Bitcoin Forum

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I very much agree with you that the failure to the later as per bitcoin adoption was basically due to the approach used. I don't Reside in El-Salvador to be entirely conscious of there state of affairs before the Bill was paste but, it was rather too sudden and change when it comes too sudden never gets to last for a long time.

Bitcoi  is a currency of will. Its adoption and used cases has functioned due to the freewill nature of it and with its users. Gir this to be more possible, it operates in a decentralized system for which, no government or organisation stayed in the center of its affairs but, we can't say the same about the Chivo wallet, can we?
Apparently not and that would libe citizens with some biased mindset on some attributes that are supposed to come with bitcoin as per its be in charge of your financial affairs nature.

Airdropped $30 actually pushed for a pump of the app download. Who wouldn't want that and it coming at no cost.
Meanwhile, bitcoin is not some stable currency following its volatile nature and not all citizens have got the investor mindset or are ready to hold on there needs and hodl bitcoin in a bear market so, it becomes painful selling, especially when you received coin within a bullish market. Hence, a lot of users won't want to go with it but instead, stick to the fairly stable fiat gor which they are more adapted to.

This is a good decision.
Implementations forcefully can impact a bad impression on people. And also others states will get bad bad impression too.
Optional is a better decision.
Because every state have different minded people.

I go through the report and where I also got some reasons why the people didn't download the wallet here I am quoting.


Mostly reasons are pointing out that it forcefully implemented therefore people didn't take it seriously and go against.
But in future better decisions can lead this situation in right way.

But still the people of El Salvador Harshly against it.
Here you can see in the photo.
https://i.ibb.co/Qnn7qJT/images-5.jpg

Nayib legalized bitcoin as a legal tender but not with its freedom. Instead of teaching its citizens about the basic technicalities of bitcoin, the government introduced the Chivo centralized wallet which meant the population was directed to remain in government control from the start. I had predicted that they would fail that way, and the initial sign was a problematic wallet (https://cryptopotato.com/el-salvador-to-fix-chivo-wallets-issues-by-partnering-with-alphapoint/) which was a little frustrating.

The wallet is problematic in one way, but it was meant to create awareness among the common people about the usage of bitcoin providing $30 free. We can't state the bitcoin adoption a failure in El Salvador. It is almost 7-8 months since the bitcoin adoption happened in El Salvador, which means we're getting into conclusion in a very fast manner.

Based on the data provided by OP, there is lack of usage of Chivo wallet, majority haven't downloaded it, very little businesses around the country have begun to accept bitcoin. Most of the businesses that accept bitcoin too is converting it to USD within a short time. So, different factors indicating that there is no big movement within the country as per the plan. Surely this is a success in the long term.

This is one hell of a can of surströmming you're opening here. I'm probably the last person on this forum to defend Bukele and his Chivo project but I don't think anything has failed, rather it has exactly gone as one could have expected.

Adoption, this is one tricky word, what does it even mean, people holding bitcoin spending it using for personal p2p transfers between family and friends or just trading? I can't picture an accurate definition of this adoption when it comes to btc, and even if we go for usage alone, there are other problems, for example is loading a debit visa card with btc usage?

One can argue that people hoard coins, very much possible, if the numbers from Salvador as little as they are would be quantified to the claims of users in the world, there aren't enough addresses and tx to cover that. So I'm not sure that adoption has failed, rather I would call it a failure of replacing traditional payment methods.
As for one of those numbers, the Chivo app downloads, the decline makes sense, every app does so after launch, you install it once and that's it.

But one more thing, and this might be a clear evidence of how things are going, is it just my impression or has Bukele stopped buying the dip for quite a while lately?

7-8 month duration after of the said legal tender kind of decision wont really be that enough or something that we could make out conclusions out on that very short time manner but at least we are seeing that there

are people who do really tend to make use of that Chivo wallet.Wont really be that an assured thing though if users would increase in numbers overtime but at least there is some recognition.

I do agree on the sense about being centralized as it do really introduce about a custodial wallet which people do mind about anonymity will surely be opposing with that idea.

Practical incentive for bitcoin adoption comes from those who create the jobs opportunities in the country. No one can expect common citizens and individual merchants are going to push adoption up by themselves. The method would be much more efficient if the government and big employers paid wages in bitcoin to workers.

Moreover, adoption would also increase nicely if supermarkets networks and other important stores where you can find basic goods for daily life gave discounts for people when paying with bitcoin.

People aren't going to use bitcoin if they don't see a practical benefit on it. And to protect money against inflation and government's intervention, privacy, anonymity aren't reasons most people keep on their minds. Most people don't even save money, so they see no reason to care about that.

I believe that it was certainly a good experience for bitcoin adoption anyway.
Are people in El Salvador using bitcoin now? No, but it is too soon an it certainly made a lot of people more interested in bitcoin all over the world.

 it is a small step towards a long run bitcoin is doing.  A lot of companies and global authorities gave a more serious thought about bitcoin, and certainly it was positive overall


Things are a little tricky in these latin América countries. I believe this is very like Brazil.
Many protestors are paid to be there. How come someone, a simple person, protest against bitcoin adoption? If he doesn't want he is not forced to use it. Those people don't even know what bitcoin is.

Certainly these people are there for reasons they can't even figure out.

This is all quite over blown.


Remember, it has been 7 months.
7 months!

You can't call the adoption of a new currency a failure after 7 months lol


This is the VERY BEGINNING of Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador. Let's come back to this in 5 or 10 years to see what is happening there.

There are places in El Salvador where Bitcoin usage is quite popular, and in fact was already popular before it became legal tender. So to think it hasn't caught on at all is just wrong.

Also, Chivo had plenty of software problems when it launched, Bitcoin education in general everywhere in the world is very low so you can't expect a significant amount of people in a country to suddenly start using a currency they know nothing about, especially when it is entirely optional. And for most of the time since it became legal tender the price has been going down and been low, which is precisely the time when people don't show interest in Bitcoin. It's really hard to get new people interested in Bitcoin when the price is going down for months. You have to actually be educated about Bitcoin to not care about that because then you know short term price movements don't matter.

I think those numbers all look pretty decent considering it's only been 7 months and most of that has been a price downturn. I bet those numbers will start popping up once Bitcoin is hitting new all time highs and El Salvadorians start to realize they could have had much more money if they had been taking and holding onto Bitcoin the whole time.


This proclamation that Bitcoin failed there reminds me of similar statements of Bitcoin having failed as a currency or a store of value because it hasn't yet become a global currency or widely accepted store of value.

Remember people, we are still sooooo early in Bitcoin's growth and adoption. It's only been 13 years. And in El Salvador it's been all of 7 months haha. This "bitcoin failed" narrative is just a negative narrative by anti-bitcoiners to push their bias.

Also, as far as the Bitcoin protests that happened back when it first became legal tender...it's not like these were mass protests. It was like a few hundred people here and there. The media just picked it up to create a narrative of the people not wanting Bitcoin. And it's a pretty safe bet that of the small amount of people in the country who were out protesting Bitcoin, those are people who probably don't know they first thing about Bitcoin, as that is the common thread among 99% of people in the world who think they don't like Bitcoin.

Final thought...imagine if after credit cards came out a survey was done to find that not very many people used credit cards yet half a year later and so credit cards were deemed a failure. Think about how stupid that would be. And so now realize how stupid it is to say now that Bitcoin failed in El Salvador just because it hasn't been widely accepted after only 7 months.

We have to keep in mind that El Salvador is a very poor and underdeveloped country.
The vast majority of the population are pretty traditionalist and conservative.They want to stick with what they are familiar with.The people,who are open minded and want to embrace new technology are a really small part of the population.
The "download Chivo wallet,get 30 USD for free" campaign was pretty much expected to fail.There's no clear incentive for the people to use the Chivo wallet,except those 30 USD.
The current state of Bitcoin doesn't help for mass adoption.There's a high inflation around the world and the Bitcoin price isn't moving anywhere.The myth about Bitcoin being able to protect your wealth against inflation is about to get busted.

Perhaps the approach used was wrong or lack of proper awareness to prepare the people of El Salvador before the legalization. Maybe it should have began with acceptance, give the option to all businesses around El Salvador to make the decision to accept or not, give opportunity to the people to use it and decide through the feedback if they are all ready to make it a legal tender.

Maybe it was hurriedly done, process like this needs time, people have been on fiat for decades, it won't be easy for some to just switch overnight.
It is not just about the majority of people in El Salvador being poor, it is more about 'change' some don't like sudden change, they find it difficult to quickly adapt. It is a matter of time before they will understand it much better. It is too early to consider it a failure when fiat has been around for generations.

I don't think the approach was the main reason, in fact as I said elsewhere analyzing things in El Salvador is a bit difficult because of their economy. In other words if we consider the adoption a failure (which I say that is also too soon to say) the problem was the terrible economy of El Salvador.

Another thing to consider is that during most of the time they adopted bitcoin as legal tender, bitcoin price hasn't been doing well. We already know that weird volatility or weird drops is always been a big discouraging factor for people to look towards bitcoin while more consistent market or a rising price has always done the opposite.
I am sure if we had a way to measure adoption of bitcoin elsewhere we would see pretty similar results to the adoption in El Salvador.

Isn't this chart showing number of Chivo downloads and isn't this considered normal?
For starters you download the wallet once and only once. You don't need to download it every day.
Also you don't have to use Chivo, in fact you shouldn't use it because it is centralized and closed source. Instead people should and may be using something else like Electrum.
I'm not saying they are but just pointing out that like most surveys on cryptocurrencies this one also has many flaws.

P.S. I believe that the protests had more of a political nature rather than having anything to do with bitcoin.

This is exactly what happened. The President make a firm decision without consideration about the investment of his country to Bitcoin. He goes all in while the citizens is still not in favor due to Bitcoin volatility. Mass adoption will surely failed if it will be done by force and not through an open way of encouraging his people. Right now El Salvador already loss million dollars with there investment, This will just ignite havoc to its citizen while Bitcoin reputation will just be put in question. This surely fails.

El Salvador is going through a lot of challenges. Inflation, crime violence, infrastructural deficit and low investment in education. These challenges needs to be tackled before we can see the benefits of bitcoin. It's true that 7months is not enough to judge the adoption's failure or success. But El Salvador government is always hasty in making policy pronouncements on bitcoin. And some of this policy statements are inconsistent with the country's laws. There are speculations that the reason for the delay of the bitcoin bonds was because it was inconsistent with the country's pension laws. Delays in implementation of such proclamation can cause disaffection among the people. It could mean that the government is not doing its job well.

Also, the government has mind-blowing plans for bitcoin such as the bitcoin city that would be built from some of the proceeds of the bond. For me, El Salvador don't need a bitcoin city except it is certain that this city would be of economic benefit to the country. Rather they need to invest in security, education and infrastructure. Investing in this areas would naturally increase the use of bitcoin. No investor or tourist would be willing to invest or visit a country that in facing insecurity.

Bitcoin awareness is key to its acceptability in El Salvador. Everybody likes freedom and financial security. If the people of El Salvador understands the benefits of adopting bitcoin, they would freely adopt it. Hence, the government should invest on bitcoin education.

If 20% of the population continue to use Chivo after claiming their $30, that's actually a pretty good result. That's way better adoption than the rest of the world, where only single-digit or even below-single-digit share of population frequently uses Bitcoin.

Also, this report doesn't show the most important metric - transaction volume. How much money is moved through Chivo or Bitcoin in general, compared to all other payment methods? Because if those 20% of the population use Chivo a few times per year, then adoption is indeed low.

Well I surmise the following is happening right now:

1. There are powerful people behind who doesn't want Bitcoin in El Salvador
2. People doesn't want Bitcoin per se because it is a new technology and mostly the population is uneducated, hence they are afraid that they might not have the tools
3. Maybe the population thinks that Bitcoin will just harm their economy for long term.

Best also to reference a point I saw someone already mention in one of these threads: if you don't set yourself up to succeed, you fail.

So many points to address they did not even attempt to, putting the cart before the horse. Basic, fundamental economic structures like IT, communication, education.

Not to forget this wasn't even what the people knew was even an option, let alone that they could vote for it. Yet another agenda pushed down their throats, ignoring the far more significant daily struggles they have to go through.

Country's currently under state of emergency, martial law, by the way. Gang violence, murders, riots, looting. Bukele is cracking down dictator level now on his people, so you bet Bitcoin's the last thing on anyone's mind there. You're a regular El Salvadoran, you're caught between bloodthirsty gangs and an unaccountable government.

How this was ever going to be a champion of/for Bitcoin I never understood.

Will it rather not be early to conclude that bitcoin adoption has failed in El Salvador. Howbeit, I have these following to say according to your article.

• According to the statistics above, the awareness of the chivo wallet and bitcoin is about 80%, which is very huge. The $30 airdrop has accomplished it's purpose,  which is awareness.
• If not the method El Salvador used, this should be the awareness stage and experimental stage with one city of the country.  I will rather say they were in a haste.
• El Salvador adopted bitcoin when it was $50k and above and since then, there has not been ATH. It is a very big challenge
• My take is that government is a continuity, this present government has created the awareness and made some tangible efforts, next government can continue.  I don't wish El Salvador adoption of bitcoin to fail because it will really affect others intending to

Just like maybe most of us here, I did celebrate when it was announced that El Salvador is going to recognized Bitcoin not just another form of money but as its legal tender...wow that news send good amount of positive vibes all over the crypto world. I was then expecting that people would love to taste the freedom they can enjoy with Bitcoin and that a critical number of people would be using Bitcoin everyday even as to buy a toothpaste or a soda in a nearby convenience store. So what happened then with that assumptions? Is there now a big failure after 7 months of opening the gates for Bitcoin in this small country...or have we looked at things in a very myopic way of view? Hate to say that whatever outcomes in El Salvador would have a far-reaching repercussions in the general adoption of Bitcoin especially with many countries who can be modeling their decisions here in El Salvador. Anyway, we can all magnify what happened or we can just shrug them off as non-important to Bitcoin.

And can you name those places and have some numbers for this "usage"?
I know places that accept coins, and I know owners of businesses that do so, they all tell me the same story for the last 5 years, usage isn't there.
Talks about it, groups, chats, investments, buying and holding yeah, this is happening for sure, but spending, no!


And you just invalidated your own point with this one, you just told all the people in Salvador to hold their coins instead of spending because they will be worth more next year.
How can you argue about daily usage when you say stuff like that?


Oh yeah, using somebody's else money in order to promote something to make other people rich.
I think I read this somewhere in Satohis's whitepaper but can't remember where, mind pointing it out?

I think its now high timebwe stop getting moved by the outcome of staging a protest in the name of expressing displeasure, we have many areas of the economy that needed amendment especially in the economical era of fiat system and our government interference innit, on countless occasions there have been protect against the government and i see this bitcoin protest as just a minor one compared to the ones wage against the government on bad economy situation, this protect is just like a group of less than 50 protesters influenced by the anti bitcoin entities to cause disrupt, because base on the statistics above we could see how the percentage of those that make use of the chivo wallet is high.

I honestly never heard of a single thing in universe that was adopted without issues in less than a year.
Funny thing, I didn't know that United States National Bureau of Economic Research is so much interested in internal affairs of El Slavador and Bitcoin.
Maybe they are just concerned that dollar will lose more value after Central African Republic and other countries are following similar steps and making Bitcoin a legal tender.

I don't consider that bitcoin adoption failed in El Salvador because millions of people used bitcoin and downloaded Chivo wallet, because they all received $30 for free.
Fan fact is that more people used Chivo wallet than El Salvadorian bank, but that doesn't mean that citizens are receiving paychecks and earnings in Bitcoin, and it's normal activity will slow down after $30 was spent.
There is no going back now, but I would promote other wallets that are free and non-custodial in El Salvador.

I went to the article, and I think that the charts are a bit misleading. For example, the Figure 6 one is talking about .6 share of the population. Which is technically right if the population is 1, but since it doesn't say the population is 1, people might think that less than 1% know about Chivo, whereas it's actually 68%, and over half downloaded the app (all of this is on p. 2 of that paper), and that's in a country where Internet access is at around 60% itself. But the fact that only 5% of all sales that conducted in Bitcoin is quite sad. What would be really interesting to see next to this figure, though, is the percentage of sales where people pay by card. Because of course cash is easier to use, but I wonder how Bitcoin is doing compared to the banking industry in this country, where 70% of people are unbanked.
I think that low level of usage of online banking (90% don't use it), of banking in general (70% are unbanked) and low internet penetration can be viewed as key factors of why this adoption isn't going well.

The bitcoin adoption around the globe keeps increasing. If adoption in El Salvador is  failed one, why more countries show interest on cryptocurrency adoption. More small countries legalise bitcoin as legal tender following El Salvador. Surely the new comers won't come directly, they'll analyse and further enter the market. In that way I find Central African Republic's adoption of bitcoin an example. Following that Panama, a latin american country have passed a bill that will regulate cryptocurrency usage.

The bill has to be signed by the President to be a law. If the law gets passed the acceptance of cryptocurrencies from businesses and the usage of cryptocurrencies by the residents gets legalised. However no clear information has got revealed on the usage of bitcoin even when the law is being passed as the country has got its Panamanian balboa and US dollar in usage.

It's almost impossible to apply such a modern system to serve for/by ignorant people when to know about the high illiteracy rate in Salvador with the high crime rate beside a low schooling rate. People still found it easy to use dollars over all currencies. Before all, not everybody has a mobile phone connected to the internet.

About Adoption Bitcoin is very good but as some people here have said their approach i think its right with opinion some people, their approach is quite a failure which makes it seem like it's a failure.
The problem is quite simple, they still don't really understand bitcoin but they are fed too much and the use of Chivo which immediately makes this worse.
For people who already have a basic knowledge of bitcoin, this is indeed something that is quite good but how for those who are new to it, of course there must be further introduction about it.
This doesn't mean it's a failure in my opinion, but it's a process that is expected to be too high so that when the prospects are low, it is immediately labeled as a failure

I think this map of countries which adopted bitcoin legally proves that it actually worked:

I find the OP's analysis interesting, as I did not know several things he tells, but I think it is too early to say that adoption has failed, as others have commented just as there is data like the APP download Chivo that does not make sense, as there is not an unlimited number of people in El Salvador, therefore we cannot expect an infinitely increasing number of downloads.


Most likely, anyone who buys bitcoin expects it to go up, and if they expect it to go up, it is foolish to spend it.

THIS exactly this.

Nobody cares about centralized wallets. Why would a leader of a country pretend to understand the benefits of Bitcoin only to go against the very nature of Bitcoin? If I had Bitcoin in El Salvador, then I definitely would not want a wallet which is centralized. Thats just dumb.

Comparing El Salvador Bitcoin legalisation as subjective to the centralized government wallet is not really worth the trouble, as nobody wants to trust the government with their money anyway.

If that were true then Coinbase, Blockchain.com, all the exchanges, ... and movements like not-your-keys-not-your-coin or even closed source wallets wouldn't have existed!
How many people are keeping their coins in their Coinbase account? How many are storing bitcoin on exchanges?

There is no doubt that the governments will always want control and Chivo was created for that purpose but at least they were clear from day one that you don't have to use Chivo and can use any other wallet you like. It's not like they mandated that the only legal way to use bitcoin is through their shitty wallet!

That would have been true if nobody had any bank account, credit card, etc. So they already are trusting the government with their money :D

I will prefer to go for decentralized wallet, but you should understand this, individual can use decentralized wallet in El Salvador if you like and you will have the custody of your bitcoin, nobody is saying you can not be in control of your coin. But El Salvador make bitcoin a legal tender, which means Salvadoran government will be in control of the bitcoin they bought and make their citizens to use it. It is centralized, have very cheap fee. If people do not like that and want privacy, they can go for noncustododial wallet. There is no way a country will make something they can not control a legal tender, that is why El Salvador buy the bitcoin his citizens are using to have the control.

You are right, it all takes time to be perfect. I am already proud of the courage and speculation of President Nayib Bukele. They boldly legalized bitcoin which the IMF has opposed. Although they have to accept the risk of not getting money and the World Bank also does not give him a loan. The transactions of few users do not understand I think it is limited because they do not have the ability of the economy evenly. I think it's quite interesting with the Airdrop that has been given, it's one form of introduction. Perhaps Bukele has other main goals such as making Bitcoin a reserve of the country's assets.

Great post OP, have I had any smerits left I would've given you already.

Now about the idea of your post, I must say that I too have the same opinion about the bitcoin adoption of El Salvador. I mean yes, it was something that most of us crypto enthusiasts were so thrilled about and have been waiting for since forever but just like what you said this is an uncharted territory. What El Salvador really lacked was patience. As what you can see most of the countries that are pro crypto or the neutral ones never decided on a whim and mostly are even undecided still to this moment. This is because they prefer to observe first and are still devising plans about this so to make it a smoother, less flawed and mutually beneficial for everyone.

funny you should say that.. late last years issues with their wallet were problems that were LN related.. oops.. yep you just fell into your own trap of calling your favoured network 'shitty'

at the user level it was just mysql balance which if prompted by a user request would trigger the custodian hub to do a LN payment using their master hub custodian channel. to move some msats to an exchange..
users never had coin control.

this broke because the master hub had mega balance but none of its routes had balance(liquidity) to support the amount of routed funds out of the hub to certain limited services that supported LN in el salvador.
so the LN payments failed due to liquidity bottlenecks between the hubs and services.

but hey. ill give you .. pfft. 6 months to do some research.
..
should you care to do your research(i doubt).
maybe you should look into the hoard of coins that were allocated into the el salv chivo. and actually see if those coins were ever sub divided into millions of independant locks to allow each person to even have key control of a $30 allotment to move between wallets.

should be easy enough to find millions of channels of $30 balance measured in msat.. right?
(hint)
how chivo worked was not as you think, the users couldnt simply take a $30 channel balance and sign it into another wallet provider
..
this prompted el salvador to now be using 'alphapoint' as a custodial service that hoards all the coin and then converts it to fiat within their system. (much like coinbase)
or offers LN entry/exits if customers request withdrawals. and occasionally they can even withdraw actual bitcoin (though as you know and love.. the fee's prompt users to stay away from withdrawing bitcoin)

thus again not actually touching the real bitcoin network nor splitting the funds  of real bitcoin to each person independently

..
big hint .. just because a brand/service/altnet/app says "we are bitcoin" does not mean its actually bitcoin

If a country is in a very difficult economic situation and it constantly takes loans, then Bitcoin should not be blamed for this.
Bitcoin can help countries and their citizens get around some sanctions, but if your economy is unprofitable, then adopting Bitcoin will not solve the economic problems in the country.

Yeah, obviously the very point that needs to be made is that El Salvador is not giving their people Bitcoin freedom. This is the reason why Bitcoin is not such a huge hit in El Salvador. So obviously as the answer to the topic of this thread, "Why has bitcoin adoption failed in El Salvador?" I can only say that the failings in El Salvador do not speak for the adoption of Bitcoin itself.

At this point, its not even about Bitcoin in El Salvador but rather using the image of Bitcoin for a PR stunt, hoping other bigger countries take notice of their tiny county.

Its a shame, but it still helps somewhat with getting other smaller countries onboard.

Salvadorans may not have confidence in Chivo wallet, that is one of the reasons as some people that uses Chivo wallet complained of money loss few months ago, but not the reason why bitcoin adoption failed in El Salvador, but one of the reasons for slow adoption. Because people do not really use Chivo wallet do not mean bitcoin adoption in El Salvador has failed. Some Salvadorans are still using Chivo wallet and bitcoin.

We can also put it like this, has bank failed in El Salvador? No. But 70% Salvadorans are not having bank accounts. That does not mean banking sector failed but low adoption. Some Salvadorans are not educated and some that are educated are not having bitcoin education and they do not know how to use bitcoin and Chivo wallet.

Also know that El Salvador makes bitcoin legal, friendly about bitcoin and definitely about other cryptocurrencies. I have always said that what that matters most is adoption, El Salvadoran government gave to his people bitcoin adoption which is all that matters.

the unfortunate series of events happened like this

el salv' presdent announced to the world about him grabbing up millions of dollars of bitcoin before putting it to a vote with his people. then he didnt explain to his people what it all meant

his people thought it meant that the dollar(their main currency) was going to get dropped and replaced over night by some crypto they never used or handled before. and so the initial protests began against bitcoin. once they realised that it wasnt a dropping of a dollar but instead having 2 choices of currency they calmed down. but then they seen no advantage of using crypto because for them dollar works.

then those that did use crypto seen lots of issues. and there was a huge lack of education and implementation. in short it was rushed.
they never seen the benefits of real bitcoin. instead they had this altnet wallet and custodial thing happening.

the citizens were hearing words about bitcoin, but then being handed a custodial wallet of a different unit of account. something that was not independantly owned by each citizen but just a balance that they seen on a screen that meant nothing to them, apart fro free $30..

the merchants and services of el salvador didnt get much help and their retail services didnt get much use. again lack of education and lack of implementation.
again those that did want to use that $30 amount of crypto. found issues paying merchants and also trying to get their unit of account to an exchange to get the $30 out, so even more people didnt really like the whole implementation.

this is not bitcoins fault because 99% of the whole implementation has nothing to do with bitcoin..

as for the bonds..
well no one wanted to invest because while el salv government was speaking about $1b of bonds backed by btc. the government only had like $85m of bitcoin in custody. meaning investors already seen the red flag of thinking the bonds are under valued to a tune of 1:12 ratio of fractional reserve

i think he jumped in too quick hoping investors would throw money at him, without him planning how to actually utilise the opportunities that real crypto can offer,

he has now tried a new wallet/custodian service to help get citizens to migrate away from dollar, but as of yet the citizens are still relying on the dollar

No body cares with centralized wallets because dominance by Unites State as country most influential country in the world against with cryptocurrency and afraid impact for USD currency. I think still less and about El Savador as country legal bitcoin little hard how adopt and make bitcoin will be success for legal currency payment, but need process not all bad did by El Savador so far and they have earn much profit before by success sell bitcoin on higher price after investing with lower price.

I think where it all went wrong is when the El Salvadorian government forced the public to use Bitcoin as legal tender. If their approach was rather to give the people the "choice" to do it, it would have received more support. Then the government gave them a Free $30 in their wallet as an incentive if they opened a new wallet... and that was seen as a bribe.  ::)

You win the public's favor if you give them the perception that they have a choice in any situation ..... so when you force someone to do something, you trigger a angry response. (Which could be seen with the riots in the early days after the announcement)

I hope other government that are planning to do this, will learn from the El Salvadorian government mistakes.  >:(

I had seen in the google,most search one of bitcoin was first place to the El Salvadorian people.Because the government had force the people to make use of the bitcoin.The people will not accept the things by the force,it was the just a better to give a option.Because they need to use it for the while and come to know the prose and con of the system.Forcing will not help for the better results.

And what, in fact, they tried to achieve by introducing bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador. Having a good means of payment is still a small part of the solution to the problem of poverty in the country. First of all, goods should be created in the country, high-quality services should be offered, and the country's economy as a whole should develop. It will stimulate the collection of taxes, increase social payments through it, and so on. Indeed, Bukele started the reforms from the wrong end. By itself, the introduction of bitcoin could not lead to a rise in the economy. But only after that bitcoin can help society.

I agree with OP's point of view.
The government of El Salvador was quick to pass the bitcoin law as legal tender.
The population was not educated as OP says, planning would have to be done.
Now El Salvador has invested in some valuable assets ready to be used by Salvadorans and they are not used.
The opposition party to the Nayib government also does its bit by boycotting with marches and protests against bitcoin.
According to statistics, remittances continue to be received by the usual means in the nation of El Salvador.
I think that the government of El Salvador will be creating new strategies so that the population knows with certainty the benefits that bitcoin can offer them.

I would guess that every single nation is in bad economical situation right now. Nations with huge economies grew smaller as well, not as bad as smaller ones but still it didn't do well. In a world where the UK or the USA and what not is doing badly, it is highly expected for nations like El Salvador should not be really a shock to us that they would be doing even worse.

Bitcoin adoption could get higher there overtime when people see each other gain a lot but we haven't seen that since the legal tender deal. If it was done in 2019 and then the price increased during 2020 and 2021, we would have seen a lot more adoption. Which we will see in the future when that cycle comes again.

Probably because El Salvador is an impoverished country where the means of survival include having enough to eat with sustainable shelter. People don't recognize the luxury of living in a developed nation where law and order is maintained, and the economy is healthy enough to diversify into currencies aside from the government backed fiat. Though I wouldn't call it a complete failure -- these types of adoptions and overhauls of financial systems can take years, if not decades. But understand that a poor population can't reasonably be expected to immediately adopt a digitalized currency with no understanding of how it works. It takes time.

You are like a weasel, you run in any discussion and somehow manage to bring up LN regardless of whether or not it is relevant like here. Chivo is a closed-source centralized custodial wallet created and controlled by a government. Whether or not it also uses LN has nothing to do with its shittiness.

Adopting bitcoin could help you in some ways. For example, if your nation makes let's say 100 million dollars debt every single year on average, and grows 10% every year on debt, then you would be able to pay that back if you get bitcoin with it and it goes up. That way one day bitcoin may do like 10x and you could sell it and pay all of your debt and it would be helping you.

This isn't a guaranteed thing and maybe your debt could grow faster than your bitcoin reserves could and it would never be paid in full, but as long as bitcoin goes up, that should be a beneficial thing. Instead you could invest back into your nation but in 99% of the nations corruption prevents that.

I agreed with your observation because Bitcoin for payment purposes will not work as it is, due to a variety of reasons, like what I experienced in my country, most users are complaining about the transaction fees because they were deducted from their balance they consider it as the additional burden that's why it's not suitable for that purposes, second is the complexity of sending Bitcoin through the complex wallet addresses, etc. and IMO if this problem will not be fixed Bitcoin adoption for payment purposes will not work just like what happened in El Salvador.

But what I believe is if Bitcoin will use for other purposes like an investment or even savings I think it will be more useful because it is not required daily transactions so it's not burning fees.

Since you took this example on why they should get Bitcoin hoping that the price would move up eventually, what happens if the market comes down drastically and they purchased the coin at a higher valuation, do you think that the debtors will hold till the next rally to collect the debt. So i consider it as a double edged sword and i am against forcing people to do anything including making Bitcoin usage mandatory.

Has it really failed and we can say it already?
Bitcoin is a new technology and it just needs time to be established and understood by many people.
Expectations of Bitcoin were very high, maybe too high.

I would not say it is failed already because I would wait some more time and see.
Give Bitcoin time and more people will hold it.  :)

Just give it some time because we arent just passing 1 year time on this bitcoin adoption on El Salvador and i agree into that point or feedback in speaking about people are expecting or having that

high anticipation on things that should really be happening and we know on how reality works and we know that it couldnt be that possible on having things to be in proper order or supposed to be
on first integration.Of course it would really be taking some time and would really be making out adjustments.Citizens wont really able to embrace out easily and its true
that there would really be hesitance and doubts despite on making it as a legal tender.

im not the weasel that wants people to use LN you idiot

i am sorry that i openly warn people of the crappiness of LN. and im sorry that you didnt realise the flaws of chivo was your favoured network and how you fell into your own hole. but you digging your own hole by saying anyone that brings up LN is a weasel backfires on you yet again. because you love advertising it.. YOU endlessly try to get people to use it even when in this very topic you were describing its usage as crap/shitty.

by the way i make many comments about many things. the only reason you think i only talk about LN is because YOU are the LN centric focused idiot that only see's LN focused topics. and yes i appear in them to warn people away from it because guess what.. unlike your dream. LN is not bitcoin

now grow up and realise the flaws of your network and stop dreaming the utopian dream.
use this topic as your awakening to you finally realising that there are flaws and you should stop being a animal craving to pull others into your hole.

..
i know you never do any research. but atleast try for once to look into things if you ever dare want to reply about something that you got wrong. not via your buddies patting you on the back asking you to recite a silly script. but instead actually research the topic.
EG find out what the flaws were of the chivo wallet.
you will find out it was the LN element.. which is why they dropped the LN element and now going stronger into the custodial element, not the other way round

..
learn from this
trying to thrust people into using a new payment system thats not like the system they are accustom to, where that system has flaws, does not create good adoption campaign.

do you get it yet

It's not about using somebody else's money, it's about cutting your own profit a little bit to incentivize the adoption of something that is going to be useful and make the difference on the life of every adopters futurely.

And if merchants manage to reduce costs of imported goods when dealing with bitcoin, it could not be even necessary to cut part of the profit, but just pass along the fair price to the final customer.

It has nothing to do with whitepaper, though, it's just a possible practical approach to reach the most basic layers of the society in a more efficient way. LOL!

Also, go to table 3. These people who have been continuing to use the Chivo wallet appear to be using it for payments made through American dollars. The government of El Salvador might have created their own dollar stablecoin instead of bitcoinizing their country hehehe. It appears Jack Maller's original plan for Strike in using USDT might have been more preferable for the people.

Isn't it too early to say that it failed? Most people still feel that it's hard to utilize or do with the certain implementations they have. Remember that people tend to prefer something more accessible than something more complex than something they are used to. It's just that they couldn't wholly absorb it and would like to make things easier in life, hence the low adoption rate.

This would always be a trial for everyone, and maybe if it's even more implemented or something, people would just accept it. Is it always going to be about having an alternative, right? So perhaps show the benefits of using it instead of cash etc. Maybe they would use it more or something.

it's like you said. and it was his haste that made him fail. The approach must be slow. attracting the interest of the people there must be gradual and slow. like you said. can also start by creating a special area that adopts bitcoin. and expanded at a later date after seeing increased interest and users.

What happens is that adoption cannot be forced, in our case we are invested in bitcoin not because someone else made us adopt bitcoin but due to our own conviction it is the right choice, so while awareness can be raised through different programs people will decide on their own if it is on their best interest to adopt bitcoin or not, and if they feel they do not need something like bitcoin at the moment then they wont, people downloaded the wallet because of the free money they would receive but once that was done they did not had too much of an incentive to keep using it, so I think that what we are seeing at El Salvador was to be expected.

Maybe the Main reason is that the government mainly are the one who wants bitcoin  but they are lacked of encouragement to people instead they put it directly that people don't understand and just put it in their Mouth.
this is the reason also why there are arguments happens in that matter un tp now.

I want to understand how centralised the bitcoin  El Salvador citizens are buying is. Do you mean El Salvador government buys btc in bulk and resell to her citizens?
Or you meant that the wallet the country is using is owned by the government and centralised.
What is the essence of the centralization, does the government has a means to make citizens not lose money during dip?
If no, why the centralization. Anyway, if the country allows people to take charge of their coin and  buy coin anonymously if they want, I don't think there's a problem.

El Salvador bought the bitcoin.

But gave a reward of (I think) $30 to their citizens

Salvadorans can convert USD to the bitcoin easily with cheap fee using Chivo wallet

Salvadorans can decide to convert to USD or bitcoin and they are the owner of their coins. Citizens are the owner but El Salvadoran government are the owner of the bitcoin on blockchain because they can overide the control of their citizens bitcoin holding. We should expect that though.

Salvadorans can make use of noncustododial wallet if they want to have total control of their coins.

Freedom of choice is the best option in any democratic country rather than implementation by force, it would have worked better if they had allowed both ( Dollar and Bitcoin to work in parallel). Beside it, I think it didn't work  because adoption of Bitcoin could not attract the foreign investment in the country but Bitcoin can not be blamed for it as the conditions in the country are not conducive due to high crime rate and poor economic and financial management. The bitcoin is still considered as store of value and people buy it  for investment purpose and rarely used as currency to buy goods and services because its highly volatile.

A couple of factors are at play here. The most important one is that BTC and crypto are being treated as a band-aid for years of economic mistreatment and a generally bad state of the country. While Bitcoin is a great tool for empowering the common man and an interesting project that could show us how things might or might not work in the future, it definitely is not a complete solution to years of systematic abuse and dependency on foreign help. And unfortunately, many laser-eyed crypto influencers are giving away the impression it is, and then crypto investors that don't want to think for themselves jump on the hype train slowly chugging towards destination disappointment. The amount the IMF loans (at high rates) to third-world countries is much greater than BTC can facilitate at this point, and unfortunately, with its current state of affairs, El Salvador would be doing them a disservice by choosing BTC over that.

This brings me to another issue. Why have we put a time limit of what, half a year and determined that something is a failure without acknowledging that it's a small time frame in a country filled with economic distress? Changes like that don't happen overnight and will have their ups and downs for years to come, but that doesn't mean it's failed nor does it means there are no other alternative pathways to gradual crypto adoption.

Countries that have an unhealthy government system are certainly difficult to develop their economy. Bitcoin there is legalized on the basis of a deteriorating economy. and on the other hand, it seems that many of their governments only think of themselves, so that the people and the country are the victims. actually the distribution of $ 30 per resident is not bad, because it aims to stimulate people to use bitcoin, but the mindset of people in developed and developing countries seems to be different

For Salvadorans, it was not clear why they needed bitcoin. The majority of the population lives very poorly and they do not think about investments, especially investing in cryptocurrency, the main task for them is to feed their families. And it was just as difficult for them to use bitcoin, because of the high volatility, for example, each time refueling the car and having to look at the current price of bitcoin, this is not convenient. While the price in dollars was always stable and it was understandable and familiar.

That's why I also think the same thing because they don't understand but it's as if they are forcing their own will so that they don't go one way and make this failure.
If they could understand what bitcoin is of course they would go after bitcoin and agree to it.

I think El Salvador went too soon by adopting Bitcoin as legal tender. The country didn't have the infrastructure to support digital payments at a mass scale. So adopting a digital currency when there's basically no infrastructure for it, makes people look elsewhere. Considering that most people in El Salvador are poor and have no access to the Internet (as far as I'm aware), Bitcoin adoption will be little to non-existent. It's only been a few years since the government passed the law to make Bitcoin legal tender, though.

We should give Bitcoin some time to see how it will mature within the El Salvador. The only way adoption will increase is if Bitcoin reaches a new All-time-high in price. As long as we're in a bear market, adoption of Bitcoin in El Salvador won't be going anywhere soon. Just my opinion :)

Truth. This is what happens when a government forces its own interests above the public interests which is wrong in so many levels because as leaders that have been appointed by the people, they should do their job and serve the people well and put the public interests first on top of anything else. What's worse is that the decision is pretty half-assed and they didn't have lots of back up plans that would support their decisions in adopting bitcoin as a legal tender if anything goes wrong. Having lots of countries that are pro or neutral about bitcoin not doing anything yet is already a big enough hint that this matter should not be taken lightly and should be thought about thoroughly. I just hope that El Salvador manages to turn things around not just for the sake of bitcoin's reputation but for the sake of their people as well.

OP is right that the government hasn't taken the right approach to implement bitcoin as a payment method in El Salvador.
Directing users to Chivo wallet is the last thing that the government should have done.
Bitcoin is decentralized and so the government should have not promoted a single wallet.
The reason why many people were against bitcoin may be because most of them lost money in phishing and scams.
They should have made every citizen learn more about bitcoin by conducting events, lectures, workshops etc...
This way many citizens would be able to secure their money from these scams and may be this would have increased bitcoin adoption in El Salvador.

You do got some point somehow which i do bet that citizens of El Salvador wasnt never been aware for it to be coming considering on how short the time did their President did make out such acceptance

or making it as a legal tender.We cant really say that it had totally failed since its been not a year before this decision happened which means that there should be still some specific time on where
they would tend to embrace it.
Of course you couldnt expect for it to end up on positive or make out some conclusion basing on short period of time.

Only through a centralized wallet it is possible to provide a signup bonus. For that reason El Salvador government might've decided to go with the Chivo wallet. When people were given with little bonus, they'll atleast intend to know what it is. Here the people received the bonus and further stopped using it. This is where the problem arises, and for this government should take some measures to make use of bitcoin on real-time needs. This can be provided with some discounts when paid with bitcoin. With time surely growth will happen. Also now it's to early to conclude the happenings within El Salvador.

In a few words, being as clear as possible, the implementation of cryptocurrencies in El Salvador was in the blink of an eye, so to speak, since it did not yield the benefits as it should be, since the citizens of the same did not deposit 100 % of their trust in a digital currency, highlighting the fact that they are used to a traditional economy, and also due to the lack of information since the government had to implement strategies influenced by the learning of this digital world.

Most of the users believe that the implementation isn't done in the right way. I don't know how far this is true. As per me, the government took a strong decision and working on it amidst opposition from small group of people. It needs time, because it is not like the traditional money. Based on the volatility the executives need to take decisions, if not a small mistake could cause a big destruction in its economy. It isn't a failure, it is at its infancy.

There are some important lessons for countries adopting bitcoin

1. The implementation of policy is equally important as adoption of policy. Discuss,  get consensus and go in phased manner.
2. Learn to use bitcoin, before converting your assets in crypto
3. Bitcoin is not solution to bad economic policies. Keep your balance sheet clean.
4. Pilot scaling is important before going into mass adoption
5. keep the confidence of investors intact to keep economy floating
   

Agree , they are forced to Use and being mandated and this is why there are many demonstration and Rallies happening in their country because of this issue.
they should push the people in dealing rightfully and not with this , because people are the one who will use this and not them.

And also this is how strong the Opposition in their country that's why they can show this kind of attraction and showing how failure they can bring against the government .

I don't see that there are something they need to be against if they are truly for progress of their economy because bitcoin is one of the most promising and encouraging currency ever existence but with the EL Salvador's government approach this is how they fails i believe.

I fully agree with  what you said about use of Bitcoin as method of payment to buy goods and services is not understandable or convenient for any body wherever he comes from  because it is highly volatile and its price keeps on fluctuating every second which is the main barrier in its adoption as day to day useable currency. I think until the marketcap of Bitcoin increases  to some reasonable level like 10 trillion, it will remain volatile and unless that happens the perception of Bitcoin will remain as store of value suitable for long term growth.

That's a stupid approach at first place. If I were at his place then I would have instead suggested all the citizens to learn about bitcoin.
I would give free courses to them and hire teachers to make the citizens learn about bitcoin.
Then I would conduct an examination and whoever passed the exam would receive the same reward in BTC.
At least people would have got to learn more about bitcoin this way and still enjoy the reward in their wallets.

El Salvador's government should've introduced some kind of restrictions or requirements that would force people to continue using the wallet just to claim the "signup bonus" at the end. Giving away the bonus all in one go, is a terrible idea in my opinion. As I've said before, El Salvador went too soon by adopting Bitcoin as legal tender. Without a proper infrastructure for digital payments, you cannot expect people to adopt Bitcoin in-mass. The country needs to provide some discounts or additional bonuses when paying with Bitcoin in order to encourage its use within the region.

It's only been a few years since the law of making Bitcoin legal tender was approved, so I'd say we should give Bitcoin more time until it matures in El Salvador. With another country joining the game (Central African Republic), we are slowly heading towards "hyperbitcoinization". Just my thoughts ;D

Even when they rush about it, there are stores accepting BTC. Its just that it can't sustain because right after they year they tried adopting, a bear market comes in. Naturally, few people can't afford to maintain its BTC activity because the country is populated by poor people.

The rest that may have hold their BTC may find themselves lucky when prices go up. They may only be few. The one that the country may have to focus I guess is the BTC city they were building which the companies can pay employees in BTC.

Who really says it "failed? I mean it’s still a legal tender and people could use it if they want to and that’s all that matters, isn't it? In order to say that it failed you need to look at how the world is going and how El Salvador was before the adoption as well, seeing there is not much change in there, I would say that bitcoin has been fine.

Yeah, I agree that they are not financially suddenly wealthy nation, but what did you expected? You think just because they invested into bitcoin they would have flying cars now? Of course, they are doing worse because world is going to shit these days and a country such as this would go down even faster, that has nothing to do with bitcoin.

That's one way of looking at it and it is not wrong but let me point out another point of view.
The free money meant that a lot of people who never knew bitcoin and would have never even touched it if there were no $30, now know about bitcoin and have used it at least once. I'd say that's a good introduction and imagine how all those people who cashed out right away are going to feel when in a year or so that same $30 is worth something like $300.

This is why I disagree with saying it was too soon for them to adopt bitcoin as legal tender. The adoption is not supposed to happen overnight so the first step has to be taken sooner so that in a couple of years they can reach a much higher adoption.

A few years? It happened a year ago, give or take a month or two. 

The economic situation in the Central African Republic is even worse than in El Salvador. They don't have the crime rates of South America, but we are talking about a country where the majority of the population don't even have electricity or access to computers and mobile phones. 8 or 9/10 people don't have internet access. Good luck using Bitcoin there. And before someone recommends Bitcoin over satellite, those struggling to put food and clean water on the table have other priorities that purchasing satellite dishes. 

In my opinion, Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador has failed, because government was boosting adoption and infrastructure wasnt ready for Bitcoin. First they announce Bitcoin as a legal payment on the territory of Salvador, later they have started to created places where Bitcoin owners could use it and develop other programs. They have started everything from the end. When first mass of people received free $30 in Bitcoin, they did not have a place to spend it.

It still remains the official legal tender in El-Savador and there have not neither has there ever been any official statement stating the reversal of bitcoin as their legal standard, then i asked myself why the worries up and down from other governments and those that couldn't deer take a common risk just like El-Savador.


I still want to believe that few were yet to cashout due to one reasons or the other but just as you've said, how amazing would this have turn to when they got to discover what's in for them in the wallet, by then the whole world could have seen what they all termed "stupidity" act of Nayib Bukele turn to wealth and fame.


What infrastructure? what else could El-Savador have developed more than all it has, btc ATMs, mining rigs, bitcoin city/beach, bitcoin tourist centre, chivo wallet for all citizens with free $30 worth bitcoin, good accessible network frame and regulations suitable enough unlike India demanding 30% on tax, many institutions, organizations and companies all accept cryptocurrency for transaction in the country, then what else could Bukele have done? The president just set a good example and never forced anyone to use it, should we still blame him for that.

by receiving $30 in bitcoin which aims to socialize the use of bitcoin in the country because it is legal, it seems that there is no follow-up for further socialization, so with the lack of infrastructure and human resources which in my opinion are limited, they are only limited to receiving and spending it, things like this seems to be forced by the government, even though if the state legalizes it at this time, of course it can be used for the welfare of its people because in other countries many are investing in bitcoin for the future

Yes, it indeed has not been introduced well enough before they legalized it, things happened too fast in the eyes of the people in El Salvador I bet most have just agreed to follow this adoption because of the promises the President has made to them and their businesses or maybe to save themselves from being socially singled out by not adopting to this new thing.

It would have been nice if El Salvador di not announce their plans too early let alone executing it that fast. Instead, they should have allocated a few budget for free courses and seminars about bitcoin and this industry before executing the legalization to make people understand what they are getting themselves into so they can be prepared when price plummets just as how it did in the past few months. I pity those businesses and individual people that suffered losses due to this bad decision making of the leader which the people trusted and followed blindly.

While it hasn't been a long time yet, we can say that this was a bad and a failed attempt. Still though, I am hopeful and wishing that they can recover from this.

It was indeed on a fast pace manner on which its been to short that El Salvador had engaged to crypto and then suddenly decide on making it as a legal tender which i couldn't really blame that there would

be some mishaps or misunderstanding specially into its citizens because switching from fiat to crpyto/BTC would be entirely be that needs some time and cant really be able to
be adopted or understand in a short span of time as i said earlier and now people been calling it that it had failed?? No its not..We would be calling it that it failed
when they do revoke or revert their decisions.

Yea right. this is indeed a failure. but that doesn't mean failure means ending. but it's just that people's interest in el salvador is still low and today continues to wane. but we do not know in the future when its citizens get education about crypto . and begin to understand how practical it is to pay via crypto, be it bitcoin or altcoin. so I'm sure at that time the citizens of El Salvador will start flocking to start using bitcoin.

so el salvador is just not good at providing crypto education to its citizens because even this adoption of bitcoin is too sudden. and it has become commonplace. every time something new comes up, there are always pros and cons. we will have to see a few years later then we will conclude whether this really failed or not.

in my country people are flocking to buy crypto. even to the artists plunge into the world of crypto.
and this happened because the news media reported the achievements of successful people from crypto. which makes people curious.
maybe el salvador also needs to approach its citizens by controlling the media there. because people tend to follow what the news media says.

Who has the rules to be able to say that adoption in El Salvador failed, of course the classic items, yes, yes, the who are allowed to say this chivowallet is useless, it was a failure.

By the way the global adoption of bitcoin not finish penetrating in more than 12 years, so a few months are enough to mount the result of El Salvador on the cross (crucify him).

What is the adoption in the parameters of who, where there is an item of bitcoin adoption for the countries, there is not that norm, if someone can write it, it is El Salvador.

The concept of true adoption is lost, the true adoption of bitcoin is individual, it should only require the intention of two individuals wanting to exchange bitcoin.

El Salvador is the icing on the cake of what is required to have a true revolution, when it should be the individuals of each country who raise the true premise of bitcoin and then get a ruler/leader, (not a government) that supports them, but It turns out that governments adapt bitcoin to their needs to approve it, oh that's fine, that is a "good" adoption.

need adjustment and need more education about how to use Bitcoin as well as using FIAT. Saying failed may not be exactly what you said, because they have not revoked or made a decision to use bitcoin. It is not easy to adopt bitcoin

Well, people would always need someone to blame and if there is someone who is worthy of it or should take it then it would definitely Bukele and his advisors since they are the ones that pushed this half-assed decision.


Quite difficult to understand what you are saying right now but yes, if we take it literally, the word failed is quite inappropriate to use in this situation since they have not cancelled bitcoin adoption yet. So a bad decision it is then. Regardless though, this bad decision from them really made the lives of most people in El Salvador a bit more difficult than it already was. It would've been really nice if they have prepared plans to aid people/businesses when market situations such as now happens or just delayed the adoption all together if after critical consideration they still cannot find solutions to protect adopters when such bad market conditions occur like now.

It’s not easy for everyone to believe in something that they can’t see, especially when it is about their money. Moreover, the bitcoin price is not stable and for anyone holding it, there is a risk of losing money because of the declining value.

That is really unfortunate and I’m reading this for the first time with full confidence that El Salvador project failed. Did not expect this to happen considering the first energy and news plummeting all over the world. Man, there was time when everyone started calling El Salvador as bitcoins hub and mining business might just bloom in that county. It’s shocking to read people are refusing to accept the bitcoin.

Is this the grim reality of our bitcoin? Because such protest is harmful and could leave out bad impression to the world.

There is just one simple point which people need to understand and that is governments won't accept decentralized crypto aka bitcoin. The trap by Salvador government is very much the same as done by majority of big powers aka keep the crypto centralized so that government have full control of it.

They could have first supply merchants with terminals for Bitcoin payments. I dont know, let them first create stickers "We accept Bitcoin here". Develop software for Bitcoin payments at different places. Instead, they first created Chivo wallet, gave citizens $30 in BTC and let them free. Only after, they started to think about creating special tax zone, give benefits for foreign Bitcoin investors, add a program "pay in BTC for fuel, get a discount" and etc. Imagine you receive your salary tomorrow in bananas. Do you have lot of place where you can spend them?

well ... I was surprised to read this. but when searched from various sources it is as written by the OP.

I still remember, I myself am proud of El Salvador to be an inspiration for other countries to follow suit. and sure enough some countries are starting to follow suit. but i don't know the actual condition of el salvador at that time.
After I explored the shortcomings of El Salvador, it was only lacking in the way of education or approach to its citizens. but i still appreciate el salvador. and I hope that el salvador can make a new approach for its citizens to understand the advantages of bitcoin.

and this is the opportunity of the opposition to push the sentiment of the people to favor them making noise against the government .
maybe they are also the one who is funding the rallies so the media will publish this against the government

That is correct. But with the pandemic still in play, it looks like we're living an eternity to be honest. I'd wait a few more years to see how Bitcoin's adoption would progress within the region. As long as the government does its part to provide the tools necessary for adoption, Bitcoin will become largely successful as an alternative to Fiat within the country. ;)



I fail to see how people in the Central African Republic will adopt Bitcoin as a medium of exchange since most of them are poor with very limited resources. If the government wants people to adopt Bitcoin, it's going to need to provide the tools necessary to do so. Maybe something like giving Internet access for free with a smartphone will suffice? Unless there's the infrastructure for making digital payments within the country, only the wealthy will use Bitcoin while the rest will carry on with their lives using Fiat.

If only developed countries like the US, UK, and even Japan adopted Bitcoin as legal tender, things would've been different. But it's unlikely they'll do it since their economic situation is pretty good. For now, it seems that only developing countries or countries with a bad economic situation will adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. Let's see how everything will turn out to be in the future as Bitcoin continues to grow in popularity worldwide. :)

There are all sorts of motivating factors behind what you say is the failure of Bitcoin in El Salvador. Firstly, the government tried to hurry the process along by basically forcing El Salvadorean's to fund a purchase of Bitcoin (through taxes) which was then given back to every citizen - basically just a vote buying attempt. A slower roll out, which focused on setting businesses up to process payments through Bitcoin in a really efficient way, would have been the correct way to do it or even focusing on the "send money from overseas and avoid excessive middleman fees" would have been a stronger angle to take on this. However some people in the country struggle to find work or even eat, so they're not too interested in this inanimate internet currency when they already have existing payment facilities.

The exercise to its rule becomes unfriendly and it seems to urge people to use it rather than to see a willingness on their part. The approach isn't right and certainly these people, these Salvadorians never understand it clearly which makes them argue with the government and stop the adoption. But what happens is not a failure at all, there is only a thing they need to change before imposing it again maybe at this time 2nd attempt, went successful.

Well, I guess there is no instant adoption has been made and the government needs to understand it, instead.

To adopt any kind of new currency you need to educate your population very widely and to reach out to those who are most vulnerable. Countries in the EU that are yet to adopt the Euro are dragging their feet for that very reason and are extremely careful about it, and the Euro is a fiat currency that much more stable than Bitcoin. With Bitcoin has to be even more careful and I don't think El Salvador was.

You are right to a great extent as most people always have drawbacks with new technologies especially when it has to do with finances, am not of the school of thought that bitcoin has failed in El Salvador simply because of poor motivation of the citizens to adopt the currency one we most look at Bitcoin as a global currency and we must learn to treat it like that, bitcoin has no direct connection with El Salvador except for the fact that the government announced their support for the currency, so in the long run, El Salvador citizens are going to adopt Bitcoin when they're realized it a great opportunity.

That is very sad the people did not accept bitcoin. But is it really the people who are protesting of there are other factors involved as well.
Once Salvador was hub of bitcoin. What are people going to do with their bitcoins now? Is it the future of bitcoin?

It is not that the adoption has failed, in that country as in all there are many people who do not want to believe in BTC, they say that it is a scam and they get carried away a lot by the news, which by nature is not very good, most of them go against of BTC. On the part of the young people, if there is a lot of adoption, there are jobs that pay in BTC and those who work the most are the young people, they are taking advantage of it, it is very difficult to explain to an older adult about BTC because their mind does not allow them to accept the technology or alternative economies, for them what is safe is what works, like gold, fiat money like the dollar, for them that is safe, it is very difficult to change the culture of a people that the only thing they do to survive is of remittances.

If that is true then why governments on some countries have allowed the use of bitcoin? What you said can still be true but only to the countries where bitcoin is currently banned. Most cryptos are decentralized and some governments leave cryptos like this because they don't impose strict regulations like KYC and they don't do what El Salvador did. They don't create their own wallets and introduce it to their people.

I don't know if what El Salvdor did was a trap but I think they still help btc to become known and, people on their country can now spend their btc directly. They also have that so called bitcoin city, so overall they still have done a great job IMO.

yeah it's like you said.
and indeed, every new thing that appears in a country or in a group, it is normal that there will be those who are for or against and there will be those who are against or against. This cycle is common.
the process of receiving bitcoin in el salvador does take time and cannot just be accepted by its citizens.

This should be approached slowly.

can also apply the inbound marketing approach.

Inbound marketing itself is a strategy in a business to attract consumers (citizens) by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to consumers (citizens).

Introduction to this inbound marketing strategy can be effective with a few modifications and additions that are adapted to the situation and conditions of the El Salvador residents themselves.

I think it is too early to conclude that the adoption of Bitcoin by El Salvador has failed. The problem is not Bitcoin in itself, rather it is the manner/approach the country have adopted. First, I feel it is wrong for Goverment to use any form of coercion or force citizens into the adoption. The first thing Government ought to do is to sensitize, educate and encourage the citizens to see the advantages of using bitcoin. When the citizens see the need and adopt it out of free will, that is the beginning of the success. The Government is IMO hasty on the implementation. Offering the people $30 for downloading the Chivo wallet was a good incentive but not enough to sustain continuation of the project.

They need to take time to sensitize people - especially the technical aspects of handling bitcoin. Not everyone is technically savvy to be able to handle bitcoin wallet. To sensitize and teach the people on the technicalities of bitcoin could take several months or more than one year, it all depends on the peoples ability to understand. Again, since Bitcoin is very volatile, it is not going to be easy for some business outfits to adopt as they may be confused. Sensitization is the key - teaching the people how to profit and use Bitcoin, rushing the people will likely not yield results.

I think, El salvador need to go back to the drawing board to re-access the journey so far, highlight the mistakes, correct it and move on. With proper approach, they will make it.

Although it is very early to predict but of course the failure has started and there would be no stopping once the process begins.
 This is very unfortunate for the the those who have invested in bitcoins.
There should be proper education prog to help people learn and understand it- otherwise these kind of incidents will happen.

Decentralization can't be changed by making it legal tender. Only what you can do with it could be legally ruled out, otherwise bitcoin itself can't be centralized nor can it ever be controlled by anyone, only what you can do with it.

This needs to be learned by everyone, I keep seeing these type of messages and posts by people who do not know what decentralization is all about. Just because you can use it or you can't use it doesn't make it centralized, decentralization means that you can't change anything regarding bitcoin itself, like no rollbacks, no freezing it, nothing directly related to it, only things they can do are impacting what you do with it.

I hope the residents get the justice. I am thinking about all those who might be loosing a lot during this process.
There was a time when Salvador was hub of Bitcoin. Is this the future of our dear Bitcoin. I think its all luck game. Some becomes rich while the other faces trouble.

exactly what you said. Even an accelerated approach will not be good for the sustainability of a project. like a coin price that is pumped, it is certain that it will quickly fall back or dump. so also in terms of the approach of a country to its citizens. must be done slowly and with definite steps.
The question of interest is not something that can be forced, but this is where the state must be good at leading good opinions to attract interest itself. identify strengths and weaknesses. real profit and loss. let people freely choose and determine. in this angle the country of Panama is like implementing this in its steps to adopt bitcoin in the country.

Exactly. Most people don't even have the resources to access Bitcoin, so it's unlikely adoption for the cryptocurrency will grow within the short term. El Salvador's government should've built the necessary infrastructure in order to make people adopt Bitcoin in mass. I hope businesses and merchants in the country adopt Bitcoin as their main currency of choice to help contribute to the cause. The market is bearish right now, so it's going to take some time before people in El Salvador become interested in Bitcoin. At least, the government is buying the dip. Who knows if BTC's next All-time-high in price turns El Salvador into a developed country in the future? Just my thoughts ;D

I spoke to one of the Ukraine clients and they said they would not have an idea that they will be refuges in a while. Likewise you never know when are you going to loose your hard money - this is very risky game, one can't believe what is going to happen in coming days.

Yes, I fully support this idea, because the more people are educated about BTC, the better it is for people. I think that the main mistake of the president of El Salvador is not having launched awareness campaigns to be able to learn about BTC for all the people, with so much money that a government can handle, there is no doubt that a great effort can be made so that at least 70% of El Salvador knows what BTC is about and how citizens can see and understand everything about crypto.

In China before launching the government stablecoin, they put a lot of emphasis on btc, and this helped a lot to make people understand BTC very well.

How do you know that the president of El Salvador has not disseminated information one way or another to explain what BTC is? Do you live there?

I would be surprised if he hadn't done something.  Another thing is that much of the population still sees it as a strange and volatile thing, no matter how much you explain it to them, and also the price behavior since the adoption of BTC has not helped. If the price had gone up and today it was 5 times higher, it would have a lot more followers there.

Do you all think El Salvador President Nayib Bukele have taken this decision without prior analysing the risks of the market. Just eight months passed and it is the major crash bitcoin is experiencing during this time period. Give them it's time. Some have stated of providing proper education to the citizens, so to use it in an effective according to the market.

People see their president doesn't have proper experience, which is true. However the initiative taken by him is a bold one and surely gives best result. If the price have bounced high, now even without any form of education people could've started learning it. So, even now the people can educate themselves and support the combined progress of the nation through the adoption.

but you clearly did not analyse the actual events of el salvador.
the government hoarded btc in custody. and the citizens didnt really get offered to actually use and make payments in btc. they were playing with other denominations using other databases and electronic messages between wallets.

Given the fact majority of citizens oppose Bitcoin as legal tender, and that more than half of El Salvador's population may lack internet connection in the first place, it appears that El Salvador's attempt to legalise Bitcoin may fail in such instances. If it succeeds, the country will not only become the world's largest Bitcoin market, but it will also provide the cryptocurrency with a flood of new alternatives.

I support the growth of bitcoin adoption in any country because it is the best hope to make it more famous and used in various places. I'm not suggesting that El Salvador will ultimately fail with bitcoin adoption, but I do agree that they may not have the right approach.

They weren't completely wrong about his approach because we really knew that it was a bold first step from his administration. We hope there is something better about bitcoin adoption in El Salvador and also maybe they will be an important country to achieve successful bitcoin adoption in other countries as there are many lessons to be learned from making comparisons from El Salvador.

I agree, he knew the risks he was taking when he used everyone's money to invest into bitcoin. What you need to understand is that this isn't his money to do whatever he wishes, I know that most presidents all around the world (including mine) end up spending treasury like it's their personal wealth, but the reality is that El Salvador will benefit from this and not him, he is not doing it for personal benefit only.

When the time comes for the next elections, if this method haven't provided any benefit at all, it will not be good for him and he will lose elections, so the only scary thing would be someone else winning and selling all the bitcoins before he should.

To some degree it is a bit strange to have this thread that proclaims that El Salvador's bitcoin adoption failed.. which seems to rely upon some mainstream bullshit talking points bashing bitcoin and then another fuller El Salvador thread that pre-existed this thread.. so why two threads?

Sure there have been some decent naysaying points brought up in this thread, yet the responsive posts that provided various reasons why such "failure" conclusion would be immature come off as way more convincing.

I just provided a post of Peter McCormick's second interview with Bukele in the other El Salvador bitcoin thread (here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5342087.msg60220478#msg60220478)), which I would suggest any of the bitcoin and/or El Salvador naysayers should listen to that interview.

It's still too early to determine whenever Bitcoin's adoption in El Salvador has been a widespread success or a total failure. We should give it some time to see how adoption will progress as Bitcoin reaches new All-time-highs. The crypto market is still in bearish mode, so it's going to take at least 2-3 years from now before we see Bitcoin flourishing within the region. It seems to me that developing countries are closely watching El Salvador in order to make a decision regarding Bitcoin's status as legal tender.

With the Central African Republic also in the game, it should only be a matter of time before other countries follow suit. This is still Bitcoin's very beginnings, so I'd advise anyone to "hodl on tight" since the best is yet to come. Just my thoughts ;D

8 months is a relatively short period of time to define bitcoin adoption in El Salvador as a failure, as a retail investor, holding bitcoin also takes 2 to 3 years to be profitable, for a country to accept and widely adopt bitcoin is many times more difficult. So we shouldn't draw any conclusions about El Salvador right now, with the market entering bearish everyone is affected, not just El Salvador.

We cannot blame El Salvador for the failure of BTC to bull run at this moment. Because the whole Bitcoin transaction of in El Salvador may be not enough to start bull run. Bitcoin is so huge and decentralized. And another thing there are news that old bitcoin wallets with thousands of BTC balance are now cashing out for the upcoming BTC crash. 

Some people thought that a day can be used to build a house is what is synonymous to what they called 'bitcoin adoption is a failure'. They do not talk about the socioeconomic impact of bitcoin, they would also still be the one that will change their mind when the price of bitcoin start to increase again and reach all-time-high.

See what El Salvador's Deputy Dania Gonzalez talked about bitcoin adoption in her country. I think I have to post this here too to know how the title of this thread is passing the wrong information.

Falling Bitcoin price doesn't affect El Salvador: 'Now it's time to buy more,' reveals Deputy Dania Gonzalez (https://cointelegraph.com/news/falling-bitcoin-price-doesn-t-affect-el-salvador-s-strategy-now-it-s-time-to-buy-more-reveals-deputy-dania-gonzalez)

Part of what she said:


Gonzalez indicated that Bukele’s strategy has already proven to be successful in terms of socioeconomic impact according to Cointelegraph.

I do not know what people called failure, 1BTC is 1BTC, nothing like liquidation and the price of bitcoin will still increase. They said bitcoin adoption in El Salvador is a failure, yet Salvadorans can still make use of bitcoin anytime they want and the country is bitcoin friendly. How is it a failure? Not a failure at all.

^ The possible problem is the internet connection, we know that BTC transactions need an internet connection and if you are lack on this it will become a failure. But that is not the main factor here, they implement their own wallet and force people to use it, another factor is the recent crash, if their government invested BTC for sure they have lost profit on it. Probably it needs for them to analyze these circumstances that they did not expect or I hope they already understand this before announcing BTC becomes a legal tender.

A thing like this, adopting crypto without a proper approach and concrete plan will certainly fail but I think this would not be the case that El Salvador will quit, they have to reroute and make another plan that addresses the said approach and to make it right. It eventually needs also the support from the community and most of the big establishments, it is sure that they are also willing to help and improve adoption as this will encourage people to use Bitcoin instead of fiat money.

Basically this.


You guys need to stop spreading fud. Its how big Bitcoin investors buy your coins at a cheaper price. Surely that must somehow be clear to everyone with at least Bitcoin Veteran status? I guess the newbies get to learn the hard way, by losing their coins by shaving them away, flip flopping from buy to sell and sell to buy.

Its how I learned so I guess I can't really judge anyone at this point.

Just hodl your coins, our path to 100k has already started.  ::)


Why are you getting spooked by people who have no idea how Bitcoin works or what its advantages are? I see old generations who barely understand how to use the internet. El Salvador has been doing a crappy job of marketing Bitcoin to its people. Thats all it is. Adoption will be slow but we will see them warm up to Bitcoin. Especially the younger generations.

Bitcoin adoption in different countries may be varies from what their government's conclusion about bitcoin and other Altcoins.

Bitcoin price is not stable and that is not the usual currency that we are having.

Bitcoin is also ve needing internet connection before doing any transactions not the usuall money that we have

El Salavador Bitcoin adoption is trying to fail due lack of full trust as Bitcoin price is becoming diper everyday.
Bukele's aim is to invest more in Bitcoin to add to the 2,301 Bitcoin that was bought from public fund, but as it stand like this, the Financial Minister and others fill like the dip is making them lose many fund as potential buyers are scared of the market dip.

I am curious about this situation, El salavador was one the countries that adopt Bitcoin, why are they losing interest now, is it because of the dip? Or there is something again?

Even the question is a setup, thats how they work. I mean "why bitcoin adoption failed?" is a question that presumes that bitcoin adoption failed, who said that bitcoin failed? There is no situation where bitcoin lost everything and the adoption is a failed deal. It is obvious that bitcoin is a success because it is a long term investment and we should be focusing a bit more towards what it could do for the future of the nation.

You and I could die, we could be doing worse, we could be not rich, or get rich and stop trying and all of that. But at the end of the day, a nation will stand, most nations are older than us and most of them will stand after we die. So they could just grab as much as possible for decades and be super rich in the end.

if this is you've got to claim about El-Savador's adoption then you're getting it wrong, take a good look at the definition of bitcoin and what volatile means in bitcoin price, then try to relate it with how business people make profits through the market demand and supply, i hope you really understand the difference between bitcoin and altcoins because the trust you made mentioned makes me to ask that, by now you wouldn't have been talking about trust in bitcoin but rather finding means for an investment opportunity in it.


El-Savador is not loosing interest in bitcoin neither does it express any dissatisfaction on it adoption, i believe what some are saying is far from the truth going on in El-Savador.

What you are talking about is pure speculation and FUD nothing else. Price could go down, that doesn't mean it has failed, this is not like some situation with a deadline. If people are happy with what they have, then they are happy with what they have, if they are not happy with it, then they are not happy with it, but there is no failure here.

Bitcoin is still in their treasury and they could still go on and do something great in the end if the price goes up. This is the reason why people are calling this thread a FUD and a lie, it is deception and speculation, the only aim here is to make it look like it failed, when in fact it has not failed at all, it is just starting.

for the fact that people lack the full knowledge on the operational mode of bitcoin and how they can't just access the internet to read up about what bitcoin is and how it price volatile conditions work is really a thing of pity on them, yet this same set of people will come out claiming some unrealistic talks about bitcoin, how could one say something he or she doesn't know much about, the most annoying is seeing some of this trash coming out from some of the community members here on the forum, yet they will assume they know about bitcoin that they can't even defend nor understand, i hope they can come out now to claim bitcoin on another view since it has signal a bill run and hit $31k as at today.

I don't think this is the right time to make a conclusion on the El Salvador Bitcoin adoption, how can a lifelong project such as this be given a short-term result. It is nearly 8 months since El Salvador make Bitcoin a legal tender particularly on 21 October 2021 I don't think the ground on which this statement is based is slide at all and given the fact that the bitcoin city project and some of the other bitcoin related infrastructural development projects in El Salvador have not been completed and operational yet, any survey result about El Salvador Bitcoin adoption will be seen as a pre matured judgment/result. And the government through the presidency will make an official survey document in due time to show the impact of Bitcoin adoption and the areas to improve on.

One angle that remains quite interesting is the fact that any dumb twat can look at the BTC price and see that it is nearly 55% lower than its $69k peak, so then there is a presumption that if BTC prices are 55% down, therefore, the whole BTC project in El Salvador must be a failure.

Yeah, they can see the BTC price, but there is some kind of possibly intentional disconnect regarding how investment and development tends to work out within any kinds of governmental monetary system that might even involve looking at various revenue sources that have been changing as a result of changes within the government with more tourism coming into the country, various attention of international investors who had not even considered El Salvador prior to their involvement in bitcoin and now they are "looking into El Salvador" for sure various kinds of savings on remittances that are likely not even taking full advantage of the amount of savings that people within El Salvador have the potential to experience int the future, and some actual people are already using some of the new low cost remittance systems, and several citizens are likely invigorated by the fact that they have been exposed to ways of being banked, even if historically they had not been able to be banked.  

So many presumptions that El Salvador must have failed in regards Bitcoin because the BTC price is lower seem to fail and refuse to actually attempt to account for other changes that are taking place in the country that are either generating new revenue and/or new business and/or new economic activities that likely make up for any amount of lower BTC price that might get attributed to El Salvador BTC purchases (that are presumed as part of its treasury).  

Maybe the IMF or the US Govt has sent out these seemingly lame ill-fleshed out talking points for the negative Nancies showing their various levels of dumbness in their spouting out agreement with the various unsubstantiated and premature points of this thread's OP?

Ratimov where are you?  Defend the various points of your nonsense thread (if you can, that is)!!!!!!


Do you work for the IMF (or some other bank?)  or not?  Or do you work for the US dollar?  You are an agent of the dollar, right?A yes or no will do.


hahahahahaha

I'm razzing you a bit, but you started this seemingly exaggerated set of points contained in OP that was sucking off the teets of some then nonsense article from a month ago, no?  Have you become more convinced of your various lame and possibly regurgitated (from the article) points contained in OP or are you willing to revisit any (or all) of them?  #justasking (for a friend)

I'm sure there are only a handful of people who think like you said maybe they rate bitcoin negatively about bitcoin and surely many people in the country of el salvador accept bitcoin openly,

in fact, El Salvador's step in adopting bitcoin is something that really deserves appreciation. because it turns out that el salvador has not had its own currency. and they use US dollars. So I think their economy will be hampered if they continue to rely on other countries' currencies. and the move to adopt bitcoin could be one of the best solutions in the future.

Indeed, at the beginning of the announcement of the adoption of bitcoin, there was a demonstration of rejection from the citizens of El Salvador. but I think it's a natural thing. because everyone must be afraid when something new and foreign comes. and bitcoin for most residents of El Salvador at that time was still foreign. then the pros and cons will definitely happen and that's normal.

and calling it FAILED is too soon to conclude. because this is just the beginning for el salvador. now is the time of adaptation. Naturally at this time there were some problems. because to be successful also requires sacrifice and hard work.
so the adoption of bitcoin in el salvador is the same. sooner or later then I'm sure bitcoin will be increasingly accepted.

so it's still early to draw conclusions.
even seeing the president of el salvador continue to buy bitcoin it bodes good news too. and the fact is now many other countries are glancing and studying el salvador.and want to follow in his footsteps.

El-Savador is believed to be envied by many because they couldn't achieve the milestone El-Savador has gotten into, governments and many people create the fear of uncertainties in the minds of others thinking it could make a change towards their approach on bitcoin adoption, infact IMF did the worst but despite the threat and warnings, when a leader like Nayib Bukele have a focus on the set target and aim towards achieving it, then ordinary confrontation, allegations and mere words couldn't stand a resistant, bitcoin adoption is El-Savador's ever best decision to secure freedom for it citizens from the world of central authority.

I wonder if bitcoin is still in bull season until today and bitcoin's price hits $100k, will El Salvador's bitcoin adoption be considered a failure? instead of suspecting they had failed, people will praising El Salvador.  Maybe the way Nayib Bukele approaches bitcoin isn't really that good, but that doesn't mean they're failing. We all know bitcoin is a long-term investment so it is too early to conclude anything.

Accepting bitcoin as legal tender is a bold decision, but as the president of a nation, I believe that Nayib Bukele researched and planned his decision, a long-term plan. We're experiencing a bear market and like us, Nayib Bukele is probably struggling a bit with bitcoin's price plummeting. But just don't give up and keep going, El Salvador will achieve the desired results. I wish them success with my decision.

You should be taking the early opposition with a wee bit of skepticism (grain of salt) regarding how representative that it is in regards to bitcoin opposition rather than just general opposition, and surely there is going to be push back from international institutions, status quo rich, banking that could likely continue to build on opposition that may or may not infiltrate into grass roots type of opposition.


As you seem to be suggesting, there seems to be a bit of balancing that Bukele had been doing in terms of bitcoin adoption, and even if you look at his interview with Peter McCormick (as I had linked to that Bukele interview with McCormick earlier in this thread) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5396392.msg60220489#msg60220489), you should be able to see for yourself by watching that interview that Bukele had been trying to consider a variety  of matters - as well as he seems to be very smart and insightful in regards to the ways that he talks about bitcoin... he's no dummy or schemer... at least he does not come off as that kind of a personality.

that's why he's a leader, he leads and others follows, they don't really need to understand how and why his decisions and steps seems weird because he goes by his on vision he has and not working on other people's opinions, so don't expect them to believe in Nayib as long as the El-Savadorans do, a man who is liable to taking risk is a good entrepreneur, he's matured enough in making decisions regardless of the circumstances around it.


exactly just as the end justifies the means.

In my opinion it is too soon to call El Salvador experiment a failure, there is a long way ahead for Bitcoin as currency.
Also, I believe that this experiment is not just about the president having a treasury in Bitcoin but also about the use of Bitcoin as national income through mining and most importantly the use of Bitcoin to save money which could be lost because of remittances fees.
One can use Bitcoin to send remittances not matter the price it has on markets, for example.

So, let us sit back and pay attention to the development in El Salvador. Bitcoin price changes but the adoption must continue to increase, slowly but steadily.

Most likely, I don't really disagree with your overall points Doan9269, including the other similar optimistic points that you made at around the same time of this post in another El Salvador thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5399414.msg60777138#msg60777138). 

Nonetheless, I think that it would be better to attempt to frame matters a wee bit differently from the way that you are framing them, because it is almost starting to seem as if you are placing way too much god-like status on Bukele, and suggesting that he is wiser than others and anything that he does is good and should not be questioned, which surely is a dangerous way to frame matters.

Surely, I believe that a bunch of the bitcoin naysayers and the El Salvador bitcoin critics are wrong in their various premature assessments regarding the failures of the bitcoin tender law implementation in El Salvador, even if sometimes they might be bringing up some decent points regarding some of the speed bumps that have come up and also that there are potentials that some of the matters might not go as well as the El Salvador government sometimes seems to be framing matters.

I am NOT going to deny that Bukele does seem to be a pretty smart guy on the topic of bitcoin, and he seems to also be in the practice of consulting with quite a few smart people in regards to the bitcoin topic, even though we likely do not know details of the vast majority of whatever consultations that he is doing on the bitcoin implementation topic.

There also are going to be needs to account for on the ground developments in regards to a variety of topics including whether some of the governmental leaders or even private sector influential people within El Salvador are having difficulties with the implementation of the bitcoin law and various ramifications, and even if there are some segments of the population that have varying  views on the topic, so even though Bukele appears to be a wise leader, he does need to continue to have interaction with the various interest groups (stake holders) within the country and/or to have people who are close to him who can adequately and competently carry out those kinds of interactive functions.. such as gathering information, assessing the information to figure out if tweaks to their practices and approach should be made.

There are some aspects of bitcoin (especially regarding the future) that no one really knows with high levels of certainty, even though there can still be high levels of confidence that there are good faith efforts to attempt to employ the better of the possible paths to attempt to maximize various benefits that come from the implementation of the bitcoin legal tender laws, and almost no good thing is not without some needs to reach various balances, and to attempt to rebalance upon the best information available while recognizing that sometimes mistakes might be made along the way, too... including that sometimes there might end up being some individuals who are close to Bukele and supposed to be implementing the bitcoin law that might need to be replaced or even to be moved to a position (duties) that might be better suited to their skills and abilities which sometimes might end up in tougher decisions regarding firing some folks who might have gone astray in the process of carrying out their duties or going beyond what was expected... or not being able to get to the competency level in which they might be considered as useful to having a position within the administration.  Lots of shit happens, and Bukele is likely to make mistakes along the way too... or even to be faced with choices that he finds really difficult to make... including several possibilities about how to go forward in which sometimes there is not any kind of exact obvious right (or correct) choice... but then once the administration makes the choice they might still present it as the best of the choices (which may well be a spin rather than the actual truth.. which does not even necessarily mean that they did anything wrong or that they were acting unethically even though some folks might genuinely and reasonably perceive their actions in that way).

We must note that President Bukele is a public servant that is accountable to the people. A good leader shouldn't be a despot that takes decisions without consulting the right people. And the right people to consult most times are not the smart ones or members of the President's cabinet but the end users of Bitcoin which are the common men on the street and other business owners. There is need to gather and analyse feedback from the people which would lead to reviewing of the policies or laws on Bitcoin as a legal tender in El Salvador. The country must keep adjusting and readjusting the formulation and implementation process of its laws on Bitcoin until it becomes more effective and efficient.

Yes, Bitcoin in El Salvador had a lacklustre beginning because the factors that you mentioned but a lacklustre beginning does not mean it has been an absolute failure, it is about its current form.


It is curious, because in the case of Venezuela, we started to slowly embrace cryptocurrency technology even though it was not endorsed by the state, in fact, back then Bitcoin mining was persecuted.

One can also make reference to the impact of stablecoins in Argentina, a country where foreign currencies are highly restricted to the common people-

El Salvador have become the center of discussion when it comes to Bitcoin adoption among countries, while some believe that El Salvador have taken a historic paths in line with modern technological adoption as it relates to finances and economy, a lot of others have criticize El Salvador for adopting Bitcoin, and some of the arguments borders around the fact that.
1 El Salvador adopted too early
2 lack of adequate awareness and orientation among El Salvadorians

In all this I see that it is rather too early to expect much from this development as we all know that Bitcoin adoption is a big project that requires time and patience so we should not give a short time focus to a long term goal such as El Salvador Bitcoin adoption.

Maybe there government is just hype on past condition where bitcoin is at green level. Also for some reasons maybe there are other people who's not been well educated the risk about its volatility that's why for other country who want to make bitcoin as their legal tender maybe they look at what El Salvador do first and avoid their mistakes so that they can smoothly  adopt bitcoin without any disturbance to them.

Through different surveys it is being described that adoption of bitcoin have failed in El Salvador. We don't know how far this is true, on the other side the government keeps adding more volume of bitcoin whenever there is crash in the market. At some point people will get used to it rather than opposing. At the beginning the users don't have much of understanding and that could've made them use the Chivo Wallet balance of $30 and stop using further. This will slowly progress when government find the right way of providing awareness.

It seems to me that you (Hispo) conceded too much to Ratimov to agree that the introduction of BTC into El Salvador is any kind of failure both based on the early date of seeing what kinds of systems and usage is happening there, even if there may have been some areas in which some products did not perform up to expectations and/or even if the BTC price went down by around 75% if measured from the November 2021 top.

Ultimately, there are going to be needs to attempt to weigh areas of success such as citizens saving money on foreign remittances or the fact that people who start to use bitcoin have more options with areas that have not performed well such as trying to figure out if there are areas in which usability is confusing so sometimes people might consider bitcoin to be too confusing to try to learn and to try to either hold keys themselves or to be using third party custodians that might not make them feel that they are being empowered in any kind of way when the BTC price simultaneously ends up going down by quite a lot through the period so far, and maybe to try to figure out if areas that did not perform well or ease of usability can be improved.


I agree with your points and your framework Piesel, and of course, as some of us have already mentioned, it is way the fuck easier to try to educate folks in an active way and with bitcoin having a space within the country in which it is not only NOT ILLEGAL, but it is promoted by the country, so in that way, it can take some time for both the innovation attempts to take place, but also for citizens to both get used to the idea of having an additional option (bitcoin) and figuring out if there might be some kind of way that they consider themselves to be advantaged by getting involved in learning about the additional option that they have.


One of the advantages of any kind of a public institution getting involved in something like bitcoin would be the possibility that they would make some of their efforts public in order that both they can learn from the data and other places might be able to learn from the data too.

For example, in regards to bitcoin's price volatility, of course, any of us should be able to look at the price charts and to see that historically bitcoin's price has been quite volatile, so it would be difficult to blame El Salvador for bitcoin's price volatility, but it is possible to blame them if they were making representations about the BTC price and suggesting the BTC price to be more stable than we know it to have had been historically.  So sometimes there could be mistakes in terms of the government or its officials seeming to get too caught up with some of the hype and even making representations that the BTC price would not go below certain price points, and then they end up getting proven wrong because King Daddy does not give any shits about their thoughts/predictions about how low its price might go or not.

I'm also of the opinion that they adopted before the protocol was ready to mass use by commoners. LN is still an experimental technology. We can't expect tech-illiterate people to constantly switch money between L1 and L2. Also, the Lightning Network is still too small, compared to the Bitcoin network.

Most BIPs in https://github.com/bitcoin/bips have not even reached Proposed status, implying more work is needed on those standards. The ones that are Proposed, or Active, do not have enough use to warrant them to become Final (the most glaring example being BIP39 - many wallets are using some non-standard derivative of it because of design flaws in the spec).

Not full believing with bitcoin adoption failed in El Savador because drastically with bitcoin dump have other side not happening what did by El Savador after made bitcoin as legal currency transaction. But little mistake made by El Savador when announcing about bitcoin as legal currency transaction because price have going pump. But at the early announcement about Bitcoin as legal currency, price still not high and after legal bu El Savador bitcoin ever reach all time high above $60,000.

I think bitcoin drop drastically many people claimed with failed adoption bitcoin in El Savador but actually that not really true, bitcoin have many bad news every day and give negative side how to make bitcoin keep going dump. I sure have another day later bitcoin will back to higher price and all statement about bitcoin adoption failed in El Savador is big mistake.

To them all that seems not to believe in the progress with El-Savador's bitcoin adoption, here's another development.

https://i.imgur.com/QbElqYK.png
https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1560673790962458625?t=XI8lQ5esjsuWbxE9SjBpdg&s=19

Some salient research works are going underneath in El-Savador which are not visible to the public, here the president is taking his time in engaging divers means to ensure a stable run of bitcoin economy within his jurisdiction and he's coming up with plans to engage bitcoin leveraging organizations recovers from the effect of global distress.

El Salvador Bitcoin adoption is way beyond price speculations, because for a country with loads of economic crises to adopt a volatile currency like Bitcoin as a legal tender means the president is well prepared and informed about the actions and behavior of the market, and that is why Bitcoin price has never being a factor to consider when buying the country's Bitcoins and many have misunderstood the whole process and now related the current Bitcoin price to a failure to El Salvador Bitcoin adoption.

Those who are of the school of thought that Bitcoin price determines success are the same forks who are promoting this, what I know is that projects like this are always given long-term goals and since it is a capital project let's give El Salvador some 10 years from now, then a lot of things would have happened that can be used as tools for analysis on the condition of El Salvador bitcoin adoption and its outcomes.

Yeah that's right maybe they just analyze it wrong for that instance and I'm sure their government do something to counter their past mistake made from their first entry so provably they comeback stronger with proper data analytics on how the market moves.

For sure the bull and bear market condition teach them good lesson on how they can approach for another time around.

Not only in El Salvador but that teaches everyone, especially those who are new in crypto. They now realized that the market is really tough and it was had to understand. They oversee the possible scenario and fast adoption, they underestimate the situation and think that their people are ready for this, sadly they are not and they fail. But I think it is not an option to quit, they now need some patience and market workout to help people understand. maybe in this time, they got some support from merchants and partnerships with these business owners.

But on the one hand, the volatility of Bitcoin can lead to a buildup of debt that results in countries in Acquisitions, recessions and state revenue chaos, this is proportional to the larger funding of the public money they manage.
I even read some news about El Salvador's economic growth slowing in 2%.

My prediction is that el salvador will experience a much bigger wave of protests from its citizens, so that when the price of bitcoin drops, certain parties will experience serious problems and the state will be blamed, if it is not able to provide a solution.
Possible solutions that they can develop only in the preparation of special funds, through third parties, but still carried out together, so that they can achieve stronger economic growth in the future.

If this power can be built, it can also stop those who want to use bitcoin/crypto in terms of money laundering, taxation and other crimes, because the state can completely control the growth of bitcoin, by not being given too much access.
Please correct if I'm wrong

This is exactly what we see El Salvador buying more bitcoin when he has the opportunity to do so. But in fact, there is no real use of bitcoin in the country, you correctly said that the wallet was downloaded by users only for the sake of receiving a bonus payment, after which interest in it was lost. You say people have to get used to it, but what to get used to? Realistically, El Salvador is turning into a bitcoin-place for tourists, that's the only thing that has happened.

Regarding your first point about struggles in the economy in the event that bitcoin prices continue to fall.   I am not sure if El Salvador is in a worse position because they are involved in bitcoin because there is also evidence that El Salvador's involvement in bitcoin has brought in revenue too, so the evidence does not necessarily support that their getting involved in bitcoin has caused them to perform economically worse than if they had not gotten involved in bitcoin.  Of course, future BTC price performance could bring some further facts to this issue, yet I would not presume that the ONLY direction of BTC's future price performance is down, especially since BTC's current price performance is at (and even below) the 200-week moving average which are historical lows.  Sure, the BTC price could go lower, but it is not guaranteed to go lower as you seem to be presuming in your comments.

Regarding your second point regarding El Salvador's using bitcoin's transparency to crack down on crimes related to money laundry or taxation.  I doubt that their focus is on those kinds of activities as much as it is upon just promoting the growth of bitcoin.  Of course, both can be done at the same time, but in essence El Salvador has pretty liberal tax laws in regards to bitcoin because it is treated as a currency, so there would not be any extra tax burdens by using bitcoin - so I would suspect that if there are any extra tax issues that are coming up because of bitcoin in El Salvador those would be more fringe issues rather than falling under the main ideas around their various current efforts of just wanting to promote the growth of bitcoin throughout the country.


Do you have feet on the grounds in El Salvador Cryptmuster to be making assessments regarding the "ONLY" things happening in El Salvador around bitcoin?  Where's your data beyond your pure speculative assertion?  how about remittances?  how about certain areas in which there are regular meetups in regards to bitcoin, are those meetups expanding or having any impact on adoption increasing in El Salvador?  And even if the usage is ONLY in regards to touristy areas, then are there more businesses accepting bitcoin, and if so are they completely converting into cash or are they HODLing some bitcoin or are they spending bitcoin in other places in the El Salvador economy or not?  Where's the data?

Trying to assume more extreme, I believe that Bitcoin is at a low price El Salvador will have a large enough impact, if it is true that the news report from the IMF they use greater public money in the adoption of Bitcoin in the country.
I mean chaos will be specifically designed by people who try to weaken El Salvador, as a country that recognizes the existence of Bitcoin and invest some state money.
This design aims to undermine El Salvador, towards the adoption of Bitcoin as a financial freedom, thus the Fiat currency does not feel disturbed by some people.
This moment is the same as the beginning of the emergence of dollars in the country, where there is a special agreement on the purchase of products from those who must use dollars and are not justified using other currencies. The goal is the same, they can take two sides of the profit
1. Dollar is maintained and stable
2. Exchange of money will provide multiple benefits for the country, because the currency of other countries if exchanged with dollars will generate huge profits for them.

Has our discussion shifted away, please forgive me?

The second point concerns criminal behavior, this is easier to do if El Salvador experiences distrust from its people.
Well, based on these suspicions, it is necessary to strengthen El Salvador in any way, especially since they are a country that is free to adopt bitcoin and openly legalize bitcoin.

The biggest goal is that bitcoin and fiat currencies can grow at the same time, without being tied to competition or having to kill one of them.

Hopefully my wild assumptions are wrong and don't cause problems, honestly I'm very proud to discuss with you, greetings from me master @jayjuaneee

Though El Salvador has bought Bitcoin, a huge amount of it, however, it never means that they have the power to control its price. What they meant is just they failed to urge people from adopting and use this as a form of currency like fiat money. They overthink what will happen after having such regulations implementing Bitcoin as a legal tender, yet people are still in the struggle because they are not familiar with this.
I think they need time to prepare themselves and make other strategies in order to encourage their people to adopt Bitcoin. Not really fail, unless they will quit.

El Salvador adopted Bitcoin too early, since most people within the country don't use technology on a daily basis. The vast majority uses paper money (USD) for day-to-day payments. If the government wanted to spur the adoption of Bitcoin, it would've provided the necessary tools/equipment for merchants/customers to get on-board. Now that Bitcoin is in "bearish mode", less people will be interested in adopting the cryptocurrency as an alternative to Fiat. We're going to have to wait until the next bull market, to see how adoption for BTC would grow within the country.

Fortunately, another country has joined the game (Central African Republic), so it should only be a matter of time before the vision of "hyperbitcoinization" becomes a reality. I'm in no rush to see Bitcoin adopted as legal tender in most of the world's countries as long as it works as intended. No one knows what the future holds for BTC, so we can only hope for the best. Just my thoughts ;D

I never mentioned price controls, I mean money laundering controls or bad behavior involving bitcoin, nor am I sure right now they're a total flop, because from all the news circulating, the people who come to protest don't really know how bitcoins work.
It could be that this is specially designed and financed by the people concerned. The goal is the same, so that El Salvador is no longer trusted by its citizens.
This country is almost generally aware of how bitcoin works and its adoption, so far I haven't found a compelling reason to use bitcoin forcibly, so it's very possible that this was specifically designed by people, many news sources I searched for, the discussion is almost the same, meaning this is happening not because of something the people there want, but the riders to bring down El Salvador

It is just a situation that is caused by dropping of value of Bitcoin which will improve itself as the Bitcoin value will correct itself.

Nothing will succeed if it is done without the buyin or even the understanding of the people. El Salvador enforced something that most people knew nothing about and then paid a lot of money to companies to help the government do it.

This forum too was full of people saying it was a great thing. Bitcoin doesn't automatically make a process good.

And why are we bringing price into the picture?

Dont forget that the government of El Salvador has bought Bitcoin at rather high price with money raised from taxes. I think this fact was a key role failure or even hate of Bitcoin (I am speaking about protests during first days of announcement of acceptance). Imagine, you pay taxes and expect, lets say, improvement of roads, medicine, lower electricity bills (El Salvador uses partly their power plant energy on mining). And instead you see government buys something that drops value 2-3 times during one year.

Do you really mean that, too early? can we compare the rate of those that actually benefiting to those not, if we consider the total population in El-Savador, the young are young adults are the ones that fully engaged in tech activities and make use of the media most while the aged and young children are just but a few population compared to the ones that take advantage in using bitcoin for their daily businesses and economy affairs, with this adoption in El-Savador, it will rather increases more development by extending bitcoin knowledge to the young ones right from tender age and the adults as well never to miss out the opportunity for an asset to be left behind for their heirs inheritance.


yet a good number of this set of people still have bitcoins in their wallet they make use of saliently for either payments where it is acceptable or for an asset because they understand the future that awaits them in doing so


but that's totally wrong, if they should set in, then this is the most appropriate time to do so while on dip, waiting till bullrun occur could have renders many opportunities wasted before then and what if during the bullrun comes in another bearish while they just set in, it will rather be more discouraging than ever.

Probably it would be better for your own attempt to understand and appreciate what is happening if you attempt to understand that one of the greatest ways in which people are able to learn and to become more familiar with something is to have it actually something that they can actively engage in.. rather than theoretical.  You act as if there is some kinds of major costs in introducing bitcoin into the country when bitcoin gives options to people in El Salvador.  They do not have to use it if they do not want to.  Its an additional option, and likely people who are there are learning more and more along the way, and they are likely learning more because the government has stated that it is promoting it as one of their possible means of exchange in those there parts (that jurisdiction).. .


It is a good thing.

It continues to be a good thing.

Can you believe that a country was so bold as to provide such an option to their citizens?  And, they do not seem to be distracted by shitcoins either.. at least not so far.. Seems amazing to me.


Governments have all kinds of ways that they balance books and account for funds - accordingly, do you even know their various cashflow matters? 

Sure it is possible that they have been misleading the public in terms of proclaiming that they are getting more revenues coming into the country based on tourism and based on their pro-bitcoin stance/policies.. but I really doubt that the data is quit conclusive in that regard, either.

For sure, I believe that governments need to be as transparent as they can in regards to these kinds of matters, yet at the same time, do we have evidence that establishes that El Salvador is not being transparent enough?  Do we really know that money is not being well spent - including your concerns about the El Salvador bitcoin purchases to date, as you seem to be proclaiming bakasabo?

There is a first time for everything and the people of El Salvador are having deeper understanding of Bitcoin everyday that passes. There is high rate of Bitcoin education going on in that nation, in fact some higher institutions are offering courses on Bitcoin.

Even private businesses spend money when they are introducing a product to the public. The government of that country did all they could to ensure that El Salvadorians embrace Bitcoin. Gradually the acceptance of Bitcoin in that country is expanding everyday. Bitcoin is just an alternative currency and investment. The government did not make it compulsory or force it on the people. It is optional.

This forum is filled with diehard believers of Bitcoin, hence you don't expect them to be pessimistic. El Salvador is the first country to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender and I am sure this forum would give the country every support they deserve.
     

Sometime when people begin the blame El Salvador government for investing in Bitcoin because of the drop in price. My question is usually what about if Bitcoin had hit the $100,000 mark this year. Most critics would have called President Bukele a smart and economic guru. Every investment has risks attached to it. El Salvadorian government invested to make profit and I am sure they never expected the price to drop. But the government still has total confidence in Bitcoin. I am believing that thy would be able to make profit in the nearest future.   

If that thing really happens, then I would regret that I am not a Salvadorian. People would be really happy to see how their $30 turned into $60. This might be only an illusion, but I think those who managed to get free BTC in their Chivo wallets, have already spend them. I doubt that adoption triggered people to make investment in Bitcoin, so that when price hits $100k, they would feel a significant effect.

Oh no ops so funny, you want to change your nationality because of a $30 airdrop and wait for the price of Bitcoin to reach $100,000 so that your $30 will become $60. We must not forget the motive behind the $30 airdrop which is to aid the citizen in making transactions using Bitcoin through the government approved chivo wallets to help test the wallet and to collect feedback and possibly improve on the wallet performance and update, but many El Salvadorians only withdrew the $30 and abandon the wallet after that, while few percentages of the population have 50% usage of the wallet. The low adoption is mostly a result of a lack of awareness and education among the citizens but at the moment the government is taking the necessary steps in educating their citizens and building their awareness of the advantages of bitcoin as an alternative currency in the country.

It was totally been rushed i would say on which El Salvador did make BItcoin as a legal tender and we havent seen if there are some proper education or teachings or awareness even with the basics.
Its understandable that they had done out some teachings after on that certain decision which the result isnt surprising where it would be mostly ignored or been neglected just because people havent
able to know even into its basic principle.Somehow it isnt really still a complete fail since they are still standing strong in regarding with their decision and even make out some purchase
of coins when the market is still on bear season which is something we can say that they trust up BTC that much.

I don't think it's the decline in the value of Bitcoin that has failed bitcoin adoption in El Salvador. But it's more for residents who don't consider Bitcoin as an important currency, so there are still many residents in El Salvador who still prefer to use cash, debit, and credit cards.

And according to research I read on a site (https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/nber-el-salvadors-bitcoin-legal-tender-adoption-failed-to-takeoff-2810897), it says that more than 60% of respondents throw away government Chivo wallets after using the $30 bonus. Surprisingly, 89% of Salvadorans have never received remittances with the app, only 3% of respondents have received them in Bitcoin. However, 99% of respondents have never paid taxes with Bitcoin.

I think that this is the peak of the failure of bitcoin adoption in El Salvador, although the government of El Salvador can still improve the situation in order to make bitcoin adoption smoother and more equitable for all citizens and also provide education about the importance of bitcoin currency in life.

On a general note, you may view the El Salvador bitcoin adoption as a rushed process but you may still need to have a rethought about the whole situation and come to term with the fact that there is no right time or wrong timing for the adoption of any innovation that is of national interest most especially when it has to do with a country and government. President Bukele is a smart young leader that knows when to strike and how to strike even though Bitcoin has dropped in price since the purchase but we must not forget the fact that the El Salvador Bitcoin holding is not for short-term purposes so we should stop giving a short term result to long term goals or projects.
On the education of the citizens before adoption, I think it is better the way the El Salvador educational sector quickly adopt Bitcoin teaching into their curriculum and so many other post graduates' diploma programs in Bitcoin and blockchain adoption. So with time the effort of the El Salvador government in educating their public will start paying off as the growth in Bitcoin adoption within the country will increase and the use of the government-approved wallets chivo wallets were static and data on the level of growth and impact of Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador will be properly monitored to avoid roadside speculation, let give El Salvador some years to put things together before we can say truly the impact either a failure or success of the projects.

I don't see any connection to the market drop that caused El Salvador's failure to accept bitcoin. Legal tender is what makes bitcoin legal in El Salvador, bitcoin will be the main currency that people can use however they like, not necessarily investment.

Recently they claim bitcoin adoption is helping their country go up and attract many new investments into the country and I haven't seen any claims they have failed, why do we always predict that they have failed? They never fail, bitcoin adoption has some hurdles but they can fix it and will adapt better and better, shouldn't ask for too much while adoption is short-lived. We should give them more time.

Show me a perfect economy or country in the world and everyone will be free to live in there, i saw a publication that state all the prominent countries with debt in their numbers, can you imagine that UK, US, china and some other well recognized countries all form the list, then someone asked, if all these countries could be in debts, who is now their lender or creditor?, Enough of saying all manners of talk about El-Savador and its bitcoin adoption, other countries that failed to do so have nothing to show forth, we need to understand that El-Savador adopted bitcoin and not altcoin, that's it decision while other should learn or remain mute about it decision, even if there's a change in power, as long as bitcoin remains, El-Savador will always have it a legal tender.

First of all, El Salvador has experience in adopting new currencies and if you read that story, that information is available to everyone, then when you document yourself, you find that there was a similar reaction for dollar and in those times the precariousness and access to information was much more difficult.

When some ordinary people who are in El Salvador say that it does not work (bitcoin), these comments are not far from the previous history when they received the dollar as legal tender, in the same way the analyzes of the experts of that time.

So if you look at how the dollar works in El Salvador today, it is (was, now there is bitcoin) the currency that is used, so much so that in that process the Colon (formerly legal currency) in the process did not disappear, nor did it leave to be official, but in practice it is not used, then the transition to the dollar was successful, but! after how many years? and it was the dollar, the USD, that everyone in that region was looking for.
...
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The true promoters of bitcoin are there, in that generation that by the way began or grew with the adoption of the dollar in 2001, (21 years ago) that generation has been empowered, they have at their disposal a financial tool that will help them become entrepreneurs, or be part of a change, but progressive, where then perhaps El Salvador can say that it was the first country that left behind the US dollar and that in that process bitcoin is the new Colon.
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I am not Salvadoran, but I am sure that in this process that is just beginning, the "Salvador" dream will also begin to become legal in El Salvador.

BTC is in parallel with the US dollar there right?

So they can still use good ol USD there correct? So what failed? If you don't want use it, don't.

I thought the push was to help the unbanked. To allow people to receive funds from relatives at a distance such as the US and abroad. Western Union fee's are horrendous.

The amount of BTC  in the countries coffers is a fraction, he didn't bet the farm.

The only loss is see they held him up for ransom for that 1.3bil "loan". The strings that bind and strangle.

What defines it to be failed, is the people that stop using Chivo Wallet after making use of the few dollars available on signup. The postpone of bonds without any proper time schedule, or the statistical data that is being collected by different universities. The president have taken a decision on behalf of his citizens. There were criticism, hatred, opposition and protests. What finally happened, the country have turned to be the first to adopt bitcoin. Further it have experiencing the bear market which isn't predicted to happen for now. Just on this we can't conclude the decrease in the value of holding as a failure. It is a learning for them to prepare for the worse in all time period to reap profit. Until the holdings are sold for a loss, we can't term this to be a failure.

@Ratimov I understand the point you are trying to emphasize here and you have clearly outlined the points behind your decisions, but also note, even though the news of El Salvador Bitcoin adoption is over-celebrated by the community without adequate attention being paid to the impact of this Bitcoin adoption on the overall Bitcoin market behavior and how the IMF has kicked against this El Salvador move to adopt Bitcoin which is the measure reason why the bitcoin bound project could not fly since the external contributor did not find the project worthy and stable enough to invest such huge capital on, because of the uncertainty of the future Bitcoin market condition and lack of consistency in Bitcoin price which could not be practically projected for a capital project. That is the international monetary funds/(IMF) view anyways.
Now the point am trying to make is, that even though El Salvador is passive by many to have taken a wrong decision on Bitcoin adoption, emphasis should be ace on the long-term advantage of this decision on the Economic production of El Salvador, with the growth of Bitcoin in that country a lot of other sectors we develop along with it, take for instance the Bitcoin city which was made to be one of the biggest Bitcoin development in that country will Foster a lot of economic activities that will generate both direct and indirect jobs for the citizens, and the power sector will greatly improve because the volcano will become the major source of power to the Bitcoin city and if their capacity of electricity generation increase along the way the power sector in El Salvador will also benefit from the klw of electricity generated from the volcano.
We should give some time for El Salvador to put the dots together and figure out ways to develop their master plan and I know for sure in the next coming year we will have a lot of verifiable data to base our analysis on and then we can figure out what direction this whole thing is heading either negative or positive.
What I fear most is the continuity of this project after this present administration and what becomes of Bitcoin in El Salvador after Nayib Bukele leaves office will the next president be a Bitcoin fan or will he have a dark spot for Bitcoin, this is my most worries at the moment.

It may be best we wait until the next bull run before coming to such a conclusion of failure. These things take time and it's easy to deem "failure" in a down market.  Funny how tunes on El Salvador will change when the crypto market is on fire again.

It was a bad thing to reward users of the Chivo wallet without encouraging their participation on the BTC blockchain. The government should've rolled out rewards at a slow and steady pace to help motivate people to keep using the Chivo wallet. Besides, not many people within the country knows what Bitcoin is or how it works. This was just an early move from El Salvador that's bound to failure within the short term. We're going to have to see if adoption for BTC in El Salvador will increase in the future as the market turns bullish. The government already approved Bitcoin as a legal means of payment so the sky's the limit to how far the cryptocurrency will go in terms of mainstream adoption by businesses and individuals alike.

So far, El Salvador hasn't sold a single Bitcoin, so it has every chance to win once the market explodes again. Who knows if government's "smart move" turns El Salvador into a developed country within the not-so-distant future? Just my thoughts ;D

It has not failed, though it appears adoption is slow everybody has access to the Chivo wallet and can spend at Super Selectos, Simon and other large chains. Individuals also accept it, but you do not see ... such as services rendered from the US (gardening, medical, cleaning). There was more than $50M in remittances in the past year.

A major problem is that most do not understand "not your keys? not your coins." In fact, it appears as though many of the $LBTC transactions may actually be Chivo-to-Chivo because I have tried paying two separate parties with Lightning and it did not work. I even tried both implementations and paid the $4 watchtower fee. It's a little concerning that the government holds all of the keys on an exchange in Mexico called Bitso.

But the cool thing is they can accept from any BTC wallet and send to any BTC wallet. Plus, it is ONLY BITCOIN - which is huge. That drops everything else out of the equation and they are building legal securities infrastructure (with the help of Simon Dixon and Blockstream) on top of Bitcoin.

Have a good day. And, please, visit the eastern part of El Salvador ... a place called Tropico Inn at El Cuco is a local favorite for those living in San Miguel (the largest city near to where Bitcoin City is slated to be.) Come visit the east not just San Salvador and drive via Usulutan not San Vicente, it's faster. I have an Airbnb if anyone is interested.

Do you believe that the El Salvador government blew its whole wadd merely because it gave a $30 credit to each of it's citizens in the Chivo wallet?

Do you know if they are not going to issue another credit ?  similar amount?  smaller amount?  How do you know that the issuance of one time was a failure in terms of getting some citizen's aware of bitcoin and maybe they can change the next issuance, in the event that they make another issuance, no?


So you are concluding that adoption is currently not good?  Are you concluding that some citizens are not benefiting by using and transmitting in bitcoin, including receiving remittances into El Salvador with low fees and without having to worry about the government being hostile to their bitcoin related activities?


And, I doubt that we have all the data in regards to the various ways that people and businesses are increasingly getting used to bitcoin and also increasingly using it.


Overall it seems the amount of bitcoin that they bought is really not a whole hell of a lot, relative to the other kinds of holdings that they have.  


It is nice to be able to hear on the ground reports, and if you can see some of the changes in usage on the ground as they are taking place.. I thought that Strike was also popular in El Salvador, but yeah maybe there are some difficulties in terms of transacting between different wallets.. I personally have not even used the lightning network yet, and I have been thinking about trying out Blue Wallet, Muun and/or Breeze.  Those are wallets that allow the use of either on chain bitcoin transactions or transactions on the lighting network.. but sure they are custody wallets too from my understanding.  I wonder if any El Salvadoreans are using any of those wallets?

Regarding your AirBnb.. I would imagine that there is more demand for various hotels and Airbnb, and there might be some locations in which balances of availability, prices and even features are being figured out if you are getting more foreigners traveling to El Salvador and people are figuring out how to set up their AirBnbs to try to get them filled at a price that they believe is profitable, too...

I think the biggest problem for El Salvador was the timing when they adopted Bitcoins as their national currency. In September 2021 the world was still in order and everybody believed that Bitcoin will keep rising. Nobody expected a major war in Europe again that would send the world in an inflation spiral and crush world economic growth. The Bitcoin price dropped in the one year 60% which has a huge impact on the value of the national holdings of El Salvador. The government argues that this is only a short term correction and as long as they are not selling the will not realise any loss. The big problem in my opinion is that the government is becoming more harsh in their effort to silence opposition and trying to stop people from speaking out against bitcoins. This is wrong and contradicts the principles of crypto currencies, which try to increase financial freedom and independence, and should not be used against the own citizens. And then there is the IMF who is controlled by USD and will not help El Salvador as long as they use Bitcoin as their national currency. I hope for the Bitcoin project to succeed in El Salvador, but not at any cost. If the civil unrest keeps increasing they might need to find a compromise to give into the protests. Completely abandoning Bitcoins and selling all coins at the current price seems like the worst decision El Salvador could make, it might take another year but eventually the Bitcoin price is going to recover.

What is your evidence that there is any increases in bitcoin protests in El Salvador in respect to bitcoin as compared with other reasons that there might just be regular protests in any country related to a variety of issues. 

Furthermore what is your evidence that El Salvador is cracking down on bitcoin protests in any way that is more substantial than any other protests to the extent that there may even be any reason to "crack down" on any protests, bitcoin or otherwise?

Jack Maller was involved in getting BTC adopted as legal tender. But NOBODY uses strike nor do they hold their own keys.  


Yes. It is difficult to setup. To custody your own watchtower you need to (a) fund it and (b) have other people fund it. It tends toward money transmitters like Bitfinex who have the most liquid channels. I had to give my keys to two other organizations to try to pay my Internet bill over $LBTC. Neither worked and I paid $10 in fees to add and remove from their watchtower.



No. There is not one Lightning channel in El Salvador; it appears the closest are in Mexico and Panama: https://explorer.acinq.co/

Everyone uses the "Chivo" wallet, which is sort of like Tik-Tok biometrics meets WeChatPay in China. There is an option to pay with Lightning but there is no verification. I am convinced what they call Lightning is simply a database on the Bitso exchange. Chivo is the only regulated way to buy Bitcoin in El Salvador. There were a few BTM providers at popular spots, but the government took over the BTM business by placing them all over the country and adding a 2% spread. You need to have a +503 (Salvadoran) phone number, DUI (their state ID) or passport registered with the government to buy Bitcoin from Chivo vending machines (BTMs). Signs at stores says, "Chivo accepted here" not "Bitcoin accepted here," except Pizza Hut which prices in satoshis.

Very few understand keys, blockchain or fees. Most receive Bitcoin and immediately convert it to $USD. I hope it changes, poco a poco.


Yes, there are MANY more AirBnbs offered.

I'll keep trying to educate my friends on the difference between a government database and Bitcoin. It's a slow go. People will eventually catch on (when they have a Chivo wallet frozen). While SV (El Salvador) has its issues in implementation, it is f***ing sweet to have as legal tender. It makes life so much easier on many fronts.

1BTC = 1BTC; they have the same amount of Bitcoin. But, yes, people still believe in soft fiat money.

.
I have not seen that. I have only seen a few protests in the capital ... it's mostly farmers who want seeds and fertilizer. Oh, and the media. They are negative on Bitcoin. But they are mostly negative on anything the government does.
 
They have two national legal tenders: $USD and $BTC. Puts the $USD cartel, established by A. Lincoln in the 1863 and 1864 Banking Acts, in a difficult position. It's funny. But the fun part is that SV (El Salvador) is building securities law around Bitcoin. So, it is trending toward the direction of all securities "permitted" in El Salvador need to be on Bitcoin. You cannot, for example, live on dividends from investments on a US exchange ... hence, the need for Bitcoin. People shit on El Salvador. I've even had hundreds stolen from me (likely from the FinCEN) in transmission.

What are you talking about? The protests were in 2021. The biggest danger is that Bukele changes the Constitution, so he can remain in power beyond 5 years. He has like an 80% approval rating, so many are likely to support it. He showed up in the Legislature, during session, with the military and surrounded the place. After that, there were talks of changing the Constitution but it has all been in secret. If changes were made to the Constitution, nobody yet knows.

It is almost a year after bitcoin was officially declared a legal currency, but the country of El Salvador has not been able to improve their country's economic situation, most likely it is true as you said maybe they still need time to wait for the next increase, because the price of bitcoin is now falling much differently with the price that nayeb bukele bought when legalizing bitcoin in 2021 last year, although many say bitcoin adoption failed in El Salvador, opinion polls show that there are still very many people who support nayeb bukele..

For sure, if you have boots on the ground in El Salvador, then you will have more ideas regarding some of the various ways that bitcoin is being used there, and I would imagine that there are some locations that have more bitcoin related businesses than other locations - so surely it is not going to spread evenly throughout the country.  

Many of us likely heard of Bitcoin Beach in El Zonte.. so I supposed the capital of San Salvador might be another possible place where spread of bitcoin related transactional options increase, and surely there could be some ways that people are interacting that you do not know about such as using Local Bitcoins or Paxful.. and like I said if they are transacting wallet to wallet using Blue wallet, Breeze, Muun or some other wallets that would allow for direct interaction between bitcoin users using the lightning network or other kinds of on chain bitcoin wallets.    Bitrawr lists 6 different exchanges in El Salvador (https://www.bitrawr.com/el-salvador) if that information might have some correctness.

I had heard that there are some bitcoin-friendly areas forming around bitcoin lake in Guatemala (https://www.bloomberglinea.com/2022/03/25/bitcoin-lake-guatemalas-crypto-enclave-launches/) and another one in some cities in Honduras that has been dubbed as Bitcoin valley (link 1 (https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/honduras-launches-bitcoin-valley-tourist-town-santa-lucia-2022-07-29/), link 2 (https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-valley-launches-in-honduras-60-businesses-accept-btc-to-boost-crypto-tourism/?utm_source=coingecko&utm_content=coingecko&utm_campaign=coingecko&utm_medium=coingecko&utm_term=coingecko)), and then apparently Honduras also has a Special economic zone for bitcoin on what seems to be a private Island (https://blockworks.co/bitcoin-now-legal-tender-in-special-economic-zone-of-honduras/) so surely there could be circles of bitcoin users that you do not really know about but those circle of users may well be making efforts and progress in terms of expanding outwardly, too.. and maybe it is not widely know which wallets or ways of transacting might be used in each location or if some of the hype about various available transacting abilities might be overblown as compared with what can be seen to be happening on the ground.


My understanding was that there was some ambiguity in the language of the El Salvador Constitution, so sometimes there can be a reinterpretation of already existing constitutional language or like you said another possibility might be to change the language (which also might be framed as a clarification of language that is already there).  I could attempt to find a newer source, but this article from last year (https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/el-salvador-top-court-rules-presidents-can-serve-two-consecutive-terms-2021-09-04/) seems to describe that there already is an ability for Bukele to run again in 2024.


Do you have evidence to either show that El Salvador's economic condition has not been improved in the last year or at least that it is not worse off as compared with other countries of similar stature who had not adopted bitcoin.. so even if El Salvador happens to be worse off economically this year as compared to last year, do you have evidence connecting that to bitcoin, besides "other people saying that" in their wishful-thinking kind of way?

What made Bitcoin currency and wealth protecting asset is people themselves. Not states or governments. El Salvador is obviously good experiment for Bitcoin adoption but in the end it's all about people that wanna use it or not. In my country (which is Türkiye) people get used to Bitcoin usage because inflation is so high and Bitcoin is nice option to protect yourself. Its also nice option to do exchange money.

I largely agree with you that governments do not matter as much as people matter, but the dynamics of any area can change through the actions of governments in terms of either promoting something or making a hostile environment, or alternatively the government could attempt to remain somewhat neutral, too.

So government action and interaction can surely affect the atmosphere for something like bitcoin even if they might not exactly be able to stop bitcoin, but they could make lives miserable or pleasurable in relation to something like bitcoin, and surely sometimes, it irritates me a bit to project the governments as if they are a hostile force to the people, and so even if a lot of us have various periods of being bitter towards governments and governmental power, they are not necessarily any kind of force that applies the same in each location, even if frequently we might find circumstances in which a government might start out seeming to be on the side of the people but then morph into something that no longer seems to be serving the interests of the people but instead the interests of some smaller groups that might have coopted some aspects of the government (or sometimes seeming to have had coopted all of the things and then confidence will be lost in some of those circumstances, too).. 

First I have quite a few doubts whether your renditions of facts are very accurate in regards to bitcoin being rejected by El Salvadorean citizens - and Bukele and other government representatives have quite a bit of discretion regarding various ways forward that they want to go in the government, and it seems that Bukele remains pretty popular in El Salvador.. so it is difficult to understand why you want to be fighting those kinds of on the ground facts.

Second, I wonder why you seem so hostile towards bitcoiners appreciating the various efforts that are being made in bitcoin, and to continue to argue that bitcoiners are blindly following some kind of a disingenuine scheme in bitcoin, when the facts also don't seem to support those kinds of accusations either.  There tend to be a lot of bullshit framing of arguments to be proclaiming that bitcoiners are some kind of a homogenous community that agree on x, y and z... which surely is bullshit since it has tendencies to imply that bitcoin has varying centralizing tendencies.. which are also not implications supported by actual evidence..

Regarding your compare and contrast of various on the grounds and grass roots efforts on the ground in various places in Africa, none of those are necessarily preferable, even though they seem to be working quite well as you suggest - and in the end bitcoin is going to have pushes that come from all directions, and the mere fact that El Salvador is promoting bitcoin in El Salvador does not necessarily mean that on the ground efforts are not also informing El Salvador's approach to attempting to create bitcoin friendly policies.  

Surely, if you amorphously refer to Africa, then you seem to be either avoiding talking about various governmental efforts or you are trying to minimize various governmental efforts, and surely many of us following the bitcoin space realize that Nigeria is frequently pointed out as one of the highest of bitcoin adoption countries in spite of their government seeming to fight against bitcoin in a variety of ways, so sure there are likely a decent number of valid points to suggest that bitcoin adoption can take place in a variety of ways, and I have quite a few doubts in accepting your El Salvador bashing framework that wants to suggest that bitcoin is ONLY stronger if it grows in a hostile environment.. when your analysis seems incomplete at best when you are seeming to want to make battle out the ideas and to impose what you believe to be better or worse, when both ways can exist at the same time and they do exist at the same time, and whether these kinds of various systems end up merging and converging or creating separate systems that compete.  The idea of good ideas coming together is referred to as Schelling point, so we have those kinds of things going on at the same time in which the good ideas will end up emerging, but they are not going to come together until time passes and systems bump up against each other  (also Nash equilibriums play out too).

It seems to me that in the shorter term there are going to be a whole hell of a lot of ways that bitcoin builds and develops, and likely in the longer run a lot of the systems will merge and converge, and the free-er the market of ideas, the more free and easy it should be to recognize various better systems to beat out the lesser systems - but in the earlier stages of growth there is likely going to be a lot of variations in terms of better and worse attributes, and yet even in that regard, it seems illogical to be proclaiming that systems in Africa are superior to El Salvador's adoption - even if you personally have that opinion.

There is some validity to the thrust of your points that frequently governments overpromise and under deliver, and I doubt anyone would be proclaiming that Bukele would be exempt from those kinds of claims that do not end up materializing, but you seem to be quite inclined to point out the so many ways that Bukele is less then genuine in his assertions - so from your point of view Bukele is largely engaged in spinning matters in ways that he is not going to be able to carry out.. and then you also want to proclaim that bitcoiners just fall in line with whatever he says.  Personally, I am not very inclined towards worshiping governments or even leaders, but Bukele has gained a lot of popularity because he has been working to achieve matters that he proclaims to want to do, and I have my doubt that he is even as close as disingenuine that you seem to ongoingly want to paint him.  For some reason, it's like no matter what you are wanting to see the negative and maintain high levels of skepticism that do not really seem warranted - even though we are seeing that modifications of plans are being made along the way and sometimes the proclamations regarding what is achievable seem to be a bit much, too.. so for me, even though modifications have come to these projects, I have difficulties concluding that Bukele and his people were being disingenuine in setting those various targets to aim for.

Hypothetically, let's say that Bukele is able to run again and gets reelected in 2024 for another 5 years, then at what point is he going to give up upon bitcoin?  Prior to 2029?   Is he going to fail before the 2024 election?

Be more specific with your criticism and your prediction rather than just spouting out nonsense conclusory statements that have little to no reference in terms of what you are predicting or even the timeline for such, except El Salvador's inevitable failure in regards to its bitcoin adoption - or maybe you want to hedge your bets and proclaim that El Salvador will fail in its bitcoin adoption in the next 50 years.. before 2070-ish..

In other words, give more specifics.. otherwise you are speaking nonspecific conclusory nonsense.

El Salvador's economy grew by 16.63% in 2021, which is an astonishing amount considering many countries see 4% as great.

Numbers are still out on this year, obviously.

Source:https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SLV/el-salvador/gdp-gross-domestic-product (https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SLV/el-salvador/gdp-gross-domestic-product)

Besides the fact that, to me, it's really difficult to understand how someone could say that the bitcoin adoption failed just after a few months (credit card, internet, television... It was the same), it would be great to actually ask these people who protested what bitcoin is and what they're knowledge level is as well:

I'm pretty sure that 99.9% have absolutely no clue and they're protesting just because someone else told them to protest.

According to reports, Bitcoin hasn't altered El Salvador's economic realities, in part due to the protracted "crypto winter" that has plagued the sector since the beginning of 2022.

Secondly, government-held BTC has seen a loss of roughly 60% of its estimated total worth following the most recent market crisis.

Due to Bukele's inability to draw in new cryptocurrency investors and a fall in the number of Salvadorans using Bitcoin, the nation's economy is being drained.

With these results, the Bukele administration's critics charge that it has shortcomings, dubbing it dictatorial and image-focused while raising questions about the practicality of its lofty goals to transform El Salvador.

It is about math , and the lack of btc supporters that refuse to use math.

BTC transaction fees are too high, so no one is stupid enough to use it in everyday purchases.
LN is a failure because it charges 2 onchain transaction fees, plus it's own fees,
ensuring that direct transactions of less than 1000 transactions, it is still cheaper onchain, which is already too high.
Only Banks can use LN affordably since they can loop thousands to millions of transactions of offchain to 2 onchain transaction fees.

Adoption of onchain bitcoin is designed to fail, between individuals, only using Banks and never transacting onchain makes any financial sense,
and if that is the case using visa/mastercard makes more sense with less headaches.

So bitcoin adoption has always been a non starter, since the refusal of the btc devs and community to increase blocksize,
which is the only way to spur adoption thru lower onchain transaction fees.
LN was design for banks usage, not retail.  :P

You sound like you are just making shit up.

I think you're the one not understanding the basic elementary of the mathematics involved here with bitcoin transaction, it transaction cost is customizable, do you know that? for every transaction you made you can choose the cost for that which in many cases are below $1


you're wrong, lightening network provide a cheaper transaction charges and are more faster than you could thought of, remember is a transaction off the blockchain also referred to as layer 2 transaction


you're totally getting it all wrong in misconception, how can you in the first place compare a centralized bank with a privacy conscious digital currency like bitcoin and its lightening network?


now i think I got the direct impression that you're one of the anti-bitcoiners also referred as the bitcoin antagonist and i rest my case

It was 7 months have passed already by the time he created this thread and maybe for him that was a long time already to make a judgment but I think you are right that it was too early. It would be better if we gave them more time and see if what is the true outcome of this decision. If people on that country start to love bitcoin and like its benefits or the decision is still the same.

About the items that you mentioned above, I don't think they are like bitcoin that is being hated when they first came out because they are so innovative and people like them instantly but for bitcoin? It wasn't the first digital payment method and its origin or use is also complicated for the many.

We should give at least 1 year time before making some initial feedback or comments on what are the things that changes up on the time that El Salvador make Bitcoin as a legal tender not just on making

some feedbacks when we are still on few months which it wont really be that enough or long to see such effect.In speaking about having lack of knowledge then this is where its President does commit out

some mistake and its not really that surprising on why it isnt really getting that much support since people doesnt even know with the basics.They had just launched everything in one go
without having that sufficient knowledge but sooner or later these people would be realizing even with just the basics.

Surely goes to show you that the theme to this whole thread has quite a bit of disingenuiness - because surely it is possible that El Salvador could end up failing in its attempt to adopt bitcoin and the way that it implemented bitcoin as legal tender.. but surely the extent to which El Salvador is successful or not does have to do with ways in which success failure are measured, while at the same time, the goals/objectives might end up changing too based upon ongoing happenings, learnings and developments.


I suppose no matter what there are going to be some people who advantage from the implementation of the bitcoin-friendly laws in El Salvador, so then the more profound questions would likely be more granular in terms of attempting to assess various cost benefits and if the policy is continued or if it were to end up being abandoned.. along with one of the BIGGER successorship questions that could be answered in 2024 or it might not get addressed until sometime closer to 2029 (in the event that Bukele were to win another 5 year term from 2024 to 2029 - so we cannot really know some of those dynamics, yet.. and if there is any kind of potential for successorship situation (which seems to always be something that should be accounted for), then it would be nice to see some kind of policy announcement in advance).


We should be able to speculate that the longer that bitcoin as legal tender is in place in El Salvador, then the more informed the populace should become in regards to the extent to which they perceive bitcoin to be helpful or harmful to themselves and/or to their country. We should presume that the arguments for and against bitcoin should get better with the passage of time too - even though many of us who have been in the bitcoin space for a decently long period of time likely recognize and appreciate that on an ongoing basis there are seemingly lame anti-bitcoin talking points that get recycled over and over and over - even when the factual basis for such arguments seem to have roots in what was happening in bitcoin in some earlier time (such as 2017), and surely another common theme continues to be the mixing up of arguments related to bitcoin and criticisms of the overall crypto space that seem to convolute and confuse ideas of what is bitcoin versus what is happening in other areas of the crypto (shitcoin) space that may well not be very well connected to bitcoin, and it is possible that El Salvador may be able to keep itself more bitcoin focused in the coming years so that some of the bitcoin versus shitcoin arguments/convolutions would be less applicable in terms of what El Salvador is doing and/or attempting to do with its ongoing implementation and adoption practices.


Sure the passage of time helps, but I doubt that there needs to be any kind of deadline in which the outside attempts to judge whether or not El Salvador has succeeded or failed in its adoption/implementation of bitcoin laws.  Agreeing to some deadline seems to just arbitrarily ascribe some timeline in which certain results need to be achieved blah blah blah.

Did El Salvador give its own timeline in which they would measure success or failure?  What are the public discussions?  What are the discussions within the administration?  

Administrations (such as sovereign nation-states) have quite a bit of discretion in terms of both assigning its own goals and objectives and discretion in terms of how they talk about their goals and objectives (what information they disclose too).  

Many of us trying to follow the bitcoin happenings in El Salvador or in any other location likely appreciate transparency in terms of governmental entities sharing information regarding what they are doing, their perceptions of progress, and surely any of us should be attempting to figure out if there is governmentally compiled data in El Salvador that relates to implementation/adoption that could (or should) be shared with the public.

Nothing has failed yet in El-Savador but things are rather going well with them. Infrastructure development worth $203m investment to commence soon in El-Savador's bitcoin beach.

https://i.imgur.com/V0FluLB.png
https://twitter.com/BTC_Archive/status/1564939590561107968?t=LN5Zybv2gSxqsY_MuZvULg&s=19

El-Salvador president's experiment to bet his economic salvation on Bitcoin didn't work out as he hoped it would be but I don't blame him for this failure. He made sincere efforts to adopt it as method of payment  but unfortunately rising inflation due to sky rocketing food and fuel prices have increased the trade deficit of all developing economies as well as  price of Bitcoin dropped more than 70% and it failed to provide hedge against inflation.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/25/el-salvador-bitcoin-experiment-not-saving-countrys-finances.html

The thing is, if we tend to say or look for data and substances that surround El Salvador and its Bitcoin adoption agenda and how the move has impacted the citizens and the economy. We should not that Bitcoin global adoption has witnessed a high rate of citizen participation and being in a country like El Salvador where Bitcoin is made a national currency there will be a wide acceptance of the digital currency as an alternative to the dollars and a pedestrian to other economic development.

If folks decided to look at the whole scenario from the angle of market value we may tend to lose focus as to what we want to become the outcome of this policy as regards its effect on the citizen.  And in the present time, El Salvadorans are beginning to be more aware of Bitcoin and how Bitcoin innovation can support small business and personal usage

Not exactly. El Salvador blew it when it gave away the $30 all in one go. It should've rewarded citizens based on participation (like a sort of cashback), not just downloading and installing the wallet. A slow and steady release of the $30 credit would've been ideal to keep people using the Chivo wallet for BTC transactions. Maybe El Salvador's government will issue additional rewards to help fix the problem?



I wouldn't say adoption has failed just yet, because it's only been a year since Bitcoin was made legal tender. It's a process that could take months or years, depending on the governments' efforts to build the necessary infrastructure to spur adoption of Bitcoin within the country. Of course, the benefits of using Bitcoin are always there. But you can't enjoy the full benefits if most merchants and/or businesses are still using Fiat on top of Bitcoin, right? Let's give it some time to see what happens as Bitcoin goes more into the mainstream. ;)

I don't want to agree with you that Bitcoin has failed in El Salvador.
First, they have succeeded in creating some kinda cryptocurrency literacy, and that is a plus for them. I am sure that you can't say you are from that country and you know nothing about Bitcoin.
On the other hand, due to the volatility of Bitcoin, I think the government may have suffered some lose due to the bad market situation and they have stopped buying the dip for sometime now, other than that, I think they will do well when the market gets better.

I would expect both Bitcoin and USD to be used.. and I would expect dollars to be used way more, until people start getting used to bitcoin.. lower usage as compared to the dollar's usage does not even come close to justifying assertions that bitcoin is on the road to failure.

And, sure if there are dollar options available and there are not any costs to transact in dollars, then likely the vast majority of times it would be better to spend dollars first.  We also may well know that dollars are overall a less sound (softer) currency, but it does not mean that individuals are going to appreciate idea about which money/asset is more sound merely because the govt says that bitcoin is good....

I would speculate that when the BTC price is going down, there are reasonable impressions that it would be better to hold dollars rather than to hold an asset (bitcoin) that is going down in value.. which surely is correct in the short run but not necessarily correct in the longer duration.. and the more that any of us zoom out the more that we should be able to appreciate historical BTC performance that does not guarantee future results, but should give some ideas as people learn more about the underlying reasons why bitcoin is the soundest of moneys..

The idea of sound money may well not sink in as something that should be considered for people who might not be clear about making evaluations and in terms of how to hold BTC and how much BTC to spend spend and replace or some other ways that might make more sense in terms of personal circumstances regarding how to attempt to manage bitcoin's likely ongoing and likely inevitable volatility that can also be seen in its historical volatility, too.

I totally agree with you that they have suffered losses due to massive slump in Bitcoin price which is almost 70% from its ATH but must appreciate that they took the initiative towards adoption which is indeed very risky path. The situation would have been better if Bitcoin winter had not been continued all along 2022. I am sure, things can get better in future when market conditions improve which we might see in mid September if CPI data starts coming down. DYOR

And we also don't have to agree with you, the failure in question is in the stage of suppressing inflation, this has an impact on the temporary income of bitcoin adoption, but this is not a failure and I'm not sure that they failed miserably in adoption.

True, the loss in question is due to Bitcoin Votality being in a bad market condition, this is a natural thing when bitcoin reacts that way, but again I don't really agree that El Salvador failed in adopting bitcoin

he does that on two motives, one is to help the citizens adapt to the use of bitcoin by having some stash in the wallet so that they can all have a reason more for it engagement, he also do that in other to consider the less privileged and for every single citizens to have at least that little amount to earn a living, maximize it potential and make profits, invest with it or even has it as one thing the Bukele led administration had done to help an average El-Savadoran, he has the intention to make life easy as the cheapest means for the people, what have you benefited from your own government today?


$30 is too small to be expected on  bit by bit release, they wouldn't have any thing reasonable they could account for in using the fund, at least it can solve an average man daily needs or rather some can choose to hodl it over a long term as investment to make some earnings.


no iota of problem was found with the use of bitcoin in El-Savador, so no need for that.

Most everyone immediately downloaded the Chivo app. For the first week, I saw about 1/3 using the Chivo wallet. I have seen a handful since. Most people spent it right away. But I do think it is helping with remittances in amounts of $20 - $30 because it removes the 25% transaction fee. Everyone I send to sends me a screenshot and I see "convert to USD" checked.

I would like to be able to receive Bitcoin as change from SuperSelectos, Texaco and other large establishments.

One of the things we should understand about El Salvadorans is the fact that there is high rate of poverty in that region and most of the citizens saw the $30 airdrop on their chivo wallet as a means to earn a living and help them and they family and most of the did not take time to utilize the opportunity to own Bitcoin and try the thing out for long term goals.

The major problem with the El Salvador Bitcoin adoption presently is the lack of motivation on the side of the citizens and the lack support for the government to help push the Bitcoin project in that country forward. Many of the citizens do not want to sacrifice efforts to help in improving the economic situation of the country, hard it has been that the citizens give the same push to Bitcoin as the governments pushing the level of most of the projects that could have helped salvage the struggling economy of El Salvador at least the country could have been able to push through the Bitcoin bond that could have funded the first government own Bitcoin mining in that country that could have been a source of employment for El Salvadorans.

El Salvador has grown over time. As a result the poverty have decreased to less than 20% and the same was 39% in 2007. The extreme poverty have come down to 1.5% and the same was 22% in 2007. Based on this I don't find people used the airdrops out of poverty and waiting to receive another airdrop. It is the awareness that makes them spend and leave. Maybe some other advancement will help overcome the issue, in specific education, awareness and need of technology.

All about awareness or basic knowledge about Bitcoin on the first place.If the government had missed out on doing so then expect that citizens will really be that ignoring on what bitcoin is all about.

They would be minding mainly on that free 30 bucks which they could get on downloading that Chivo wallet and would forget it afterwards but there are some might really be that get curious but if
we do tend to compare to those who arent then there's so much difference but still surprisingly the President still pursue on accumulating much bitcoin despite of the current market
condition and the situation in regarding about failed adoption or making it as a legal tender but honestly its just too early to make out some conclusions.

I can so much relate on what you said, it is true. I am a traveller, I have gone to a country where the citizens see anything from the government as a national cake to be share. There was this program to help local farmers and traders with a loan to be repaid with zero interest and span across a long period of time. The farmers collected the loan and refuse to pay back because they believed it is their money that they collected back.
That could be the same issues with El Salvador, I know that poverty and entitlement mindset. When most of them saw the $30 they quickly converted to fiat and solve immediate problem. Should I blame them? No.

Someone who struggles to get 1 meal a day shouldn't leave $30 lying in their wallet. What if they left it in the wallet, by now it should worth nothing more than $12.
The best way is for the government to continue creating bitcoin awareness campaigns rather than airdrop bitcoin to people who don't know its value.

i can tell you of a truth right away that El-Savador isn't quite about it bitcoin adoption, there have been development of many kinds in bringing this into a successful end, though it may seems we hear less frequent about them often but things were in progress over there, the government does not only focus on bitcoin alone but rather carry other aspect along with how the use of bitcoin could do something worth it in there.


that's not true, many of the people uses dollar and yet have the alternative one as well which is bitcoin with people in their big numbers making bitcoin payment, transactions while accepting it in their businesses, so here the effort needed from the people is the support in using bitcoin which they are doing already.

From my own perspective, Bitcoin adoption is a gradual process, it takes time for growth. When Bitcoin first came into Existence, it didn't boom immediately, it took awhile which include awareness period,trial and the likes.
In El Salvador process was not done the way it was supposed to be, the government should have created the awareness of Bitcoin and it's benefits to the citizens before the adoption. It was lack of knowledge that made the citizens withdraw to 10% of it's users when Bitcoin plummeted.
The government should have study her people and understood what should have came in first before the adoption of BTC.

El-Savador never had a better yesterday, ever since bitcoin adoption till now.

https://i.imgur.com/NNaD8s0.png
https://twitter.com/stacyherbert/status/1566463771656192004?t=CsWtFmW8b25Hja0KQFyDxA&s=19

Yes, Bitcoin has really given El Salvador an alternative investment and payment platform. It has been reported that its adoption of Bitcoin as a legal tender has attracted tourists to this nation, thereby increasing the income gotten from the tourism sector.

But the tweet you quoted was specifically for the nation's success in making El Salvador safe and not about Bitcoin. El Salvador was ravaged by gang-related crime and the government has done a very good job in limiting their activities to a large extent. President Bukele understood that for his nation to become a Bitcoin hub, it must be safe for investors and Bitcoin tourists.

I am sure in a few years we would begin to see the positive contribution of Bitcoin to the multi-dimensional development of El Salvador.

El Salvador has gone past that stage now. Currently, people are aware of the benefits of Bitcoin and more awareness is still going on. Now it is up to the citizens of this nation to choose between fiat and Bitcoin. Those that are interested would definitely grab the opportunities and options that Bitcoin offers.

The poverty rate may decrease little by little, but still El Salvador is a poor country. The whole truth is that the population does not need bitcoin, they are not ready for this. Recently, a journalist flew to El Salvador to see how they are doing, where you can pay with bitcoin, but everything turned out to be very sad, the sellers say that almost no one asked them to make a payment with bitcoin, even tourists.

Having everyone to download some wallet and getting things setup + lengthier time for a transaction to confirm definitely does not sit well with the elder generation.

Of course, when bitcoin is present the citizens (and anyone visiting El Salvador) can choose to use either the dollar or bitcoin, and they do not need to choose one or the other (of course, unless the option is not available, and some areas have more adoption of bitcoin usage than others - and maybe there are not too many locations that are already set up and used to transacting in bitcoin and/or lightning network?).  

Personally, I think that it will be a good thing for citizens to be able to hold value in both bitcoin and fiat.. especially if they start to get accustomed to hold bitcoin and to figure out how much to hold and maybe how much bitcoin to keep in their bitcoin wallet versus a lightning wallet.  

Holding value in fiat value would be for shorter-term cash expenditures and maybe for a large number of El Salvadoreans, there is not much savings after holding value in dollars and even an emergency fund in dollars. Nonetheless with bitcoin there are options that would possibly involve attempts to allocate some amounts of savings and investment into bitcoin over longer periods of time and then just to be attempting to spend strategically from the bitcoin holdings.  

There is no exact one formula that anyone might use for deciding how much to hold in bitcoin as compared with holding some of their value in dollars because there are needs to account for a variety of individual circumstances such as cashflow, other investments, view of bitcoin as compared with other investments, timeline and risk tolerance.


If you (including elderly peeps) don't want $30 then you don't need to download any such wallet.  

For citizens, including elderly, Bitcoin is optional in El Salvador.

If you happen to be a decently-sized business in El Salvador with abilities to access the internet and payment systems, then there seems to be an expectation that you set up to be able to receive bitcoin, but you do not have to hold bitcoin..

holding bitcoin is optional but surely with the passage of time, it is quite likely that more and more people will begin to exercise their bitcoin option whether they are elderly or otherwise, yet if someone is more elderly, they might be more opposed to keeping any value in bitcoin because their investment timeline is too short to be able to tolerate the likely ongoing volatility in bitcoin, so they would likely keep their value in dollars rather than in bitcoin.. at least keeping value in dollars would be more reasonable and prudent for someone who feels that they need to keep their value more liquid.. and might not be able to save/invest because of those kinds of reasons.

In my opinion, we may not see the effect right away of btc being the legal tender in El Salvador.
It may be few years from now, because this development within their country is like work-in-progress.
We should not expect something superb will come out just few months of its implementation.
But if their tourism sector is gaining from this initiative, then, at least, they are already seeing positive from this decision.
It would take time for people to appreciate its existence, and they need to experience it first-hand to understand its advantages.

Am not surprised by the respond of the poll and the personal expereinces of El Salvadorans who may want to use bitcoin for payment in regular market, I can attribute this to several fractures that have influenced El Salvador citizens.
1: the high rate of inflation in the country, has made technological innovation knowledge to be below average and the economic situation in that country has made access to technologies difficult and this reason has affected their ability to try out new development.
2 lack of adequate preparation of the General public before Bitcoin adoption e.t.c.
The conclusion is, that El Salvador Bitcoin adoption is still at its early stage, and at that time and efforts are needed to place the right things in place that will allow citizens Bitcoin integration possible, El Salvador Bitcoin adoption just crossed its first anniversary some days ago and to me personally am hopeful that things will change in a positive direction as time passes by.

Seeing how bitcoin badly decreased so bad and they bought it and more expensive price for sure that many people will think that this is really a failed experiment to them. But its not the ending yet until they drop their holdings there are good cycles to happen and for sure they can benefit with it if they are more careful and not be greedy when market is going to pump back slowly.

If bitcoin works, it does so in any economy and citizens can be so ignorant in relation to the subject regardless of whether they are from the third or first world, there are undoubtedly differences, but they have decreased with the level of ability to access information.

So, simply El Salvador it has not had the estimated results, so it is a guess to say in a certain country if it will work.

I doubt that El Salvador is simply "guessing" in their approach to implementing their bitcoin law.

This whole thread has been riddled with baloney impositions of what is success or failure, and it is surely going to take a while to get people used to the idea of bitcoin and the various ways that it can be used, including for people to see the extent to which they perceive that they might be advantaged by having bitcoin as one of their options - which surely, I would say that looking at the matter 5-10 years down the road would be more likely to give more concrete assessments.. but sure, there's no real problem with looking at data on an ongoing basis and trying to figure out various ways that implementation might be improved in one area or another.  Assessments of failure continue to come off as nearly pure nonsense, even if you quote an article or quote some surveys of people who are still getting used to bitcoin and may well still NOT be sure what bitcoin is or how to use it in their own lives exactly.

Bitcoin adoption failed in El Salvador for the following reasons.

• People just use the bounty and never use the Chivo Wallet later.
• Very little number of people have begun to accept bitcoin into their businesses.
• Postponed Bitcoin bonds.
• Loss with the holding value out of bear market.
• Opposition from certain group of people.
• Nothing certain about its future progress.
• No improvement in economic uplifting out of bitcoin into personal usage.
• The adoption is done against the suggestion from the IMF.

One who is against bitcoin will keep on adding more reasons to state bitcoin adoption in El Salvador is a failure. We need to understand El Salvador isn't a country that is Wealthy to stand strong against the world powers, but it have took a bold decision and working on it. This itself a true success. El Salvador is in its experiment and to get the result it needs time. It has passed one year since adoption, but what El Salvador have encountered is criticism. Same time if the market could've turned bullish, the same people who are criticising might've stood along saying this is great from El Salvador.

I am in that very healthy line that everything is a matter of time to bitcoin begin to offer positive statistics.

By the way a year is a short period to evaluate bitcoin in the different parameters that were promised, but not for a presidential administration, which is actually the heart of the matter, Bukele's haste to promise and create uncertain expectations does not It is a situation that should fall to bitcoin.

On the other hand, it is common to read things like those mentioned by the fzkto user, it is a worn speech that has no measurable references (there are none) to be able to assert that a certain "first world country" and consequently to the fact of being one of the called first world by cultural condition it seems that they are always better informed than third world users in reference to bitcoin, it surely works with the Salvadoran, but it is not something 100% true.

In any case, as with the previous point, in this first celebration of bitcoin as legal tender, the theme "Failure" went viral, perhaps if remittances had been 10%, for example, they would surely be equally bad for many, so I think data "calibration" for this first year, as I said, is for Bukele.

Exactly my point, I think analysts are quick in their conclusion of El Salvador Bitcoin as a failure and any one supporting that assumption look as if they don't have adequate knowledge of the government stance and plans on Bitcoin in El Salvador, e.g the Bitcoin bond is not a short term project so even though there are short term challenges facing that project and stopping it from kicking off we should rest assured that in the nearest future that Bitcoin bond is going to be sign approved and developed on. As you rightly also said there is nothing bad in analyzing data on ongoing projects but then we should not forget that some situations are unpredictable most especially Bitcoin conditions so we have to focus more on the long-term goals of the project other than being clouded by present conditions. We will have more data and facts to analyze in the next couple of years ahead but now I believe it is too early to draw any conclusions on this matter.

Yet, that hasn't stopped El Salvador from reverting its decision of accepting BTC as legal tender. It may've been too soon in doing the move, but it hasn't lost anything yet. Most people in the country reject Bitcoin because they think it's a scam or simply because of its unstable market prices. That, and also the fact that merchant adoption for the cryptocurrency is extremely limited. El Salvador should've provided some sort of incentive to merchants and businesses accepting BTC as payment method to help spur its adoption. Unless BTC reaches a new All-time-high in price, don't expect to see an increase in Bitcoin adoption anytime soon. Just my opinion :)

Of course, you can just make shit up and hope people reading this thread will believe your pie in the sky bitcoin naysaying nonsense, and assert that bitcoin adoption is not sufficiently or adequately increasing in El Salvador when the facts are contrary to your assertions...

For example, look at a cross post from the other El Salvador thread in terms of expansion of education materials as outlined by DdmrDdmr (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5342087.msg60924486#msg60924486)

In other words, adoption of bitcoin in El Salvador is progressing right along and taking place in many areas.. even if you proclaim based on your non-assessment of facts and logic and your wishes that you are unable to see such adoption progress happening.

Yes agree bitcoin adoption in El Salvador is still growing even after legalizing bitcoin in the country, currently the government of Nayib Bukele has launched several bitcoin related projects such as planning to upgrade Bitcoin Beach infrastructure and they will invest $200 million to upgrade beach facilities to become more luxurious so that tourists will feel comfortable when visiting.
More info: https://finbold.com/el-salvadors-bitcoin-beach-to-receive-over-200-million-in-infrastructure-investments/

i don't think this will be possible, this is legal currency we are talking about and don't you think El-Savador isn't cracking a joke when it declared bitcoin as a legal tender? they cannot revert it else there's intransparency in the adoption and of which everything has been plain, fair and stable and the people are getting used to the system already in a big way such that almost all businesses and enterprises are open to the acceptance of bitcoin.


that's not it, they were not mandated to compulsorily engage the use of bitcoin, it's an option that's acceptable by majority and they are using it, if you think using it isn't ok by then it's fine the law does not hunt you either for jot using it, remember that bitcoin is an opening to accessing freedom in the financial economy.


even right before the adoption of bitcoin, market price has ever remain unstable.


Do you think bitcoin ATH is what make room for tendencies to bitcoin acceptability? obviously no because lot of countries could have adopted it right before now if you study the price volatility over years.

I think it is high time people begin to see things for what it is, El Salvador Bitcoin adoption is a long term journey and it requires time to grow, the grassroots awareness level may be low at the moment which have resulted into the low Bitcoin adoption among the citizens most especially those in remote areas. But with the efforts being put in in the information and education direction, I few years from now the result is going to change and more El Salvadorans will become more informed and educated enough to tap into the innovative advantages of Bitcoin and they will try to build their life around Bitcoin as an alternative El Salvador have hard currency changes in the past and in 2001 when the adopted the United States dollars its rate of adoption was also low but just that the method of adoption of the United States dollars is different from Bitcoin because in the case of Bitcoin is adopted as an alternative to acting along the US dollar.

It does really takes time for it to grow.The wrong thing on here is that people do really make out direct conclusions that it had failed considering that we are just seeing on 1 year basis after its legal  tender

adoption but people had been keeping on giving out those negative sentiments speaking about it had failed or didnt really get that much attention which is somewhat true
but just as been said that we should give them some time because citizens would eventually find out on what would be its advantages and total relevance
because the President wont really be making such action if he doesnt see any benefits from it.

any new technology really needs time before everyone got a grasp on it. imagine, btc playing the same role with their fiat? fiat has been there for decades and decades so yes, they should be more considerate when it comes to adoption of btc because el salvador has just implemented this as legal tender for just a year. so they should not expect that the adoption is already the same with their fiat.

Whenever something reaches the market people find it hard to get used to it. Later slowly things change when the real value of the same is being enjoyed/experienced by some means. The same is the reality of the adoption from El Salvador. As said just think of our bitcoin, very few were interested on bitcoin at its early days. Those people have made it reach the world and it is successful. Same as this with time we'll experience the success of El Salvador and for the reason the adoption isn't a failure.

For some of the reasons that you stated 348Judah, it would be unjust for El Salvador to reverse it' having already had implemented their bitcoin as legal tender law.  It would not be impossible, but it would likely create injustices to rescind such legal tender law before at least giving it a chance to succeed.

it's not that easy to change someone's mindset, because changing someone's point of view requires a deeper approach, and there are many stages because something rushed usually doesn't last long, even according to a survey of Central American universities 9 out of 10 El Salvadorans don't know what bitcoin is and 8 out of 10 even doubt digital money, surely it will be very difficult to see from their very little knowledge of bitcoin, So in conclusion El Salvador is too hasty about adopting bitcoin, without considering the wishes of the people.

El Salvador has remained consistent with its decision on Bitcoin as legal tender even though the IMF has urged to overturn the legislation, but the first year after Bitcoin legal tender is still drawing criticism for Bukele for the impact of Bitcoin price on bear markets, many news sources have downplayed its decision but when the next bullish phase then they will regret that their country still "ban cryptocurrencies". El Salvador is very lucky to have cryptocurrency because Bitcoin is higher than any other currency, when it reaches its bullish phase they will applaud Bukele's decision

Surprisingly they are really indeed having that solid decision in terms of bitcoin accumulation despite on whatever market condition that we are facing on.They dont really mind if its dumping or bears
as long they could accumulate as much as they could.Its not really that something bad on which the President is doing but he should really mind the situation of its citizens whether these decisions
were feasible and something that could really give out positive impact in overall.

I guess Bukele is looking forward in the future where there could be a chance that bitcoin will overturn their current struggles right now. The lower bitcoin go is the heavier their country will suffer, His country man are currently suffering from what Bukele introduced to them but his name could easily be flipped when we enter the bull market and bitcoin rise. Bukele just did a gamble with his country and we might know what might happen to them in the future.

He should analyse the real condition of the people through a perfect survey. In that people need to be asked, how their financial growth have taken place out of bitcoin adoption. Here very little positive support will be got from the people, and through this it can be used as an opportunity to explain people a new system into usage won't give benefits at the shortest and it takes time. People will surely start using it, and the real value of bitcoin adoption can be seen.

It seems to me that the challenge of the adoption of Bitcoin as a legal tender is receiving more publicity than the benefits of this policy. The bearish market and the global economic crisis caused by the effect of Covid-19 and the invasion of Ukraine have made El Salvador's economic challenges more complicated. But nobody is talking about how much El Salvadorans have saved from remittance fees due to Bitcoin adoption. Improvement in investment, education, and tourism is not getting the same publicity as the losses the country has incurred due to its investment in Bitcoin.

As you rightly pointed out, the government of El Salvador should do a proper analysis of the outcome of its policy of adopting Bitcoin as a legal tender. The yearly evaluation should be focused on the impact of this policy on the users which is the citizens of the country. This would help to identify the strength and weaknesses of this policy which would definitely lead to a review and adjustment of the implementation process. One year is a long time but it might not be enough to score the success of a particular policy especially when it is a long-time investment. But it is indeed a good time to check and recheck the outcome of a project

El Savador citizen not criticism for Bukele about bitcoin become legal currency transaction, but many of them not happy El Savador government invested when bitcoin still on higher price. Now become happiness moment for citizen criticism with Bukele act for investing in bitcoin because price drop drastically. Bukele can respond with criticism some citizen when bitcoin reaching higher price, but right now he need try patience waiting for when bitcoin back to higher price again. Maybe if El Savador just make bitcoin as legal currency transaction only without try investing he will get support from their citizen, but bad thing when try investing with bitcoin on higher price and right now bitcoin drop almost 50% when Bukele made first investment with bitcoin.

So when is the time, why compare and with whom, there is no official record, El Salvador is marking that official data that does not exist for any country, the mentality thing is relative and always happens with any change that is implemented, in any case El Salvador has a history with the dollar, the story was not very different in the rejection and use, curious to think that despite having more than 20 years of use as legal tender, the deficiency of bank accounts is still prevalent, in In any case, any study that is mentioned should have its respective reference, due to the data it that you mentions.

Why other countries should mind their own business rather than on making out comments and criticisms on what El Salvador had done on making Bitcoin as a legal tender?
Its their country to be affected if ever the market becomes worst and not on the country you are living, whether this market turns out to be positive then we know that in our minds
saying that they had done the right decision but on the time that the market do make out some shit movement or declining then this is where blaming and flaming out
words would really be coming out into our minds.

The adoption of bitcoin in El Salvador at the state level can only bring good results if the right measures are taken to restore the national economy. After all, finance practically only serves the economy of each state. That is, a strong currency is of great importance, but is not a decisive factor for economic growth. In this regard, cryptocurrency cannot cancel the operation of general economic laws. The success of bitcoin circulation in El Salvador, therefore, will largely depend on how professional the government will be in carrying out its usual functions.

Exactly the point, the success or failure of El Salvador Bitcoin adoption should not be hedged on the price of Bitcoin and at what price El Salvador Bitcoin holdings were bought. Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador should not be given a short time view because of the nature of development that should be put in place for a smooth transition and general adoption, I don't know why analysts are giving it a short-term overview. El Salvador Bitcoin adoption is just one year old and bitcoin in its entire existence is still a decade old so let's wait and see how things unfold in the coming months and how the Bitcoin bond and Bitcoin city will help push the adoption of bitcoin in El Salvador if the investment in bitcoin education in El Salvador pay off with larger members of the citizens of El Salvador gaining adequate knowledge on Bitcoin and the entire blockchain technology more innovative growth will be recorded in El Salvador that will trigger economic growth. So I view all this data from various surveys as irrelevant and inaccurate at this point for long-term projects such as Bitcoin bonds in El Salvador.

That’s because there is a conflict going on. Governments and banks are afraid of Bitcoin's success. And there is a lot of misinformation. However, in the long run, it is a losing battle. Everyone understands that Bitcoin is a clean asset. Even banks and governments will eventually purchase it someday. Just that people need more education and research more about it.

Talking about the recent progress in El-Savador, the government has announced the first phase for partial payment of its bond for 2023 and 2025 maturation date and has put together all efforts in acquiring about $565 millions of bonds that has prompted the generation of about $275 millions as profits into the treasury of the country in a bid to pay off some of its debts, with these and many more development has brought about increase in El-Savador's economy with bitcoin adoption, nothing is failing in El-Savador, but rather goodnews everywhere.

https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1572676285461061632?t=nv6JjqZUBUpczP3do0xYTg&s=19
https://i.imgur.com/TZ29CYA.png https://i.imgur.com/ZH66ntg.png https://i.imgur.com/iFYp5Iq.png

Well a frontal idea will always attract a frontal reactions as well , so i think they are pretty much aware about this before they announce the project , you might find it wrong in approaching but you can still figure out the other approach options till it become a success one .

I still believe el salvador would be one of huge example on how bitcoin adoption should be made , even if they completely fail , the next one would be successfull ... just the matter of time though.

El Salvador faced hard criticism as it postponed the launch of bitcoin bonds. But, they've been working on it amidst the market trend. Finally this have come for the public usage. The president believes in the future progress and as a result this have been launched at the present market situation. They're quite confident in the progress as well as have things planned in the right way. For all who stated the adoption as failure, will now realise the reality.

I don't believe that the adoption of bitcoin at  El Salvador has fully failed, however, the government needs to take some measures in order to increase the adaption among people.
Also, the whole world is looking toward El Salvador and if bitcoin is a success at El Salvador , then other countries may follow the same.

Bitcoin has not failed in El Salvador, there are some people using it.
What is highly needed is to educate the people, people in El Salvador confuse the Chivo Wallet with Bitcoin.

This that work in El Salvador in regards Bitcoin:
The ATM machines use standard Bitcoin QR codes and work with any Bitcoin Wallet, max daily limit $1000 USD in multiples of $20.

What does not work, the Chivo Wallet personal and the Point of Sale:
The point of Sale when I was in El Salvador in Nov 2021 it was completely broken, Bitcoin payments would vanish, it would only work reliably for the Chivo wallet at the time.
This made payments at major stores like Walmart not possible with a non Chivo Wallet.

The Chivo personal wallet, it works but has serious design flaws, for example Bitcoin in El Salvador is used mostly for small transactions as such you would expect the Bitcoin lightning to be the QR code by default, but no it is the hardest one to access furthest away in the menu, the default QR code is the one provided by Chivo which is only readable by Chivo Wallets, standard Bitcoin and Bitcoin Lightning wallets can not read the QR code from a Chivo Wallet as such you need to request another QR code which only very small bussiness are willing to do. From my experience the personal Chivo Wallet does work in Bitcoin and Lightning mode but it is not a QR code provided by default which causes a lot problems like not being able to pay in places like Walmart.

The point of sale had many catastrophic bugs which hopefully they have been fixed by now.

The good thing of the Chivo wallet is that its QR codes are easy to recognize just by looking at them, at the center if there is a $ sign it is a Chivo code, a yellow B a Bitcoin QR code, a yellow lightning then it is a lightning QR code. So as a tourist as soon as I saw the $ in the QR code I knew it would not work and requested a lightning or Bitcoin QR code which sometimes they were not willing to provide and the transaction could not take place. My experience was that few places would generate the proper QR code and that was because they were willing to learn, the lightning QR code was kind on hidden in the menu which is a terrible design.

My recommendation to the people of El Salvador, is to modify Chivo to provide a standard Bitcoin lightning QR code by default not hidden far away in the menu that way tourists can use Bitcoin to make Bitcoin purchases.

The people that created the ATMs did a fairly good job, I only found one issue with the ATMs but overall once you know how they work they are very reliable. The only issue I found with them is when selling Bitcoin you need to let the ATM know you are done paying it is not automatic, otherwise a timer kicks in and resets the ATM without a warning causing you to lose the funds (you get the funds back by opening a case but it is a lengthy process).

Bitcoin has been introduced or adopted in EL Salvador for a year but so far there has been no significant improvement in their economy, but even so I don't think that bitcoin adoption in El Salvador has failed because it feels too soon for us to judge the failure or success of the adoption , nowadays many say El Salvador failed just because the price of Bitcoin has decreased in price but if the price of Bitcoin went up high wouldn't we praise El Salvador actions in adopting bitcoin?
I think even though many El Salvadorans are against the adoption of bitcoin in their country, they should be more patient or at least give them time for the steps taken by President Nayib Bukele.

https://i.ibb.co/hmTvN5p/camilo-freedmangetty-images-169.jpg

One of the images of protests against bitcoin in El Salvador :'(

Adoption does not have to depend on whether a government has good or bad management, it is irrelevant, bitcoin essentially depends on the individual actions of each person and then on what is generated as users in the ecosystem, entrepreneurs, businesses, trips , etc. everyone does their part, some hodl, others sell, buy, start businesses related to bitcoin, traditional businesses get involved, we must intertwine everyone, all this together in the idea is the greatest power of adoption.

That governments legislate to make bitcoin legal, either as an asset, payment system or in the case of El Salvador Legal currency, the adoption does not have to be linked to the political, economic management of the government, beware, it is the infused line of thought that has been had to take, or better say give in, it seems that legislating and controlling bitcoin with laws, taxes, etc., is the way to the best adoption, no, it is what corresponds due to the old traditional scheme dominated by governments and supported by the banks.

I think the biggest obstacle to bitcoin adoption in El Salvador is EDUCATION. The majority of the population does not know what Bitcoin is or how it works. They don't realize that they can be paid in bitcoin, and that they can integrate it into their online and offline businesses as a form of payment.

The main goal is to get ordinary people to ask these questions: "Why do we need a bank? Why don't we just use this Bitcoin stuff? Can I buy groceries with bitcoin?" Once people used to ask that question, At least bitcoin has done its job in El Salvador.

Even the citizens of El Salvador have said the same thing, that the reason why some citizens are still skeptical on Bitcoin the Bitcoin adoption is the lack of awareness in the general public and that the citizens were not given adequate knowledge about the technology before the adoption, but at the present moment, the rate of Bitcoin Academy in El Salvador have increase in the last one year since Bitcoin adoption. The government in putting in efforts to spread Bitcoin awareness and education to the citizens and there is already a diploma course in Bitcoin right now from one of the higher institutions in El Salvador, so if we give it some time, the rate of bitcoin education will still increase which will push for more adoption of Bitcoin within the country and El Salvadorans will become more knowledgeable about Bitcoin and it advantages and that, will fuel their interest in the currency as an alternative to the US dollar in El Salvador.
I have always stated it clear on this thread and any other discussions as regards the state of Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador, that we shouldn't give a short term judgement to a long term development like this. How can we be discussing the condition of Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador when the adoption is just one year old and the adoption happen prior to a bear market which make it look as if President Neyib did not make the law on Bitcoin adoption at the right time, but then we most not look at it in terms of the price of Bitcoin at the moment but we should view this in term of Bitcoin developmental impact on the country most especially the impact of Bitcoin on the economy in the long term.

Wrong time when El Savador adopted bitcoin as legal currency payment transaction and have been investment way almost one years later but still not have significant improvement for their economy, I don't think wrong what did by El Savador president Nayib Bukele because he seems invested when bitcoin have been reach higher price. All people claimed about El Svador failuer and  I don't think is true because ever Nayib Bukele got profit at the first time bitcoin adapted and purchase until reach ATH.

Human attitude I think when bitcoin going dump they try find who have to fault but make them forget when bitcoin have been higher price actually with El Salvadorans have contrast ideas about bitcoin adapting there, I think still have chance for El Savador get back profit by investing in bitcoin and lately need to patience get progress or profit with bitcoin.

Nothing has failed with EL Salvador's efforts to adopt Bitcoin, although it seems that EL Salvador has suffered losses due to the decline in the price of Bitcoin this year.
But overall from the plan executed by president Nayib Bukele, it went very well and even according to plan. So EL Salvador just needs patience to see the country develop for the better and so far President Nayib Bukele is still very optimistic about Bitcoin and the adoption he is running is not wrong at all

If this is all a matter of time and patience that must be applied by the government as well as its citizens, then I think it is not a difficult thing to run as long as the economic cycle in El Salvador is still very smooth and not experiencing disruption due to the decline in the price of Bitcoin.

El Salvador was well ahead of its time. It adopted Bitcoin as legal tender before anyone else. That makes it the pioneer in Bitcoin adoption. The country may not have the necessary infrastructure to spur adoption of Bitcoin within the region, but at least it's on a good path. El Salvador's President was pretty smart by encouraging the use of Bitcoin by individuals and businesses alike. The region could become a tourist attraction, adding more fuel to the local economy.

I believe Bitcoin needs to go bullish so people would become more interested in it. Decaying prices will only scare away the general public from the cryptocurrency. It's only been a year since El Salvador made the move, so let's give it some time to see what happens. Just my thoughts ;D

Their intent was good but execution was really poor. They should have done their market research properly...

So far they haven't sold any bitcoins, how can that be called a failure? Just like us, the bear market makes us reluctant holders but we have a strong belief that bitcoin will rise again in the future, and so are they. If you haven't sold yet, you won't lose, just hold on and wait until the bull season, I see that they are also implementing the same strategy as we are now. So it cannot be said that they have failed.

They were the first country to accept bitcoin as legal tender they were the pioneers so initial difficulty is inevitable as long as things are not too serious and solvable it is impossible to call is failure.

I wouldn't conclude that the Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador is a failure, it's still at its initial/experimental stage. I couldn't imagine what the president of El Salvador was thinking when he adopted Bitcoin (a very risky asset) as a legal tender in the country. This is because Bitcoin is still at its early stage, more time in the tune of decades is still needed to effectively study its behaviour and reliability.

Let me assume that the country has offered itself as an experiment for others to learn what is possible with Bitcoin, yet they might laugh in the end. The issue at hand is the lack of responsivity of the asset for now, but it might be a boom for the country when it stabilizes above $50,000 in a matter of years.

Nevertheless, their citizens should be smart in handling the coin due to a lack of reliability that will never be dissociated from it.

Continuous going bullish is not the solution to bitcoin adoption else it will only continue been bullish alone anf turns thesame as inflation in the economy, hut things has to be balanced base on the demand and supply, the economy needs rise and falling to create room for new participant in it, bitcoin being volatile is not a risk placed on it value, rather it's a choice that determines the market standings base on the ability to speculate it, the two sides needed to be balanced, there must be a demand and supply must also be available enough to satisfy every demanding request in the economy market and not a flow on only one direction.

You can't lose if you don't sell. While El Salvador invested a huge amount of money into Bitcoin, it still has a lot of money in its reserves. If the government keeps on "hodling", it's possible El Salvador will turn into a developed country in the future. That is if President Bukele remains in power for quite a long time. If he is replaced, you can bet the "Bitcoin experiment" will ultimately fail.

Let's hope that won't be the case so other countries can follow on El Salvador's footsteps. Who knows if we're closer to "hyperbitcoinization" than we've previously imagined? Just my thoughts ;D

Anyway Adoption of bitcoin in el salvador I don't think it failed. if we call bitcoin adoption a failure in el salvador just because of the protests against it at the start, then that is a common thing and not a failure. but the anti-bitcoin media always appears preaching bad things. and they hide the good they find. if it fails? So why are there 44 countries who want to gather there to discuss bitcoin. isn't that a positive response. and slowly now the people there are getting used to the new payment system. and many have started to use it.

One possible reason for the lack of bitcoin adoption in El Salvador is the prevalence of gambling, betting, and sports betting. Casinos are also popular in El Salvador, and many people likely prefer to use local currency to gamble instead of bitcoin.

Another possibility is that few people in El Salvador understand how bitcoin works, and so they are reluctant to use it. Bitcoin is still a relatively new technology, and many people are not familiar with it. Until more people become educated about bitcoin and its benefits, it is likely that adoption will continue to be slow in El Salvador.

Let's not concluded yet, first is that El-Savador's president Nayib Bukele is likely and probably going to emerge another term, secondly that even though he didn't win re-election race that is not a guarantee that bitcoin has failed in the economy over there, we can predict another government to most likely continue with the adoption, remember it's not an experiment but a legal tender endorsement made, and if any new president emerges, then i think he should respect the fact that history had already been set and holding of assets in bitcoin will continue until bitcoin attain a new ATH and beyond.


what makes you think an average El-Savadoran is a gambler, what report or statistics gave this analysis which is wrong, we have many countries that have been more actively involved in gambling than how you thought about El-Savador and should incase they even gamble to an extent, then i think bitcoin could have serve them a better alternative to engage with in thier gambling activities just for privacy and decentralization with bitcoin as most casinos too now accept payments in bitcoin for their gambling services.


did you just say few? almost every El-Savadoran has a good knowledge about the availability of bitcoin and has taken some steps in giving a try for the first time even when the chivo wallet was introduced.


it's not any longer a new technology and people are well aware there's something called bitcoin as a digital currency, maybe you should say that other small scale businesses may not have the technical ability to engage using it yet in their business but a large number were already benefiting the utilization.

I would not say that adoption has failed in El Salvador, I would go more for the option that people do not know the scope of bitcoin and that everything has been filled with a lot of bad news, international organizations do not help people wake up, they believe that bitcoin is a scam, that unnecessary money was invested, but I want to see Salvadorans' faces when bitcoin reaches a new high, I want to see how they praise the president afterwards, people are to see and believe, but not to believe and knowing that they have the future in an investment that has been highly criticized since the president announced the best investment in the world.

He incorporated a decentralized mechanism into the system without asking people. The society does not accept anything with such coercions and impositions, and a great majority will oppose it. The president's thoughts are good, but I think he acted too hastily and seems to have failed for now. More training and presentations about blockchain and bitcoin need to be given to people, they need to be introduced more, they need to convince people with the right information. It was not possible for them to get used directly to a system they had never known before.

He did not need to ask.  He had already been elected to represent the people within the capacity as president, so he was not acting beyond the scope of his duties, and furthermore, he also went through  the process of getting laws past through the legislative bodies too.


Are you just making shit up?  What is coercive about it?  It gives an option for the people to use bitcoin as a payment option.  The dollar system still exists in El Salvador, too.  They can use dollars or bitcoin.


He pushed it pretty fast, but I am not sure if that would be "too hastily."


One of the ways to learn is to have options to be able to exercise the options.  So people are currently learning more and more as time passes. Spending time to teach people before making the system go live would not necessarily be a better way for them to learn or even more advantageous.  There can be differences of opinion regarding how to introduce any kinds of new systems, and I doubt that the El Salvadorean citizens/residence or less advantaged by a quicker introduction (the way that El Salvador has been doing it) as compared to whatever vague way that you are suggesting that "they should have done it, blah blah blah" 

You can always say that "they should have done it like this," but you are not providing any proof at all that any other way would have been better or that the way that El Salvador did it is causing any damage to El Salvador or putting them in a worse position than they would have been if they had done it some other way.

I just wanted to point out that they could have offered a better start, as I've seen people often be reactive. By the way, they didn't have any alternatives to do, I agree with that, it was a good transition, but it didn't seem a bit democratic to me, I just tried to talk about it. People were introduced to a system they did not know and reacted normally. Could the president have encouraged more Bitcoin to reduce these reactions, such as better promotional campaigns etc. Anyway, after the next halving, the public will really thank the president, I'm aware of that. Even though the society is not aware of it for now, they will thank the president when everything is back to normal.

So what?

Anything can be looked at after it happened and say that it could have been done better.

So what is that better start that you would have done and would have such "better start" have made any difference?  how do you know it would have actually been better? What's your measurements?


What alternatives are you talking about?  You mean that the people should have been given a choice?  Why?  what purpose would that serve, and how do you not know that Bukele did not have a good enough grasp on the idea in order to figure out what the people wanted or needed?

If a leader is democratically elected, then such leader is allowed to put laws into effect.


Their old system was not removed.  They were given an additional option.  They could use the old system or they could use the new system or they could use both.


Yes... there are all kinds of alternative approaches that he could have taken and the various approaches were within his discretion to choose which approach to take (or which approaches to consider), and I am saying that he did not abuse his discretion in terms of which choice he made.  There is no evidence that he abused his discretion, even if retrospectively you can consider some other better choices that he could have made or should have made.


Maybe.  There is no guarantee that the BTC price is going to go up from here.  Sure the odds are good, but there are no guarantees.  I doubt that the choice of adopting bitcoin is ONLY about number go up technology, but NGU is one of the factors.. even though that seems to be the one that some people maniacally focus upon.

With better planning and execution, Bitcoin adoption would've been rampant across the Latin American country. But the government rushed things, so the result is very little adoption among Salvadorans. At least, the country is one step ahead of the others by adopting it as legal tender (or as an alternative to the US Dollar). Now it's up to other countries to do the same for "hyperbitcoinization" to become a reality. The only way I see adoption soaring like crazy is if Bitcoin experiences a bull market run.

A higher-priced Bitcoin would surely attract the masses into it. No one knows when Bitcoin will reach a new ATH in price, so we can only hope for the best. Just my opinion :)

I'm still watching their country and what Nayib Bukele is doing with his plan, really we shouldn't be too hasty in declaring them failed. They like us are in bear season, so the price drop is inevitable. As long as we don't sell bitcoin that means we have nothing to lose and neither does El Salvador. They have never sold any of their bitcoins so there is no way they fail or lose their bitcoin investment.
One of his latest statements about his country's bitcoin situation, everything is still under his control.
https://i.imgur.com/O9esr5L.png

I don't know why there have being so much speculation on the outcome of El Salvador's Bitcoin adoption when the country just adopted bitcoin there is no way we can say El Salvador's Bitcoin adoption is a failed experiment when El Salvador has a long-term goal for Bitcoin.

If we must know something which is, El Salvador does not have a currency and this is not the first time El Salvador is adopting a currency it has to happen before, and seeing that Bitcoin is adopted as an alternative currency makes it more suitable for El Salvador for long-term developmental goals.

We cannot tell everyone that El Salvador has failed yet in their plans for bitcoin's adoption in their country. However, what we are witnessing is that it is very difficult to adopt as a medium of exchange because of volatility.

I am aware that it is arguable. But Bukele's excuse of not losing $50 million because he did not sell is a funny one because it appears he did with where the market price presently is. This is also the same excuse we say when we hold an asset below the purchase price. He has become one of us heheheheh.

It's not easy to take guys like you serious bbc.reporter.. when you seem to be focused on one indicator - current BTC price, and the fact that it went down somewhere in the ballpark of 70% in the past year - as if that is the primary measure about whether bitcoin adoption in El Salvador is not failing.

Another matter is that the idea of proclaiming failure - seems to be quite wishful in the sense that outside measurements would be acceptable to determine whether El Salvador's introduction of Bitcoin and the way that the did it has failed.

Sure, I would not be opposed to setting forth some criteria regarding what would be successful or what would be an absence of failure... So in that sense, any of us could proclaim that El Salvador has failed in their bitcoin implementation because they failed/refused to set forth reasonable objective measures, and they implied a prediction that the BTC price would go up (and the BTC price has not gone up).

We might also assert that if Bukele or any of his administrators do not establish a clear successorship policy regarding the bitcoin, and they might run away with the bitcoin, so if someone were to run away with the bitcoin in the National treasury, then that would add to establishing that bitcoin adoption has failed in El Salvador - although the management of El Salvador's treasury remains only one way in which bitcoin adoption success or failure might be measured.

Maybe we would make some progress in this particular thread if we were able (someone) to come up with some criteria in which to measure success or failure, and surely we might not even agree on all of the criteria, but it might still be good to see a list of the various ways to measure and to figure out which ones are controversial and which ones are not.. which ones are objectively easy to verify and which ones are not..   Maybe even then to look at each of these variables at particular points in time to see if progress might be being made in some areas and lack of progress might be happening in other areas?

So if you're a president,you will first seek the permission from the people before taking a step further? that's totally not possible you know quite alright yourself that you wouldn't do that and here he's wise enough not to introduce altcoin or token but gave the very best with bitcoin yet you insisted he's unfair?


These are part of the challenges you'll encounter as a president, moreover he never mandated every citizen to use it, so it's optional and i think Nayib Bukele is fare enough with that.


Nothing has failed regarding El-Savador's bitcoin adoption, try conduct your research properly and reconfirm again.


and that's why we ultimately need to caution ourselves to some of the means through which we obtain our information because many were just out to create stir in providing fake news in other to trend, any information i get online i personally go further in confirming such from the official portal and most of the things been said of El-Savador were actually not the real state of the situation there.

It would not be totally true to conclude that President Bukele did not consult the people before the introduction of Bitcoin. The Bitcoin law was debated in the Parliament and a vote was conducted. The bill won the majority by 62–19 votes and it was passed into law. The Parliamentarians represent and speak for the people, hence the people were duly represented.


It is important to clarify that the President in a democratic system of government is accountable to the people. Leaders sometimes sample public opinions about their intended decisions to ascertain their acceptability. Inputs from citizens, professional bodies, trade unions, and other non-governmental organizations are important in policy formulation and implementation.

Critics just assume that El Salvadorans are not pleased with Bukele's decision to adopt Bitcoin, but there are no valid or reliable polls that authenticate this fact. Most times these critics are sponsored by opposition political parties that want to use propaganda to grab power. 

 

One part of me agrees with you that they might have jumped on the bitcoin boat prematurely but then again when all this was happening markets were bullish to the extent of getting predictions of price reaching possible highs of 100k which could convince anyone to jump the gun! Now here is the only problem I find with buying crypto and holding/hodling it, to hodl means the price will be bullish nothing less which is a narrative we need to change as this is old skol! We need to have crypto and trade it as the charts demand.. if price action says bullish let's buy and hold/hodl...if price action on the charts says sell, let's sell, this way we shall all be laughing our way to the bank to cash out big!


I am pretty sure Nayib Bukele the President of El Salvador meant well for his country but unfortunately, the market has a mind of its own which was unforeseen and nobody ever saw the markets crashing to this low.

But away from market performance, you really have to give the man some credit for pushing for crypto adoption in his country when other others turned their backs on it which is a win for crypto! Btw with all these crypto advancements sooner or later this could be a crypto haven where crypto companies will be setting up physical offices in  El Salvador which could lead to direct/indirect employment which is a win-win for everyone....its currently just a waiting game but everything will fall in place.

El Salvador bitcoin law did not do anything in regards to "crypto," but instead the law is bitcoin specific... so your use of the term crypto is distracting, non-specific to what is happening in El Salvador, and perhaps suggests that either you do not know what bitcoin is, sufficiently to talk about bitcoin rather than some stupid-ass vague and amorphous term that tends to confuse issues rather than clarify or merely seem to want to appear more enlightened about the issue (which it does not achieve).  

Furthermore, you are likely going to get fucked if you try to apply HODL principles to various shitcoins.. The idea of HODL and even the idea of assessing bitcoin for strong fundamental values is not going to necessarily apply to any other coin/"crypto" especially if you are also vaguely referring to such concept, so that we do not even know what the hell you are talking about.  Do you know your reference  when you are using that vague term?

Another matter in regards to whatever the charts and the BTC price action might say, countries are not likely in the business of buying, selling and trading and attempting to either figure out which way the BTC price might go or to attempt to accumulate more dollars by trading in and out of bitcoin.  Even if you might consider that the end result is the same (to attempt to increase value overall), it seems that attempts to go down a longer term investment path, whether a country, an institution or an individual, then there are going to be primary goals that involve BTC accumulation and attempting to reach BTC accumulation targets, and surely in some sense, there are going to be more complicated goals that exist with institutions and/or government in terms of various objectives and obligations that they might have to serve represented interests.. whereby individuals and maybe even smaller institutions might have more abilities to focus on narrower self-centered goals.


This is a ridiculous theme regarding either the dependency of the investment into bitcoin to be dependent completely on number go up or that anyone would have very much ability to predict the BTC price with any level of confidence.


He did not pass a "crypto" law in El Salvador - even though of course, a bunch of shitcoins and shitcoiners will attempt to hitch their shitty wagons to the idea and act as if the passed law (and implementation) relates to some vague-ass concept to pump nonsense.. rather than the reality of the law and the implementation being bitcoin specific and bitcoin focused.


Fuck crypto!  and shitcoins too.

Bukele's government has been buying Bitcoin regardless of its price in Fiat terms. Not a single coin has been sold so far, so El Salvador hasn't lost anything yet. I'd say this is a good strategy, because it could make the Latin-American country one of the richest (if not the richest) ones in the world after the crypto market turns bullish again. Bitcoin has been shown to reach a new All-time-high in price after every halving event, so it's likely the same will happen by 2024.

If Bitcoin becomes a huge success in El Salvador, then other countries won't think twice by making Bitcoin legal tender. Who knows if there's a very bright future ahead for long-time Bitcoin "hodlers" like us? Just my thoughts ;D

The government of El Salvador is aware of the high volatility of Bitcoin. The decline in the price of Bitcoin they have is not the reason for El Salvador's failure to implement Bitcoin as a means of payment.
El Salvador with their hard work and patience in implementing something new to their country. currently, the government still holds Bitcoin and does not sell it. this is like what we do when we see the bitcoin market price is lower than our buy price. instead of frantically selling all the bitcoins they have.

I agree with you, when the market improves, it will bring huge profits to El Salvador. and that success could support for other countries to start legalizing Bitcoin as a means of payment.
more people will think the same as you think.

My reply was supossed to be a joke if anyone did not get it. I was only laughing at Bukele's reasoning on why he did not lose money because it is very much a similar reaction to those retail investors who are losing money in their investments when the market is dumping hehehehe.

I personally don't dare to say bitcoin adoption in El Salvador failed, even though we know they haven't been able to lift their economy for the better, but it's still too early to decide all that, because El Salvador only legalized bitcoin a year ago, so all of that needs a process and it takes time, it is not as easy as turning the palm of the hand, we can see from the journey of bitcoin, in the past no one believed in bitcoin, even many said bitcoin was a trash currency that had no value, but after a few years bitcoin has a very high value, even people who dared to adopt bitcoin in 2010 and then, may now be millionaires.

They've only been adopting bitcoin for a year and just because we're in bear season and quickly conclude that they've failed, we're really being too harsh on them. We often tell each other bitcoin is a long-term investment and once sold, there is no loss, so why do we rush to conclude they failed? Our conclusion is no different from the bitcoin haters out there, bitcoin haters are still spreading the word about bitcoin's death even though bitcoin is in its 13th year and it's dying at $20k now. Bitcoin adoption won't make El Salvador a superpower or get rich quickly, but it proves they have a vision for bitcoin. They are the people who know how to seize the opportunity and have the opportunity to rise to become a developed country, it is better to continue using the US dollar and be dominated by the major powers.

It's not funny - because markets move against long-term investors all the time, and many times, they do not get out of the investment merely because their overall investment is in the negative.  Many times, so long as the investment is solid, then sooner or later their investment will end up going back in the green (black), even if they do not do anything, but an even smarter move (so long as the investment is truly a good one), is to continue to add to the seemingly losing position while it is in the negative.

Of course, there are not any guarantees that in the long run the investment will end up coming back out of the negative - but many time investments with decently strong fundamentals (such as bitcoin) will end up coming out of their negative period, and continuing to invest in them (either by merely HODLing or buying more) will end up being a very wise decision that might not seem wise and/or prudent during the period that the investment is in the negative. 

Again, your supposed "joke" is not funny because you are striving to make Bukele, El Salvador and/or any other investor appear as if they are dumb when they are down in their investment - as if they should have known in advance what you happen to have found out in retrospect when the BTC price ended up going down. 

Your supposed "joke" is also not funny because it may well end up either not being taken as a joke and to suggest that folks should be able to know the price in advance and some people may well end up getting scared from investing into bitcoin for fear of ending up in a similar position as being the proclaimed "fool" - when more likely the better course of action would likely be for people who have cash to be taking prudent attempts to be investing in bitcoin during times like this.. and prudence might even mean that they should either be attempting to be aggressive in their bitcoin investment and even lump sum investing into bitcoin, rather than either a less aggressive DCA strategy or even a wait and see strategy - which might be something that supposed "jokes" like yours mislead people into such wrong financial and mental frameworks.


Well more specifically, bitcoin has nearly gotten through 13 years, and on January 3, 2023 it will be beginning its 14 years of existence and pumping out blocks every 10 minutes.  Tick tock, next block.  Bitcoin is amazing in the sense that it continues to run, and surely in its earliest of years, not very many people were paying attention to it because it hardly had any monetary value but also the circles of people who were hearing about it were likely either very technical or they were in cypherpunk circles - so in some sense bitcoin was not getting too much publicity - except through various word of mouth - and surely even though the internet can spread information - the ideas of bitcoin were not really reaching or sinking in for regular people.

It seems quite likely that even currently people are not really understanding bitcoin very well because there is a lot of confusion about money, assets and value, so bitcoin seems like a kind of fantasy money that makes little sense to many people in terms of taking it seriously and the fact that there are so many pump and dump "crypto" scams that likely cause reasonable areas of confusion for regular people to really start to understand what bitcoin is and what it is providing, attempting to provide and likely to provide into the future.

We should not be too distracted by bitcoin's unit price either, even though it does show stupendous financial appreciation in the past nearly 14 years, and maybe we can suggest that bitcoin did not really start to develop too much financial value until about 2013 or so.  Accordingly, maybe bitcoin's financial growth might ONLY be measured from a time in which it started to take off in value.. but then again, if we actually look at bitcoin's value in terms of its price and it's market cap, currently, bitcoin's market cap is around $360 Billion, which continues to be a pretty small market cap, relatively speaking - even though it had gotten up to around $1.2 trillion in market cap in it's latest 2021 top (when BTC prices were in the upper $60ks).

So yeah, right now, if we look at bitcoin and we compare it to gold, we can see that bitcoin's market cap is about 1/20th the size of gold, but it is quite likely that if bitcoin continues to do what it is doing with success, then bitcoin has about 1,000x the value of gold, yet it could take 30 to 200 years for bitcoin to reach such fair value in the market - which would require continued adoption and even ongoing development to continue to make software tools that people know how to use and are able to use and are available to people if bitcoin's adoption were to continue to increase more than 5,000x from it's current price in order to reach something closer to what it's actual value is likely to be based on various current addressable market considerations in the various ways that bitcoin is much more efficient to store the value of currencies and other assets in which value is currently being stored... so surely we still seem to be in very early days, and there are some folks who seem to be able to see the vision and to see through some of the ongoing price battles in recent times (if we might want to consider that the current price might be a bit depressed from where it should be in terms of where bitcoin is going... Don't get me wrong, merely because I am suggesting that BTC prices are currently suppressed, I would not consider that bitcoin prices could not continue to be suppressed for way longer into the future than any of us might speculate to be reasonable - given bitcoins seemingly ongoing strong fundamentals and strong use cases that substantiate its continued ongoing strong investment thesis).


I agree both with the idea that continued investment in bitcoin remains a good idea, and surely they have not gotten rid of the dollar, but instead bitcoin gives them options above and beyond merely being locked into ONLY the dollar which likely would have continued to have been oppressive on them, as it has historically done to a lot of countries who have been trying to advance their own world status.. and to become more developed.  Adopting Bitcoin seems to give more options, even if it also seems to cause El Salvador to be targeted for ridiculing and seemingly bullying attempts by the dollar-based dominant systems.

The people of the country are not ready, the governments of the world are not supportive, and the IMF wants El Salvadore to reverse its Bitcoin legal tender. And El Salvadore, as an economy, is one of the poorest economies in Latin America. It had to happen.

What are you talking about?  Are you merely assuming that OP is true?  That bitcoin adoption in El Salvador actually failed rather than considering such statement as presumptive...

In other words, you sound like you are praying for the bitcoin adoption that took place in El Salvador to get reversed, and that wish seems unlikely.

So sucks to be stuck with such fantasies, no?

You might want to attempt to learn why bitcoin is valuable in a place like El Salvador rather than merely wishing that its adoption had not happened or that such adoption in El Salvador or otherwise could be undone.

Recently, President Nayibbukele criticized Western-controlled media that unfairly spoke out about bitcoin being legal tender in El Salvador that had failed. We've been through a bearish season for almost a year so far, and El Salvador maintains a hardline stance still not selling any bitcoin, along with that they are promoting bitcoin-related issues such as bringing bitcoin into education, continuing to develop bitcoin city...It's just the beginning, so don't judge us, we need time.
https://i.imgur.com/fzPSuRc.jpg

Source: Bitcoin Magazine

Thank you for having this update here, I've thought about it as much and seing it already on this thread is a thing of joy maybe this could silent abit the overflowing noise from those claiming failure with El-Savador's bitcoin adoption and also laying all manners of attacks on their president, Nayib Bukele, i think El-Savador needed to be respected, this is their own decision madea and anyone has the freedom as well to choose on what to do, those attacking have no points in defending themselves than to create fuse through the media and cause distractions, Nayib Bukele could have be silently patient enough to have come out boldly this time around after several occasions of attacks on his led administration and bitcoin adoption, well, there have always been continuity in El-Savador's economy through the adoption and nothing bis changing this fact.

I know how often countries "mock" El Salvador's decision to adopt "an unregulated cryptocurrency" as legal tender. They believe Bitcoin won't last for long because it's not issued or controlled by a central authority (eg: Banks, governments). Opposing countries are also taking into consideration Bitcoin's price volatility in Fiat terms. But what they don't know is that Bitcoin is more than just the price.

Being a censorship-resistant kind of money no one controls does brings its benefits. President Bukele knows this, so he's been using government funds to invest into Bitcoin for true financial sovereignty. You can't sanction or freeze Bitcoin-related transactions unlike Fiat. Bitcoin is deflationary by design, so it's likely it'll be worth a more in the future. If El Salvador "sticks to the plan", it could become the richest country in Latin America. Just my opinion :)

Exactly this.
It is understandable to see some people talk about the "failure" just because bitcoin didn't moon since the day El Salvador adopted bitcoin we saw a lot of topics talking about how they are going to become "rich" from the "pump"! These are the same people who buy $10 worth of bitcoin and expect to become a millionaire in a week.

But the way the mainstream media has been attacking El Salvador because they only abandoned US dollar a tiny bit is pure propaganda. Adopting bitcoin was never supposed to perform miracles in this poor country but it was a great first step towards that over the long haul.

I won't say bitcoin adaption is failed yet because some big like this will take some time, specially if it's coming up for the first time in the world but I think the reason of why that's not going fast and well as it should be is their government. Their government is somehow forced people to use and accept bitcoin which cannot have good effects

El Salvador, like bitcoin, has both many opponents and many supporters, a little more than a year has passed and opponents are rubbing their hands, citing as an example the figures of losses from the purchase of bitcoin and in this sense there is no escape from the facts.
There are a lot of problems in El Salvador both in the social sphere and in the economy, but how much did the state spend on the purchase of bitcoin ~ $105.6 million or 3.6% of its GDP, so far it has lost $40mn from these investments, but on the other hand, the flow of investments in Q2 2022 increased by $55.17million, while in Q4 2021 it fell by $80.6 million.
During the fall in the price of gold, you do not stop mining it, no, you just buy it back on the market, so you need to look at a longer period than the segment determined by 1 year.

I agree with the bitcoin naysayers are either misleadingly asserting that El Salvador "abandoned" USD and/or suggesting that El Salvador is some kind of a reckless actor in its adoption of bitcoin, and the reality of the matter is similar to what you suggest pooya87.  The claims of abandonment are weak at best, since bitcoin merely provides another option and/or a parallel system that any country should perceive such parallel currency building action as prudent and/or responsible.

I will admit that Bukele's somewhat flamboyant approach in the beginning of the bitcoin adoption may have attracted more naysayers and haters than if he had taken a less flamboyant approach - yet there may also have had been some value in employing such flamboyance - so it is not any kind of obvious flaw.. it's discretionary whether or not to employ flamboyance in an approach, and leaders must go forward within their discretion regarding how one approach (such as flamboyance) versus another (such as less flamboyance) might play out.


Bullshit.  That (bolded above) is an overly dramatized representation of what happened and/or what is happening.  For the most part, the law gives options to citizen's  to be able to use bitcoin.  If a business has the capabilities to accept BTC payments (such as the communication devices), then they must accept bitcoin as payment, but they do not have to keep their value in bitcoin.  It's an exaggeration to assert that the government is "forcing" people to use and accept bitcoin - even if there is some technical truth to what you are saying, but still disingenuine to be spreading as if it were some kind of a great injustice like the bitcoin naysayers/haters like to exaggerate those kinds of misleading talking points.

Before using bitcoin, El Salvador used USD and it did not make El Salvador better and even risked default. Accepting and using bitcoin in place of USD does not guarantee that they will become rich or become a great power but if they do not get rid of the dependence on USD, they will never get rid of the debt and oppression of the developed countries. El Salvador's bitcoin revolution may or may not succeed, but bitcoin is opening a path that USD has never offered to El Salvador. "If you work hard, there is no guarantee that you will succeed, but if you don't work hard, you will never succeed".


I think this is what President Nayibbukele sees from bitcoin, bitcoin is not owned by anyone and it is not controlled by any government. This will be better for his country than using USD manipulated and controlled by the US government.

It appears you never got the joke. It is very funny because this is the common reason that newbies and those investors who hold assets that are losing value always say. This also includes me and seeing that a president of a country is also saying the same excuses is, I reckon, very funny.

I do not disrespect Bukele. He also has arguments that I much agree with. The argument similar to this interview.

https://mobile.twitter.com/alexstanczyk/status/1587853770100445184

I doubt that I failed to get your attempt at a joke.. I just don't think that it is a very funny joke, for the reasons that I already attempted to outline in my earlier response.

Sure human behavior can be funny and ironic - but there is a certain amount of not-funniness when you are denigrating what seems to be pretty bold efforts of an underdog government official.. in terms of aspects of the true challenge that he is taking on to adopt bitcoin as one of the monetary options in El Salvador.  He still has not been killed, either.. even though we see that there is a lot of hatred and denigration of him that comes from status quo institutions that see his action as a threat to the system and too UPpity.. he doesn't sufficiently know his place... so in that sense, the joke is not funny.

If it turns out that Bukele attempts to run away with the money or engages in some similar kind of corruption in regards with the bitcoin in their treasury.. then I may well like to denigrate him too, but we do  not have any evidence that he is actually acting in bad faith in terms of the reasons that he seems to have expressed for getting involved in bitcoin in the various ways that he has and also in terms of including some aspect of the country's treasury in terms of buying some bitcoin, too.

Nice interview clip that you linked.  Bukele's interview with Peter McCormick from 6 months ago or so too was a very good depiction of Bukele's seeming attempts to be genuine about these bitcoin matters and also his abilities to attempt to talk about contradictions in some of the western systems.

Of course, the adoption of bitcoin by Salvador in order to attract advanced technologies and companies to the country that Bukele was counting on could not but face pressure, but I think Bukele did not expect such a large amount of fud. Of course, what he did by filling the parliament with people loyal to him from his "New Ideas" party to start transformations may lead to a dictatorship in the future and this is frightening, the best option in my opinion would be, for example, Bukele's statement that after the reforms he will leave, while there is no such fear is fully justified, and these are the main negative moments casting a shadow on.

Agreed but what I did not like in that interview was Peter McCormick's clothes. He was wearing tattered jeans and a tshirt. This is very disprespectful to the president of a country, I reckon.

In any case, as a real person he might not be that bad and he appears to have a similar attitude as many of us in concerns on society, economics and politics. However, politics is politics and he might be forced to make the difficult decisions that might be unpopular for the many to not provoke those few people behind him.

The continuity of Bukele does not have to be seen as a dictatorship, in fact there are dictatorships disguised as democracies all over the world, I do not want to go into details but Bukele should continue for at least 10 years more than enough time to be able to develop the whole of ideas.

 Bitcoin has been only a part of the complex process that El Salvador is experiencing, the security issue has had a complex framework that it decided to face with a complex social nuance.

 Things like knocking down tombs, of antisocials who were worshiping or altars, for example, there is a level of detail that must be looked at in the complexity of a country that requires continuity of leadership.

So mentioning the issue of dictatorship only borders on ignoring the situation from a more objective point of view.

That is one of the reasons that the title of this post does not consider and that in the misinterpretation of the question it is presented as a new question assuming that the adoption failed, based on merely standardized terms that in this case end up biased.

I agree that he rushed things not by totally implementing Bitcoin as legal tender but the time when he enter on Bitcoin without even considering hedging his funds while Bitcoin price is on the new territory above old all time high price. I believe his people will be easily convinced if they enter slowly right after the price hype and not during the hype.

If only he decided to enter now and not on his original entry point. He might gain the support of his people since they will create a huge trend on this uncertain market. His people is angry because they are losing big time on the things they don't want the risk.

If to expect when Bitcoin will totally replace fiat currencies then it will probably never done. But is it what we really need? I don't think so, Bitcoin gives alternative opportunities and if people got such opportunities then Bitcoin adoption didn't fail already. Even those who don't use Bitcoin at the moment can get some benefits from is as bank system having a strong competitor is much more motivated to provide better and cheaper service. May be we all want more but I'd say that what we have is already valuable.

El Salvador has about 2% of their reserves in bitcoin. It isn't very much in the big picture. El Salvador had the USD imposed on them and it wasn't popular when that happened, bitcoin seems to be following the same path. Using and understanding bitcoin takes time and not a lot of it has passed

Nayib Bukele is ay it again with another episode of an interesting interview with the fox news where he make a good presentation you wouldn't want to miss out on what he offered during the interview with Tucker Carlson, go through this for more details https://twitter.com/BTC_Archive/status/1589735056007843840?t=xdAWV5LAuZKWeSp_hEiJwg&s=19 El-Savador is just beginning its journey with bitcoin adoption and nothing is failing yet, you could see the whole expression from the president on the state of affairs.

9 out of 10 Salvadorans don't know what bitcoin is. Then 8 out of 10 claimed to have little faith in digital money, some even stated that they did not believe in it at all.

Bitcoin will definitely have an effect on society. If people don't know about bitcoin, then bitcoin adoption will fail. Because people's knowledge of bitcoin must also be needed.

On the other hand, if the Society knows about bitcoin, it will definitely not fail.

https://inet.detik.com/cyberlife/d-5909396/nekat-adopsi-bitcoin-negara-ini-jadi-amburadul/amp

Bitcoin has about 1% world-wide adoption, so 99/100 people in the world don't know what the fuck bitcoin is; however, personally, I will proclaim that bitcoin is already a success - even though it still has relatively low levels of adoption, and arguably even lower levels of awareness than the El Salvador population in which you are proclaiming that only 90% don't know what bitcoin is.. even though I question your rendition of supposed "awareness levels" of El Salvadoreans... as you are parroting such assertions from that article that you linked, unless we are just supposed to believe any kind of bullshit, merely because it is asserted within a linked article?  Is your source credible Tallupooh?  Maybe you should explain why you believe your source to be credible, and even elaborate on your own assertions regarding how even if the statistics were true how they support your conclusion that Bitcoin has failed in El Salvador.

They've just done some advanced implementation where they haven't educated their people about bitcoins before implementing it and when they are done so, the things to do for them is to conduct some seminars about bitcoins and make their people understand the importance of using it. Well! they haven't seemed to know about it at least a high percentage of their people but I'm sure, as time goes by, the adoptions will be positively improving when they increased their effort to promote the use of bitcoins.

Strange statistics, looks like fake as all other say that Bitcoin payments are still not very popular in the country but if to talk to Salvadorians they in general know about Bitcoin and about that it is an official currency in their country. National Bureau of Economic Research says (https://www.nber.org/digest/202207/el-salvadors-experiment-bitcoin-legal-tender) that little less than a half Salvadorians can use Chivo Wallet, about 20% used it more than just to get $30 bonus. Reuters is not complimentary to El Salvador's government's decision with Bitcoin, but also says (https://www.reuters.com/technology/year-el-salvadors-bitcoin-experiment-is-stumbling-2022-09-07/) that 20% of Salvadorians do use Chivo after $30 drop and 20% of business of the country accepts Bitcoin. So I'm sure that some knowledge about Bitcoin have much more than 10% of Salvadorians.

These statistics would only be true if 9 out of 10 El Salvadorians are illiterate. The bitcoin policy is a national policy that has received vast publicity in that nation. The use of bitcoin is not by force, it's an optional form of payment. Only those that have understands the opportunities that bitcoin offers would embrace this policy, others might decide to be onlookers.

It is also important to state that bitcoin education is still going on in this country which means awareness would keep improving daily. El Salvador's bitcoin experience might not have reached the expected end but I am sure it is on its way to success.

Exactly, if we want to assume that an overwhelming majority of El Salvadorians are either without any kind of media - or they live in caves within the country, then that statistic of 9/10 not knowing what bitcoin may well be true.... at least to have a bit of an idea regarding what bitcoin is.  I do agree with the idea that about 99% of the world does not know what bitcoin is, otherwise we would have greater than 1% of the world's adoption of bitcoin.. but that's another story that goes to the fact that even a decently large number of people who buy bitcoin don't really know what it is... so we are still early days in terms of both figuring out what bitcoin is and what are some of the purposes that bitcoin is capable of serving within society.. world-wide or even more locally for many folks.. local may well be more important (and concrete) rather than thinking/pondering globally (or global impacts/effects/use cases).

To be honest, I actually only believed the articles I read. because I think the article makes a lot of sense about the failure of bitcoin adoption in El Salvador. Of course, I also read other articles to increase my knowledge. I'm sure people have different opinions and have their own beliefs.

Well, if you are able to engage in critical thinking, which is an important skill for attempting to give weight to things that we might read including but not limited to attempting to weight facts, logic and conclusions that are reached based on such critical thinking, then you should be able to explain why you believe some facts, logic and conclusions are more persuasive than others.

In other words, not everything is true merely because it is written in some random article, and you should know better than just accepting matters on face value - which causes me to speculate that you are not really even attempting to be genuine with your expression of your purported beliefs and practices.

In other words (and I running out of words yet?), you are quite likely full of shit.

thank you for your advice, I will continue to study and learn so that my writing is better.

My knowledge is still not much, so once again thank you for reminding me.

As long as the government is involved, it goes against the essence of the real Bitcoin - decentralization, and you don't need to think too much about other things. Without decentralized operations, there will be no Bitcoin. Where does success come from?

I forgot to ask you just now, Ukraine accepts the financial support of digital currency, is there any way to stop this? Or would you join the army if you were needed? I will. Although I am not in Russia. I've always believed that a comedian is an actor after all.

Bitcoin is decentralized by its nature. Government can only try to regulate its connections in outer world, but it has no real options of regulating it inside. I'm sure with further adoption of Bitcoin governments will try to regulate Bitcoin more and more again and again, but they have just limited options of doing so. So I have no worries about someone wants to use Bitcoin by own way, even through centralized decisions, Bitcoin itself will stay decentralized despite that. And as for nowadays El Salvadors decision even expands the frontiers of knowledge about Bitcoin for many people what is IMO good by itself.

I have bad news rumor depend its true or not with El Savador Bitcoin saving at FTX exchange market, I don't know about this correct news or not but depending with some tweet I found in twitter. Bad thing if true if El Savador hold Bitcoin in FTX exchange market because paused withdrawal yesterday after faced problem with CZ the Binance exchange market owner. I have try to read several source but seems not found accurate information about El Savador really hold or save their Bitcoin assets in FTX exchange market.

I hope just rumor only because could be bad problem if Bitcoin save at FTX exchange due the withdrawing fund stop and not process yet.

Source investing.com (https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/did-el-salvadors-bitcoin-btc-holdings-get-caught-up-in-the-ftx-mess-2940246)

Classical FUD I guess. CZ already issued a refutation (https://cointelegraph.com/news/thank-god-el-salvador-doesn-t-have-any-bitcoin-on-ftx-cz-clarifies) after talking to Nayib Bukele. As CZ mentions, Nayib Bukele says that El Salvador's government never had any business with FTX. Of course we have no proofs but in this case first I want to see proofs from "accusing side", otherwise it is just a classical FUD attack.

I guess this is one of the many primary bitcoin adoptions in El Salvador being able to settle migration and taxes fees with Bitcoin is a big relief to many that have been following this discussion on El Salvador's Bitcoin adoption, and seeing that the rate of adoption has grown significantly among retail businesses make the ease of transacting with Bitcoin more appealing in El Salvador. This also came as a relief from many worries about the success and state of El Salvador's Bitcoin position since we are in a mid of a bearish market and a lot of fomos around the cryptocurrency industry resulting from exchange collapse and other incidents that have affected investors and users motivation toward hold digital assets.

Exactly. This is FUD. Fake news. There's no proof at all that Bitcoin bought by El Salvador's president was in FTX Exchange.
Another thing is there's no proof at all too or official statement by El Salvador's government, so expect that this is completely FUD or fake news.

Another thing about Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador, for me it is not a fail. It's a good start and you can see there are already some neighboring countries also looking for Bitcoin to make it legal tender just like what El Salvador did. There are just some people who can't appreciate Bitcoin so they are against with it.

They are not used to it yet. Because of the payment network, there are not many shops that can pay with Bitcoin. Bitcoin usage is not at all as frequent as outsiders imagine. Bitcoin has been volatile over the past few months. Many people have panicked psychology.

El-Savador is going far to present more positive results with this recent developments in buying 1btc per day, this will boost every tenderness it has for it to meet some part of its left targets in which it has already been paying some part of it debt with the revenue generated through the bitcoin tourism, so i believe they will still meet up with any target before or by 2023 with some of its accurate and steadfast economy strategies it's adopting together with the benefits that comes through it bitcoin adoption, if you know the the opportunities that lies alone in buying and accumulating the dip then you'll discover that even while during this bear period El-Savador can can maximize potential in making good progression of income through it.

What is a good start? In fact, I have not been to El Salvador and it is difficult for me to judge how good everything is with the adoption, but judging by the news, the population of El Salvador practically does not use bitcoin in everyday life. There are establishments where you can pay with bitcoin, but there are almost no people who want to do this, so at the moment this is not a very good start.

All I could do was laugh when these articles started coming out in the Spring claiming Bitcoin was a huge failure in El Salvador haha. They literally started coming out 7 months after it was made legal tender. Just like, wtf??! How about we wait a reasonable amount of time, like 10 years, not 7 months lol.


Bitcoin is globally owned only be 1-2% of the world. Of course it is much higher in some countries like the USA, and no doubt El Salvador, but still the vast majority of people don't own Bitcoin and don't really know anything about it. Most of the time someone asks me how I retired young and I tell them I retired thanks to Bitcoin they tell me they don't understand what Bitcoin is or they ask me about it.

The fact that maybe a few percent of the population of El Salvador are using Bitcoin regularly and didn't just download the Chiva wallet for the $30, a year after Bitcoin was made legal tender, is a HUGE success. Oh, and in a BEAR MARKET!! Who wants to bet in 2024 and 2025 a lot of El Salvadorians are going to wish they had educated themselves on Bitcoin in 2022 and started using and saving in Bitcoin?

The vast majority of people in El Salvador, like everywhere else in the world, don't know much about Bitcoin. It's not like people in El Salvador are uniquely educated on Bitcoin. But in El Salvador, because it is legal tender, lots of business accept Bitcoin and some people actual use bitcoin for payments (still extremely rare just about everywhere else in the world). And there are pockets in El Salvador where people use Bitcoin all the time. That's a huge success. As with everywhere else in the world, El Salvador Bitcoin usage will increase as Bitcoin education increases.



Right now, for most people, explaining why they should have Bitcoin is like explaining in the early 80's why someone should have a computer or in the mid-90s why they need the internet. There wasn't yet much you could do with a computer or the internet at those times and most people didn't need it. With Bitcoin, right now the use case is to secure your money yourself and generate wealth, except people are too misinformed about it and just think it is very risky so most don't even understand the most obvious thing about Bitcoin: that you make money with it. Since you can't spend it readily people don't understand why they would want it, yet. It'll take time for Bitcoin education to spread, and it'll take time for Bitcoin as a used payment network to spread. We're still in the early stages, and like computers and the internet in their early stages, it may be another couple decades before using Bitcoin is just a commonplace thing. So judging El Savlador's Bitcoin usage after 7 months or today after 14 months is just beyond absurd.

Thanks for this clarification which i think will shed more light to OP of this thread and any other person thinking contrary to the success of bitcoin adoption in El-Savador, let me add this that people tend to accept what they called ponzi scam centralized inventions than what seems to be genuine like bitcoin, i wonder why people are really missing this a big time, instead of them to engage awareness campaign against shitcoins and other ponzi-like projects and currencies that extort from people in a dubious ways they begin to stage assault on the first ever invented digitally decentralized currency bitcoin, people are truly missing it up, while El-Savador is already making it up with it's adoption, everything we almost hear about El-Savador on media are just backed by the influence of news and publicity, they are not the real situation in El-Savador than the ones the official government presented through their verified social media handles, if you should visit El-Savador today, you would have discovered alot of transformation it had from few years back and all these were the evident in it bitcoin adoption.

I have also been an advocate of the long-term Bitcoin view for El Salvador since El Salvador is the first Bitcoin pioneer country. Those who have made polls or conducted surveys that came up with the conclusion that El Salvador's Bitcoin adsorption is a failure have deviated from the truth, because the indices used for the such survey are wrong and the survey result is widely discarded.
As you rightly said, we should give El Salvador a couple of years from now before making any attempt to measure the extent this bitcoin adoption has gone be it negative or positive impact on El Salvador's economy, in the next 5 to 6 years from now El Salvador would have to build a solid foundation for themselves and the citizens who have adopted Bitcoin early and gaining the necessary knowledge will be at advantage compared to those who are currently unaware of the financial possibilities with Bitcoin.
Recently El Salvador's President went all in again into Bitcoin by announcing the daily bitcoin purchase for the country's Bitcoin reserve, a 1 Bitcoin daily purchase will go a long way to increase El Salvador's chances of making huge returns on the bitcoin most especially buying Bitcoin now that the price is low.

Yes.. bitcoin seems to give a kind of hope and a reason to attempt to develop in a variety of positive directions with various projects that have potentially solid financial futures.. even if currently, they seem to be in the relatively early building stages of various projects - and several of those projects (such as trying to clean up some the criminal matters.. and the kinds of blackmailing behaviors and violence of gangs that threaten the rule of law, but then also cause a lot of disincentives to finance and even disincentives for people to want to participate in society or in the economy) have relations to bitcoin, even if the direct ties might not be exactly apparent on the face..


In essence, I agree with what you are saying Odusko including the part in which bitcoin is not necessarily ONLY a straight-forward financial investment, but it also has a learning and getting used to component, so in that regard, it can take a while for people and/or institutions to really get used to figuring out how and how much to put bitcoin into their lives and to build that through knowledge, time and even finances.. and each of those investments do not need to be a lot at once, but there can be a lot of advantages to building the time energies and finances over a decently long period of time.

Investing in Bitcoin is a long-term proposition, and if El Salvador continues HODL or buys again because now is the right time, they will become a leading economic force in the future.
and in other words: it's too early to know, but I think El Salvador will be a prime example of what to do in the future.
The adoption of bitcoin in El Salvador is definitely a very good step in its growth, but bitcoin is still in its infancy and in one country it will take years for the economy to develop and adopting bitcoin in El Salvador is a very good step for the future, because in the future of bitcoin and in the long term butcoin not only gives hope but can realize what they expect and will make other countries shake their heads.

Barometer for Bitcoin prices has been dropping since El Salvador announced bitcoin as an legalize transaction payment currency today become many perceptions that compare El Salvador's failure in terms of investing in Bitcoin. However, there are many positive sides currently developing in El Salvador after adopting Bitcoin as legal currency payment transaction, such as tourist arrivals which are increasing from year to year and of course Bitcoin is an investment in the long term.

One day later when Bitcoin reaching higher price and El Savador announced with purchasing 1 Bitcoin in daily day begin last week I think make all cristism about Bitcoin adaption failed in El Savador will quit.

Well spoken, this kind of El-Savador's mindset is what we take in with bitcoin in cryptocurrency whereby you keep investing in a currency that is valid and legit when it's at dip, because there will always be time to sell high when the price soar higher than it has been, all decisions made by the president in person of Nayib Bukele were totally inline with the required strategies to how bitcoin should be bought, sold and hodl, in due season more things are going to get unfold about the impact El-Savador has benefited from it adoption.

When a country like El Salvador (or even an institution or an individual) decides to invest into bitcoin for the longer term, the goal does not tend to be selling (or at least it should not be) - even though a lot of additional comfort can come to any investment when it is "in profits" rather than either flat or negative.

So if anyone actually understands investment dynamics, there may well not tend to be a lot of moving around and/or trading in and out of investments that are intended to be longer term - even if some of the longer term may well have higher levels of volatility like bitcoin has had historically and it is expected that bitcoin's high level of volatility will continue in the years to come.  I like to say that one of the most inevitable dynamics in bitcoin is it's likely ongoing volatility.

There are a variety of ways that long term investors can attempt to mitigate likely inevitable volatility, and one of the ways would be to get in early and keep buying and hopefully the volatility to the upside will end up causing the volatility to the downside to be less painful - or at least not force any kind of bitcoin sales when the BTC price is dropping or has dropped significantly... at the same time, if the bitcoin price is down for a long time, even long time holders/investors might feel that they are not able to sell their bitcoins... so hopefully, governments, institutions and people who are in these kinds of situations will have sufficiently and adequately established other cashflow and funding sources so that they either do not need to sell bitcoin when it is seeming to be relatively down in price and/or that they are able to continue to add to their BTC stash when the BTC prices seem to be relatively down.  Buy on the dip and DCA ideas in terms of managing one's bitcoin holdings.

el salvador had TWO campaigns..
1. the govenment hoard for government sovereignty..
2. the citizen access

now lets make things clear (1) was bitcoin.. (2) was not bitcoin..(2) failed

the september to decomber trial of a payment system for citizens was not using BITCOIN. it was using lightning. and when lightning failed its experiment to work with the chivo wallet due to liquidity bottlenecks and exit ramp dead-ends back to crypto/fiat. the citizens did not like it.
however rather then that "strike" guy admitting his experiment on the el salv population failed. he tried to distance his invovlement and tried to call it out as a bitcoin failure

the very callous nature of LN people faming up their involvement in september branding themselves as the main feature of el salvadors backbone to chivo.. .. and then running off in december and calling it a bitcoin failure is a big reason i hate LN'ers. this is not the first time they fame themselves up brand stealing bitcoin. and then blame things on bitcoin when their campaigns fail

...
now lets talk about (1)
the government is still buying bitcoin and they are playing the long game. they are not interesting in selling at a loss or selling low. it takes time for the (1) to flourish

El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender in June 2021, which means that businesses in the country are required to accept Bitcoin as payment for goods and services. However, the adoption of Bitcoin in El Salvador has not been as successful as some had hoped for.

One reason for this may be due to the fact that many businesses and merchants are not yet equipped to accept Bitcoin payments, as they lack the necessary infrastructure or technical knowledge to do so. Additionally, there's a lack of education and awareness on how to use Bitcoin and its benefits among the population.

Another reason could be the lack of infrastructure and regulatory framework to support the use of Bitcoin. Some businesses may be hesitant to accept Bitcoin as legal tender because they are not sure how to handle the tax implications, or they may be concerned about fraud or other risks.

Additionally, the economic and political situation of the country also plays a role, as the country is going through an economic crisis and political instability which has affected the stability of the legal tender and made the local population more risk-averse to adoption.

Another important aspect to consider is that Bitcoin is a relatively new technology and adoption of it takes time. Even in countries with a more developed infrastructure, the adoption of Bitcoin as a method of payment has been slow and gradual.

It's worth noting that the situation with the adoption of bitcoin may change over time as infrastructure develops and people become more educated about the benefits of using digital currencies, and regulatory framework adapts to support it.

I strongly disagrees on this, can you provide the proofs to ascertain these, the government of El-Savador introduced bitcoin to the citizens as a legal tender and does not mandate payment on them using using bitcoin only, the two were still in plafe which is the USD and BTC, now your choice to choose, he also provide the free wallet with some coins on them to each citizens to take very good advantage of in using bitcoin amd still yet not enforcing it on them.


This is wrong as well because even as at recent, we have many investors coming to El-Savador to initiate bitcoin prospects and opportunities in various economy aslect to boost their current statusqo, now you will know that many of the citizens use of bitcoin is from the numbers of people that have tried using the wallet, which means almost all of them have their bitcoin wallet they make transaction with despite they still uses the USD along.


Buddy where are you getting these information from, i recommend you read through the bitcoin adoption thread with the title: El-Savador becomes the first country to make bitcoin a legal tender https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5342087.msg61515038#msg61515038 under bitcoin discussion and see how bitcoin education is fast going in El-Savador.

There has been a legal framework the government of El-Savador has approved by the (legislature) toward the launching of bitcoin volcanic bond abd this new securities law will help improve the overall performance with the bitcoin adoption in every economical aspect in El-Savador.

https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1613287852606881793?t=Ov8nf1KOtNYInuXKo4NeuQ&s=19
https://i.imgur.com/lDZEOGH.png

I guessed as much this will not be announced here since it's not part of what can be regarded as failure, El-Savador had never regretted his actions ever since with bitcoin adoption and will not because it's has gone beyond just an ordinary fear or being timid by IMF or any other information carrier that takes host of fake news about it state of affairs with bitcoin adoption in El-Savador.

Bitcoin bonds are not so univocal decision: if you lend bitcoins in deep bear market then you take cheap bitcoin while later you'll need to repay your debt with more expensive bitcoins. Don't forget that bitcoin has a deflationary nature. Fortunately we can expect some reverse of trends in the market, and I hope, if El Salvador will sell it's bitcoin bonds, it will sell them as much expensive as possible. If to have an opportunity to buy ATH and to buyback ATL, it would be great for the country.

The bonds are denominated in dollars, and the payout is denominated in dollars (not bitcoins).  So El Salvador will use whatever dollars it get from the bonds within the various stated purposes of buying bitcoin (with half) and for investing in volcanic bonds and the bitcoin city and whatever else they had described that they were going to use the dollars (with the other half)... and then the pay back and the various terms of the paybakc will be in dollars too with the terms that they described in regards to dividends, etc.

On a financial basis, many bitcoiners would suggest to just buy bitcoin directly, but there are some kinds of entities that have difficulties buying bitcoin directly but they are able to buy bonds, and then there may be some other folks who buy El Salvador bonds, merely because they are wanting to support the bitcoin related efforts of El Salvador and they are not purely driven by the idea of the bonds being profitable (or likely less profitable than buying bitcoin directly).

Oh that's good and has more sense. Getting bitcoins directly but repaying in USD is genius! USD will definitely drop in price in time and it is a great idea to borrow a getting cheaper dollar (but directly in bitcoins) to create an enterprise for bitcoin mining. I didn't get it clear first but now I see it's good. Thanks for clarification!

What the heck is Chivo wallet anyway? It's on El Salvador people if they use such wallet to store their bitcoin, I heard they are mostly illiterate in that country, I am sure they failed to do proper research on Bitcoin and how to keep their keys themselves.

This still isn't getting in the way that Bitcoin getting adopted and this does not mean that Bitcoin had failed this is just the beginning of crypto massive adoption, and sooner or later people will understand.

Bitcoin adoption in Salvador is still in early stage, so it's too soon to conclude that the experiment  has not been successful. It was a bold decision of President Nayib Bukele to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender which should be respected. But the timing of this decision may have been unfortunate for him, due to sharp fall in Bitcoin price from ATH of 68,000 to around 16,000 in December-22, which made it challenging for the government to manage.

What difference do El Salvador and Nigeria have?

BTC is successful in Nigeria. They are the first to have Bitcoin beach and offer Crypto companies in the country. Max Keiser even move to this country all for this Bitcoin adoption. Over time El Salvador will also be successful with just a population of less than 7M people. This is the kind of country where marketing will be easier and the government can flash it all the way to their TV network.

This 2022 bear market was just one setback.

The bitcoin project that seems to have failed in El Salvador is definitely a disaster for some El Salvadoran people, the failure of the bitcoin project is caused by the lack of El Salvadorans using crypto currency, even though the government has done everything possible to boost the popularity of bitcoin and make bitcoin a currency the main currency in El Salvador but until now btc has not become the popular currency in El Salvador, even though until now bitcoin has not been fully accepted by the people of El Salvador but bukele sticks to his vision, making El Salvador the global crypto center in the future.

Are you a citizen of El Salvador? Do you have any proof that bitcoin failed in El Salvador? They are pioneers in accepting bitcoin as legal tender, and its implementation takes time. All this process took place in less than 2 years, can't rush to conclude success or failure, everything is still in the process of development and construction. Like you, you are holding bitcoin, and the market is terrible your assets are falling, but that doesn't mean you have failed because you haven't sold your bitcoins.

The difference is that they are in a different country.

Like a different continent, if I were to look at a map..

Therefore they have different circumstances on the ground, a lot of differences, if you were to consider the matter.

I hardly have grasps on any specifics to tell you the truth, yet I still know enough in regards to one country being open to creating a lot of legal ways to transact in bitcoin and to build around bitcoin (referring to El Salvador of course), and also a bitcoin maximalism kind of a perspective that actually legislates that shitcoins are securities and bitcoin is not.. so there ends up being options to either use dollars or bitcoin . and even some incentives around trying to lessen some of the tax ramifications of transacting in bitcoin that might exist in other places.


Is there a thread in which you can either make your comparison contrasts or to pump how wonderful of a situation that you believe Nigeria to be in terms of the BTC adoption, usage or whatever other metrics that you are wanting to employ in order to conclude success in those there parts of the world?

My understanding is that "officially" Nigeria is hostile to bitcoin and to the various shitcoins that are being used there.  The Nigerian government has engaged in a variety of tactics to try to suppress the use of bitcoin and/or crypto.. but people still use them and also a kind of underground economy and seemingly a scoff law kind of situation.  I am not sure if I would call Nigeria to be successful exactly and the government introduced CBDC and try to make cash illegal too, and apparently their efforts are not successful in that either, so there is a kind of battle going on there in regards to currency.. which you seem to be wanting to characterize as a success because it is coming from the grassroots up and from the people rather than accepting any characterization that the creation of a legal environment might not have some benefits, and perhaps there might be issues with shitcoins in Nigeria.. but hey, I don't really claim to know specifics, so I would not want to be too conclusive in regards to how much shitcoining might be screwing people (meaning regular people) there, in Nigeria.


Hm?  you are back to talking about El Salvador rather than Nigeria now... yeah.. for sure, it seems that they have a lot of interesting bitcoin specific developments going on in El Salvador, and the downfall of the BTC price in 2022 should not necessarily cause very much concern, even though it seems that people want to get worked up about the downfall in the BTC price in 2022 as if it were some kind of a major all-important factor when it is ONLY one of many factors, and in the last part of your post, you seem to be agreeing to that kind of a characterization too.


"even though the government has done everything possible to boost the popularity of bitcoin"

You are full of shit in regards to this assertion.... .and perhaps even full of shit in regards to your whole post, but hey.. whatever believe what you like in terms of your superficial and seemingly uniformed assessment.

Let's suppose that any country approves the art of... "PePe," a certain artist as a form of payment, what would you think at first glance, would you understand it, socourse   no.

bitcoin has everything to become a global means of payment, but being so as a local currency, results in itself exceeding expectations even for the most staunch followers of bitcoin.

That is, don't follow speeches you don't know and don't stick to the "on-topic" and use "failed" and "disaster" incorrectly.

Bukele's vision alone is not useful to take the history of bitcoin in El Salvador on the right track, it is that of many, or of a few, it does not matter, if we start with only Bukele, but I bet you "1 sat." that in El Salvador there are more than two people who believe in this project. It's the key, or not? Do you remember how Bitcoin started in its genesis idea, oh, yes! 2 individuals were needed.

Perhaps foreigners are the pioneers together with residents who believe in the use of bitcoin, many residency are being approved quickly, there are more and more places/businesses that are added to use bitcoin, surely there are also others that are moving away, but whatever, look these examples...

POV: You enter a taxi and you find this. Welcome to #ElSalvador! 😂 #bitcoin
https://twitter.com/nayibbukele...status /@Lorinaura

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fmdc4zbXoAIrUVF?format=jpg&name=small

Congrats to my new dear friends on achieving their residency cards today! I'm so glad we could help :)
(and also happy to put Denmark on my little map)
https://twitter.com/nayibbukele...status /@ElSalvadorVisas
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FmYgIV5X0AcK5s0?format=jpg&name=large

It may not be many, but it's more than the zero or nothing from a year ago, understand me, it's not easy, but the process is happening.

Good things take time to build. We can't expect quick results especially when BTC's been going downhill lately. Mainstream adoption is a slow and steady phase that requires patience in the long run. To see a developing country adopt BTC as legal tender, is quite surprising. Especially when most developing countries aren't quite used to the latest advancements in technology.

El Salvador took a step forward by becoming the first developing country in Latin America to adopt Bitcoin. It's currently heading to the right direction. Just wait until BTC goes to the moon, and El Salvador could instantly become one of the richest countries in the world. That is if Nayib Bukele stays in power by the time Bitcoin explodes in price. If there's a change in government, then it's bye-bye to the Bitcoin experiment for good. No one can predict the future, so we can only hope for the best. Just my thoughts ;D

In addition to developing a national virtual wallet dubbed "chivo" (Salvadoran slang for "cool") that provides no-fee transactions and enables speedy cross-border payments, the program involves purchasing bitcoin with public funds. In a nation where most transactions are conducted in cash and where 70% of the population lacks access to standard financial services like bank accounts or credit cards, chivo was designed to provide a simple entry point for those who had never used the banking system.

Citizens literacy would really be the key if they are really that targeting in full scale adoption basing up on what the government had integrated.Its true that these transactions would be more worth and something useful if the citizens itself are really that knowledgeable on how do these things functions.

Somehow they are really doing such step for such matter.

Bitcoin Education In El Salvador Paves The Way For Wider Adoption
El Salvador, an initiative called My First Bitcoin sought to teach over 10,000 schoolchildren about bitcoin by 2022. In 2023, it plans to reach a larger audience by a factor of 25 and teach 250,000 students.
https://news.coincu.com/155774-bitcoin-education-in-el-salvador-paves/

My prediction, if they can maintain and continue to develop things with bitcoin, then when the bull season comes, they will have significant achievements, and that will be a strong impetus for other countries to do same El Salvador. Many countries will accept bitcoin as legal tender.

But I doubt that they will become the richest country in the world with only bitcoin, we need to be realistic, bitcoin will give them a big fortune to be able to solve domestic problems as well as develop the country. Bitcoin cannot make them the richest country in the world, the amount of bitcoin they hold is still too little to be the richest.

Failed if we only look at the price perspective. But if we look at the overall situation there maybe it somehow didn't fail since they are still promoting bitcoin on their country and there candidate in miss universe represent them with Bitcoin symbol on their national costume.

Bitcoin take a good spotlight there when Miss El salvador walk in the runway.

https://i.imgur.com/qlc05MS.jpg

Photo credit taken from google

For this bringing up on international stage they are damn serious on bitcoin adoption to their country.

In all means El Salvador is trying to keep its growth and provide stage for bitcoin. Maybe in the future El Salvador flag will have bitcoin. In all possible means El Salvador is doing the best to prioritize bitcoin. Some say the country have failed, but the reality is they're with the fighting spirit. Now tourism have experienced success, slowly one by one other sectors too will progress. The small move by the fashion industry to have bitcoin staged too can cause a turn.

Oh we can see that they are trying to develop in different directions. Tourism attracted by bitcoin, they try to improve it. Volcano mining is not just bitcoin mining, it is about generating green cheap power for which huge initial investments needed — if bitcoin will help with that it is wonderful. And each one project like that can have a significant impact on economy of such a small country like El Salvador. Hope they'll succeed.

When we are talking about bitcoin making El-Savador the richest country, it's not something we should expect within a blink of an eye else people will as well term it a ponzi scheme, it has to go through some process because it's just on it second year journey in El-Savador, why not we ive it time to exercise patience, growth is as good as when the maturition time begins, i believe with the little ones we have seen there's no argument about it that El-Savador has been benefiting from it bitcoin adoption in a number of ways evident enough.

That's to much and impossible to see since we didn't see a currency symbol place on a flag in any country so if their government do that maybe there are people will do a protest since its like insulting their country. Maybe in the side of adoption they do all  to make this currency circulate on this country and for now they are doing a good track since for sure what they experience on early days of adoption is great things need to learn to improve more.

Bitcoin adoption has failed to take off within the nation of El Salvador because its regulatory framework is largely unfavorable towards cryptocurrencies. At this time, there are no regulations in place that recognize cryptocurrency as legal tender or deal with taxation and licensing of businesses related to Bitcoin. In addition, due to the lack of protection through financial regulators like the Central Bank or Securities Commission, El Salvador’s citizens are reluctant to invest in digital currencies which present many risks including fraud and volatility.

Furthermore, recent political events that have taken place in El Salvador has made it harder for people living there to access banking outside of the country and make international payments. Bitcoin holders rely on exchanges like those located inside El Salvador for trading but without a proper framework in place transactions done through local marketplaces pose significant security risks. Finally, since most crypto transactions occur online it can be difficult for users from El Salvador who may not have reliable internet access or devices capable of securely recording and storing their details regarding transactions.

Until such time as measures designed to regulate cryptocurrency usage within the country become law Bitcoin adoption will remain limited within El salvador’s borders despite its potential advantages over traditional financial systems present worldwide currently.

Bitcoin would never make any country the richest. One of the benefit of Bitcoin is that it gives the citizens a viable and superior financial transaction alternative. It can also free nations from external influence from global financial institutions like world bank. Every nation must ensure they develop other sectors of the economy because relying only on Bitcoin for economic growth is unacceptable. People should be gainfully employed, there should be good infrastructure,  less corruption and stable currency  in any country that wants to be rich.

I don't expect it to work for cryptocurrencies at large because that's the name that include every other shitcoins together under the same umbrella being crypto, we are dealing with bitcoin and bitcoin alone here, what sort of regulatory framework could be more favourable than the government giving the opportunity for both bitcoin and fiat to serve as means of payment, rendering free chivo wallet with some coins to have a good start up, allow every businesses to accept bitcoin as payment media without leveraging embargoes on them.


Cryptocurrencies are not legal means of payment in El-Savador, bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency accepted as a legal tender in El-Savador


When we are talking about bitcoin Which is a digital decentralized currency you don't made mention of banks here, they are centralized, the volatility is what bitcoin price is made of, not a misfortune if you study bitcoin well, you will understand it operates both on market demand and supply.

Didn't you go through the rules of the forum before you started posting? You just obstructed or tried to distract a very important discussion with your advertisement. Please to avoid punishment ensure you don't spam or troll around the forum. Make sure you read every thread careful before making comments or posting. Your post most be inline with the discussion. I hope you know that clicking on sites indiscriminately is risky.

El Salvador government is all out support on bitcoin since maybe they don't want to miss out the global economic changes in future and they want to grab the opportunity while bitcoin is somehow in early stage where adoption to other country didn't happened yet. Good to see how they introduce it on beauty and fashion industry since Miss universe is a big stage bitcoin at that time get a huge exposure for that scene.

Maybe I don't exactly get what you want to say, but which country should adopt a law? El Salvador is a sovereign state and adopted a law about bitcoin, so it is already legal to use it in the country, it is a legal tender in it. Can you clarify which exact laws and where should be adopted from your point of view? ???

Well, it hasn't necessarily "failed" in El Salvador, but it has faced challenges. One reason is that El Salvador is a primarily cash-based economy, and many people there may not have access to the technology or financial infrastructure necessary to use bitcoin.

Additionally, the government has not yet put in place regulations or infrastructure to support the use of bitcoin, which has made it difficult for businesses to accept it as a form of payment. Furthermore, the general population may not be aware of the benefits of using bitcoin and how to use it. Despite these challenges, there are some signs of growing interest in bitcoin in El Salvador, and it is possible that adoption will continue to increase in the future.

El Salvador has been doing a pretty good job promoting the use of Bitcoin within its borders. Not only that, but it's also helping BTC reach mainstream adoption worldwide with its tactics. I'm pretty sure the country will become the biggest Bitcoin hub in the world within a few years from now. It hasn't failed simply because it hasn't sold any BTC yet. You can't lose if you don't sell. The government just keeps buying and accumulating BTC to increase its chances of profit in the future.

If President Bukele stays in power, it's likely El Salvador will become a very rich country in the long term. With Bitcoin-backed (geothermal mining) government bonds, and now a Miss Universe model from El Salvador promoting Bitcoin, I wonder what will come up next? Just my thoughts ;D

Last time I checked, El Salvador is a sovereign country, and therefore it can set forth its own regulatory framework, which it seems to have done in regards to bitcoin (which has been a point responding to your post - already raised by jokers10).


You seem to NOT know what the fuck you are talking about.   El Salvador already passed laws in June 2021 in which Bitcoin would be implemented as a legal tender in September 2021, which already took place.

There have been various kinds of ongoing usage and building of bitcoin related practices in El Salvador in the past year and a half, and even the passage of further legislation related to the issuance of bitcoin related bonds and clarifications in the past month or so, too.

Of course, you are not incorrect in your suggestion that El Salvador's citizens and institutions are interacting with people and institutions that are located outside of El Salvador, so surely there has been ongoing adjustments in which bitcoin is one of the possible available options for people and institutions who might figure out ways to employ such options, whether we are talking about remittances or other ways in which value might be transmitted and transacted from outside of El Salvador towards destinations inside of El Salvador. 

El-Salvador is a poor country subject to sanctions by major powers such as the US and the West. Bitcoin adoption  may not make El-Salvador the richest country in the world but it will make El-Salvador a rich country, a developed country, and a chance to become a strong economy in the future without having to worry about sanctions or overdependence much on the great power.

El-Salvador is like the poor, like us, bitcoin is our chance to catch up with the rich people's lives. Without bitcoin, it would be difficult for us to change positions with other investments like gold or real estate but with bitcoin it will become easier.

You're right JayJuanGee, many thoughts they have a clue behind what El-Savador is upto but to their greatest surprises things weren't just as they thought, all i wonder is that people carry the wrong informations with the bitcoin adoption in El-Savador and work nothing about it in confirmation, but I don't think El-Savador is in for giving attention to those rumors than rather concentrate more on the more possible outcome that may come through it adoption, but permit me to hear more clarification about this old article i saw online, how genuine could this be.

More reasons to why El-Savador adopted bitcoin as a legal tender emerging.
https://twitter.com/DocumentingBTC/status/1613591151872806921?t=RqPTtGz_XQozqgC94VqPVg&s=19
https://i.imgur.com/kdWKb2l.jpg

I agree with you, timing wise it was a bad decision for El Salvador to adopt bitcoins when they were so expensive. Nobody could have known how bad 2022 is going to get, but in my opinion the project didn't fail yet. There is some public opposition against bitcoins that doesn't make much sense. Selling all the bitcoins now will only result in a big financial loss. It would be much better to keep holding and sit the bear market out. I am still convinced that long term El Salvador will succeed with bitcoins as a legal, if they can withstand the political pressure until prices are going to recover. The dress of Miss El Salvador looked amazing, I hope they can use more public places to promote bitcoins for their use. And once the next bear market comes we will talk about the success for El Salvador and hopefully other countries will follow.

Their decision was not just of investing in bitcoin, they adopted it as a second official currency in the country. It has multiple effects and not all of them are directly connected to nowadays exchange rated of bitcoin. For instance we know that statistically lots of Salvadorians still have no access to a bank service and still need to pay huge fees while transferring their salaries from abroad job. So using bitcoin they can save some money even if they will change it to dollars after transfer. Moreover as far as I remember Chivo Wallet gives an opportunity to operate both bitcoin and USD, so Salvadorians can have a bank with all those options right in their pocket in smartphone. So until El Salvador doesn't sell its bitcoins it was not so bad idea to start even at the low market.

It makes little sense to focus on short-term price moves, and any investment into bitcoin should be a 4-10 year or more timeline and probably for countries the timeline should be longer than for individuals  - even though we have already discussed that there are no successorship guarantees when we are looking at governmental entities making investment plans.

Of course, anyone has the right to reconsider any investment that they make (whether we are talking about individuals, institutions or countries), yet it seems that individuals are going to have the most flexibility in terms of their getting in or getting out of an investment - and of course, institutions and countries can attempt to act like individuals, but it surely looks more silly for either countries or institutions to be making in and out rash behaviors - unless they disclose from the start that they are getting into an investment (such as bitcoin) as a short-term trade and just for the lols.. but most serious and grown up countries (and institutions) are not going to purposefully engage in those kinds flip-flopping kinds of behaviors  - even though we do see examples of such flip-flopping behaviors happening.. flip-flopping does not tend to be the responsible and/or grown-up way of going about something that is set-forth and described as an "investment."

Since El Salvador accepted bitcoin as a legal tender, most developed countries and their press have published hundreds of articles talking about the failure of El Salvador, and El Salvador will soon default on accepting bitcoin. But by January, El Salvador had officially paid $ 800 million in debt, and interest, especially no newspaper wanted to mention this, they are trying to hide. Bitcoin has yet to make El Salvador rich, but it has done what USD will never do, if President Nayib Bukele had not risked bitcoin and continued to use USD, that debt would have run into trillions of dollars.
https://i.imgur.com/XF5Lrur.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/ZeuTNyH.jpg

https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1617983798037327876

Mainstream media are on governments' and central banks' side. They will do anything they can to discredit Bitcoin as much as possible. People tend to believe what they're told by mainstream media these days without doing their own reasearch beforehand, so any negative news tied to BTC would surely affect its market price in the short term. At least, El Salvador is on the right track by adopting BTC as legal tender.

If the "Bitcoin Experiment" becomes a huge success, it's likely the Salavadorian government will ditch the USD for good. This won't look in the eyes of the IMF and big banks. After all, they want to remain in power/control over the global economy. Imagine what would happen if a considerable amount of countries adopt BTC as legal tender. It will mark the end of Fiat for good.  Who knows if El Salvador will be the one laughing in the end? Just my thoughts ;D

Even if there's a change in power today in El-Savador, bitcoin has gone far beyond what can be stopped by any new government in power, nobody is protesting against it like the first ever, the people were already getting used to it and their children were having the best of education about bitcoin freely in schools.

As i was going through the El-Savador's bitcoin adoption as a legal tender today and in checking various comments, informations and replies that people have made over time, i could see that there's nothing showing interest on bitcoin adoption going on a low priority in El-Savador than the continuous adoption and development backing it up already, i also join in the conversation and give some reply on the discussion to come over here and remind us about nothing is recorded as a failure yet, El-Savador is going well with its economic activities without having any form of set back from it decision on bitcoin adoption and as a legal tender.

The longer the government promotes BTC within the country, the more people will embrace it. Like you've said, a change in power won't have any negative effect in mainstream adoption for Bitcoin if people are already used to it. I'm glad for the efforts President Bukele has done to help boost his economy within the country. With BTC at the forefront of the Salvadorian economy, nothing should stand in its way.

Would you imagine BTC reaching a new ATH in the not-so-distant future? It would be a huge win for El Salvador. If all goes as planned, the country could turn into a developed one in the long run. We'll see what happens. Who knows if this is the first step towards the "hyperbitcoinization" of the world? Just my opinion :)

After seeing a discussion in this thread about the level of support for bitcoin adoption in El Salvador, I decided to look for some stats data. Surprisingly, I found publications only about two surveys. One was carried out immediately (https://www.reuters.com/technology/majority-salvadorans-do-not-want-bitcoin-poll-shows-2021-09-02/), back in 2021, and the percentage of disapproval of such a decision was at the level of 67.9%. Last autumn, the same institute conducted another survey (https://news.bitcoin.com/recent-poll-shows-citizens-of-el-salvador-still-not-sold-on-bitcoin/), the level of disapproval of accepting bitcoin as a legal tender was still very high, 65.5%. And this despite the fact that the level of approval of Bukele himself was 87% last year.

I thought the government's efforts to spread the word about bitcoin were doing more. It would be interesting to see how the opinion of the Salvadorans has changed this year, because after all, there is a lot of good news related to bitcoin from this country. I hope Salvadorans see the benefits of bitcoin before Bukele leaves office.

You nailed it already. BTC adoption did failed in El Salvador due to the approach of the government. They missed it in the way they approached the whole thing and it did cost them a lot.
Moreso, BTC is not a stable coin  and due to its volatility, I don't even recommend it as a means of payment. Maybe they could have developed their own coin.

Welp, It wasn't a hard conversion from the dollar, just set up alongside it. I don't think he was expecting fireworks it's going to take some time like 10 years. I wonder how the adoption of the process of sending money say from the us to relatives is going. I suspect it may be a challenge for those in the us to convert to BTC because of the banking system.

There are positive moments, but they do not really concern the population of El Salvador, so far Bukele is aimed at attracting investment to the country and this is good, because this will enable the country's economy to grow. Little has really changed for the population, although if we talk about a decrease in the level of crime, then this is a significant change for El Salvador, perhaps the connection with bitcoin is indirect, but at least so.

It's not necessarily the "secondary currency" part that made people so against bitcoin in the country, in my observation it has everything to do with how they portrayed bitcoin to the masses, and the nigh-militaristic approach they took just so people would use it which definitely would not sit well with the people, especially when the very thing you wanted them to use is something that screams freedom in its values lmao. A couple of changes have been made in the way they took bitcoin in the country however, no longer are they enforcing the use of a single wallet brand, they're officially stating that no one's gonna be persecuted for not using bitcoins, and it will only be an optional currency, which is honestly what they should've done in the first place instead of force-feeding bitcoin to the people.

We might still think that Bitcoin adoption had failed in El Salvador but we just have to wait for sometime for us to think the adoption of Bitcoin there is finally useless. El Salvador is the first country to accept Bitcoin followed other countries that are creating laws to guide Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general. The country had shown a good interest in Bitcoin that had made other countries to take the same process but this might take sometimes for this to happen and call for more countries to follow the footsteps even though Bitcoin is going to be acceptable and regulated.

If they continue to use it then maybe we cannot it fail. Maybe some call it as a fail since maybe they lose some money due to fluctuation. But for the fact that it successfully penetrate on financial system in that country well we can still call it as success and the only thing they can do is to enhance then also find more better ways to educate people so that they would know the risk and can do something when the bearish time came in. This is long process but for sure El Salvador could surpass any challenge brought up by market controversies.

You sound retarded .. or maybe you are just ill-informed (and sucking on some mainstream/anti-bitcoin/anti-Bukele talking points)?

Bitcoin happens to be a longer term play.. so if Bukele and El Salvador are investing into bitcoin and going down the bitcoin road, it likely could take a bit of time to see payoff in monetary terms - even though surely Bukele and El Salvador are building their wealth in terms of the various ways that they are putting resources and teachings into bitcoin... and especially the way that they are doing it seems to retain its bitcoin focus - and not getting distracted into shitcoins.. even though surely there is a bit of a tech investment angle that Bukele/El Salvador seems to be attempting, which could have some ways in which it might be read (or misinterpreted) as inviting shitcoins into their current and so far BTC prioritizing approach.


You sound a bit mixed up panganib999.  Sure, there may have been fuck ups with the Chivo wallet, yet it was never mandatory or imposed upon the people of El Salvador, even though there was a $30 incentive for them to learn about it. and there seems to have had been some problems with how that $30 incentive was deployed, including that it was seemingly abused by people who were largely engaging in fraud to get the $30 rewards of other El Salvadoreans.

It is always more difficult for pioneers, but perhaps for Bukele there is also some advantage in this. And yes, El Salvador is the first country to accept bitcoin as a means of payment, it will definitely not be the last country to do this, and it may be easier for other countries, but so far we don’t know. Perhaps in this case, the president is more far-sighted than the population and it will take more time for other countries to start accepting bitcoin, and perhaps their positive example will show the people of El Salvador the benefits of such an adoption, I mean that it will be possible if we see another example with a more loyal population to bitcoin.

Do You know you can make your point without insulting others?
I was only saying that it terms of making BTC as a means of payment, El Salvador may not have gotten it right. But as per adoption of BTC, they are on track and will definitely pay off for them.

Arguably inflammatory words are added for emphasis and by discretion.  People don't necessarily exercise their discretion in similar ways, and whether I could have made my point as well or not likely depends upon what point that I thought that I was striving to make, which might not be the same as what point you might have thought that I was trying to make.

When I read back through the above post, it seems to me that I found your comment in your first paragraph about El Salvador making their own coin (which I emphasized above) to be retarded and the way that shitcoiners think.. and the way the current fiat system works and bitcoin takes us away from printing your own money and trying to establish confidence based on bitcoin, as a system, already being separate from El Salvador, which would not be the same as if they were to make their own coin.. which is what many countries have done in the past and have frequently (if not always) failed at such money printing that is likely not based on shit, even though they say that it is.. and bitcoin fixes this... hopefully it fixes your retardedness, too?  Otherwise, if you want to explain how the fuck El Salvador would be able to print their own coin and either not appear to be engaging in the same bullshit money inflation, whether they were to do it in digital form or some other way?

There are several conditions where success and failure will always occur especially for El Salvador which became the first country to adopt bitcoin and actually with some positive things that happened for them I think it is not completely a failure in fact it can be said that it is still quite successful as the first country to adopt it.
Some of the positive things that they have received after the adoption of bitcoin cannot be ruled out but there have been some that have failed and indeed that is also natural because they are the first country to do that.
But of course this will also not dampen if there are other countries that want to do the same thing and instead they will be more able to maximize it, especially since there is the El Salvador example so that they can further minimize the negative impact of bitcoin adoption in the end.
I think in this case it will still be the same even though it is certain that many parties who have large interests will talk about dangerous bitcoin adoption but still bitcoin adoption will still continue and will even be bigger.

I re-read your post several times, but did not understand what you wanted to say. Something about changing the situation is changing the situation, but in general you would like to hope for the best. However, it is not very clear how this relates to the topic under discussion.

It is clear that the headline about the failure of bitcoin in El Salvador is more in the nature of drawing attention to the topic. To discuss the existing difficulties in the development of the bitcoin economy in the country. It is clear that these difficulties exist, but we also see that the El Salvadorian government is trying to cope with them. Nevertheless, as I noted previously, sociology confuses me a little, it shows that so far the idea of bitcoin is not close to a fairly significant part of El Salvador's society, but the presidential elections are ahead, and whether in these elections or sometime in the future, but Bukele sooner or later will leave presidents post, and it is important that even after that bitcoin remained important for the Salvadorans. Of course, we'd like to hope for the best, but El Salvador apparently needs more good bitcoin news to get the majority on the side of bitcoin.

Hi, red4slash
It is not necessary to give so much confirmation to the matter and not "dizzy" the subject, the title of this thread is a circumstantial opinion, which represents the opinion of an individual, that we can discuss and give our opinion, but the topic is not conclusive as to what which it intends to take for granted.

There are TXs in El Salvador, they are alive, it is still the official currency, that is what matters, the dollar that was implemented in that same country, went through a similar rejection process

There's still a lot of skepticism when it comes to using Bitcoin as an alternative to Fiat within El Salvador. It's going to take quite a long time before we see some progress. Everything will depend on President Bukele's efforts to speed up adoption for the cryptocurrency. Compared to other countries, I'd say El Salvador is already one step ahead of the game. Especially when the US Dollar is prone to collapse soon (not to mention that other Fiat currencies are faring worse).

The sky is the limit to how far Bitcoin adoption can go within El Salvador. Who knows if the "Bitcoin City" project will boost the country's economy faster than we've previously imagined? Just my opinion :)

For sure there are really things which arent really that being able to cover up by Bitcoin in terms of those casual fiat transactions specially on micro ones and we know that not all citizens would really be that fully aware
on how to make out online transactions in between wallets but still a  good thing that they do make it as a legal tender. It might did really able to get lots of criticisms basing up on what Bukele had done but
he didnt really make himself that get distracted with those things but instead keeping on stashing up Bitcoin and even bought even into those cheaper prices believing that it would really be resulting more positive
in the future which it really did considering that we are already on this current price basing or comparing it up into its entry point. We cant really tell that it do failed out because it wont really be just that a short time
for us to see the effects and benefits on which on the decision that they had made. It is really just still that surprising that theres a certain place and government who did really make out such decisions
on making it as a legal tender on which i do actually just cant believe on such decision knowing that government does really hate up crypto in the first place.

On the issue of accepting bitcoin or other decentralized cryptocurrency from the state, one should not rush. Here is a completely different principle of their walking, especially in order to work with cryptocurrency, you need certain knowledge and practice. In El Salvador, this was done too quickly, without sufficient preparation and the creation of the necessary conditions. In addition, the people do not like to be forced to do something without choosing alternative actions. A failed attempt to introduce bitcoin will make other states unlikely to want to experiment in this way.
In my opinion, a decentralized cryptocurrency should only walk in society along with the national money of states. The people should always have the right to choose.

That's ridiculous Argoo.

You think that El Salvador acted to quickly because it did something rather than just sitting back and studying the situation?

Bukele announced his decision in early June 2021 via teleconference that within that upcoming week, he was going to propose pro-bitcoin legislation, including making Bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador, and within that same week, the law was passed in order that bitcoin would become legal tender (as an additional option - besides the dollar already being legal tender there)... so the law would become effective in 3 months, and so in the last two years El Salvador has been building and expanding bitcoin and one off the advantages of "acting" rather than just "thinking about it,"  the implications and applications become way more concrete regarding how much to do and how to do it.

You can hear from Bukele himself in a couple of interviews that he did with Peter McCormack regarding how Bukele was thinking about the reasons and the process of implementing the bitcoin law and some topics related to Bukele as a leader. 

1st interview June 2021 - about 1 hour long

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad16W-V3jwY

2nd interview May 2022 - about 1 hour long
https://cryptonews.com/videos/bitcoin-in-el-salvador-part-2-with-nayib-bukele.htm