask him to do some, just to see if he can, he never really did because I do it anyway (buying btc) but to see if he can, I will ask him to do some small amount. I believe it depends on the type of person as well, I know friends of my dad, around same age, who do not even own a smart phone, so I guess there is a gap between people as well.

Something new always takes time to adapt, and so does bitcoin in El Salvador. The most amazing thing behind all the fame of bitcoin is that its president became an important actor where he was the first president who was brave enough to adopt a decentralized financial system for his country. The decision was difficult for other countries, but his big ambitions for bitcoin have set him apart from the governments of other countries.

Sooner or later the popularity, usability, knowledge and so on will continue to grow in El Salvador about bitcoin. They have a leader who supports bitcoin and that will make it easier for bitcoin to become the most dominant currency used in the country in the future. In the end I would think that the people of El Salvador would be comfortable with bitcoin.

Hard to imagine a president with such a high approval rating. I’m the plus side, Joe Biden’s disapproval rating will be that high very shortly. It’s amazing to see how El Salvador is thriving under the decisions of Bukele while the United States is falling into disrepair with Biden at the helm. I always thought that President was a position that was more about PR than anything else, but these two individuals highlight the difference a President can make. I only wish we had such an open minded and forward thinking leader would could make hard decisions to advance his country for the good of it’s citizens.

I think He is a very forward looking leader and I know it's primarily due to the small population but even then it's very difficult to have such a high approval rating of any leader of any country. Best a good leader can go upto is 70-75%, anything more than that is really surprising to be honest. Bitcoin legalization might be one reason but I doubt this would be the only reason, people look for a lot of other things in leader than just economics.

Nayib Bukele issued some strict regulation following a surge on murders on El Salvador:

https://i.ibb.co/N9T9mKx/59674942.jpg (https://twitter.com/elfaroenglish/status/1508113415931416579?s=21&t=rvj9vNNtT9sV6PQh3cee-g)

He mentioned the fact that a El Salvadorean passport would come with a 150K investment in bitcoin bonds.
I think this doesn’t bode well for this initiative.

Curious to see how this is going to work out. Due the situation I can understand why he is doing it. What I'm going to say is not a popular opinion but sometimes democracy simply doesn't work, so alternative (temporary) solutions must be found.

For sure this is not good for him and the country. Many people already had several security concerns about moving to El Salvador, a murder rate increase is a serious thing.

Either he is a really really good guy genuinely or those are boosted numbers for the political clout. Honestly, I myself cannot imagine anyone other than Mahatma Ghandi or Mother Theresa being approved by 85% of the people.  It just seems a bit unrealistic to me. But then again perhaps I have grown wary of any kind of Propaganda after Russia's 140% rating of Putin (years ago).

I would love to see Nayib's contributions to society and the things he did to gain such huge approval, although...

Bitcoiners are good people, in my book, at least.

You are right because for me he is a total leader, the fact of implementing Bitcoin in his country despite the fact that he had against some part of the population, the IMF and a series of countries that are against them, he has known how to do things.
Some think he is crazy, and others that he is a genius, but I think he is a forger of having a great future for himself and his country and I know that in the very near future when BTC rises in price he will have great benefits, personally I did not see El Salvador as an attractive country to visit, but with all of Bitcoin City and the positive things that are said, I'll stick with it.