El Salvador has become the first country to make #Bitcoin legal tender! 🇸🇻

[Wiwo]

The problem with using the CDS price to measure credit worthiness is that it is a market-based metric. It is much like using a stock market index to rate a country's economy.

Right, probably the best tool to use in measuring a country credits worthiness is the GDP.  please correct me if am wrong on this, but be it as it may be Bitcoin has become a haven in times of crisis both economic and wartime. El Salvador's economic crisis might witness a significant shift in the positive direction for adopting Bitcoin as an alternative currency to help revive the country's already dwindling economy. And as an alternative in times of war such as what might become the reality of what is happening between Russian and Ukraine citizens may soon run out of cash and the ATMs are getting empty mobile cell phone services are shouting down only the internet is available in Ukraine Bitcoin will soon become the alternative to send and receive money in this difficult time since Bitcoin transaction does not require visiting the bank physically.

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[Wind_FURY]

Did the El Salvadorian government already issue their Volcano Bonds, and have the money ready to buy $500,000,000 in Bitcoins? Or are they waiting for a good discount? There are Bitcoiners in Twitter saying that they might get a "good deal" this year.

[DdmrDdmr]

Did the El Salvadorian government already issue their Volcano Bonds <…>

They haven’t been issued yet. As per the below referenced article, they still need to pass some prior financial reform laws, some of which (but not all) may start to be processes during this very week. It also points out that they may be announced this month at some point, or default to April’s 2022 Bitcoin Conference in Miami, which Bukele will be attending. No certain date given however, but soon …


See: https://www-criptonoticias-com.translate.goog/finanzas/se-acerca-emision-bonos-bitcoin-el-salvador/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=es&_x_tr_pto=wapp

[_act_]

14% respondents to El Salvador’s Chamber of Commerce said they have transaction in bitcoin since September

El Salvador’s Companies Barely Bother With Bitcoin

This was a survey by El Salvador’s Chamber of Commerce which shown vast majority of companies in El Salvador have not used bitcoin for business.

More than 90% of the 337 companies polled between January 15 and February 9 said Bitcoin adoption in the country had little to no impact on their sales. Of the businesses polled, 71% were classified as micro or small businesses, 13% as medium-sized companies and 16% as large, according to the survey.

Only 14% of respondents to the Chamber of Commerce Survey said they had transacted in Bitcoin since September, when the country became the first in the world to recognize the digital token as legal tender.

I am thinking the missing USD and other complaints of Chivo wallet users might caused this, people are discouraged to use what has been faulty in the past because people do not joke with their money. Or probably because there are still many Salvadorans that do not know much yet about bitcoin, bitcoin wallet and how to use it. Or probably because people just prefer to hold bitcoin than using it for paying. Or probably because El Salvador bought bitcoin at high price of $50000 or above and Salvadorans are discouraged, but if this last reason is among, there will be more Salvadorans that will use bitcoin during bull run.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

One thing to consider here, is that the questions do not refer at any point to the frequency of the TX nor their volume. By that, I mean that "Have you made any sales in bitcoin?" is a boolean yes/no question. If we were to break down those yeses by frequency/amount and/or volume, we may encounter that the 14% is actually conceptually weak due to a low recurrence, which would be even grimmer (it could also be the other way around, but the survey does not show this trend-type information).

This are the original published survey results (in Spanish). The survey is multipurpose (i.e. commerce related, but not bitcoin specific except for page 11):
https://camarasal.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/SondeoEmpresarial35422_FINAL10032022.pdf

By the way, is there going to be a need for a new thread soon (Honduras)?:

It's hapenning ...

https://twitter.com/maxkeiser/status/1504775984213635072

[rby]

The decision of El Salvador to adopt bitcoin and sell bitcoin bonds came as a surprise to many individuals, organisations and countries. It also angered some elite countries but they couldn't have done nothing to stop it because El Salvador is a sovereign country.
Since they could do nothing, they watched out to see how bitcoin will make El Salvador economy to bleed to death. I was afraid and sympathetic to El Salvador because they entered the market during the last bull run when  btc was above $50k dollars. When btc crashed bellow $36k I thought so many sad news will emanate from El Salvador. But I am happy read a great news of bitcoin making some percentage gain in tourism and about 10% in total GDP.
Who knows El Salvador may be ahead before other countries will wake from slumber.

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/tourism-in-el-salvador-up-30-since-bitcoin-adoption-minister-says

[romero121]

14% respondents to El Salvador’s Chamber of Commerce said they have transaction in bitcoin since September

El Salvador’s Companies Barely Bother With Bitcoin

This was a survey by El Salvador’s Chamber of Commerce which shown vast majority of companies in El Salvador have not used bitcoin for business.

More than 90% of the 337 companies polled between January 15 and February 9 said Bitcoin adoption in the country had little to no impact on their sales. Of the businesses polled, 71% were classified as micro or small businesses, 13% as medium-sized companies and 16% as large, according to the survey.

Only 14% of respondents to the Chamber of Commerce Survey said they had transacted in Bitcoin since September, when the country became the first in the world to recognize the digital token as legal tender.

I am thinking the missing USD and other complaints of Chivo wallet users might caused this, people are discouraged to use what has been faulty in the past because people do not joke with their money. Or probably because there are still many Salvadorans that do not know much yet about bitcoin, bitcoin wallet and how to use it. Or probably because people just prefer to hold bitcoin than using it for paying. Or probably because El Salvador bought bitcoin at high price of $50000 or above and Salvadorans are discouraged, but if this last reason is among, there will be more Salvadorans that will use bitcoin during bull run.

In a short term this is a good transition from fiat to bitcoin. Already people are good and comfortable with the fiat usage on their daily needs and business. Now a new system getting involved will take time for people to get adopted. 14% of the Salvador businesses have added bitcoin and among that 71% is small and micro businesses which is the real success. In most of the countries adoption happens at the higher level. Here we see it from the low bottom, so this number will change with time.

[Vaskiy]

That is a pretty significant adoption already, considering it's been what? A few months? I did not expect it to happen this fast, I confess, especially considering how unhappy the locals seemed to be initially.

Not the entire local population, small groups of locals united together and they were protesting against the adoption of bitcoin. This protest took place in the capital where more than thousand people marched with slogans against bitcoin adoption. Once after the success of the adoption there is not much of opposition. This itself a big success, though El Salvador is a small country.

September 7; More than 1,000 people marched in El Salvador's capital on Tuesday to protest the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender

[PhoenixZephyrus]

As optimistic as some of the stuff in this thread is, I think we also need to look on the other side of the coin. Apparently even after ~6 months, the adoption of bitcoin so that it's actually usable in day to day life has been pretty slow.
Enthusiasm about bitcoin adoption in El Salvador is seemingly wearing off

Other businesses around Bitcoin Beach said they’d given up on Bitcoin and reverted to accepting only cash. “We were losing money because of the way the currency loses value,” said 21-year-old Axel Medina, who helps his family run a surf school and restaurant. “It was difficult to maintain our business like that.”

In its current state, bitcoin has been pretty volatile in the past, in the past ~5 months bitcoin has dipped about $20k USD. Now, if the cost of products are fixed according to the fiat currency that El Salvador uses, then when the value of bitcoin goes down by such huge amounts, so does the conversion rate and that would mean a decrease in buying power too? Because the prices are fixed in fiat most likely.

Also if the businesses look toward using the BTC to fund their day-to-day business, for the same reasons, I think that might be problematic. Furthermore, a huge part of the population is online - definitely causing problems for adoption, since ATMs have also reportedly been very slow to come up. There have been reports of people having to drive like 50kms to get to an ATM - they aren't very widespread, which imo should have been looked into before the public announcement and coming out as recognizing it as legal tender. This kind of approach makes them seem like they aren't ready - not a good look at this point.

For one, El Salvador is a country where cash is still king; almost 70% of the population is unbanked. Critics say the country’s Bitcoin transition leaves behind those who don’t have a smartphone — mainly older Salvadorans — and those without internet access. In 2019, about 50% of the population was not online.

Also, there have been sketchy reports from the government where they try to portray a better picture of the adoption scenario, when other more independent sources claim that thats not the real picture

It is difficult to get a full picture of the scope of Bitcoin adoption in the country. In January, the government endorsed a report that at least 4 million users — nearly the country’s entire population — had been verified as authentic users of the government’s wallet over the past several weeks. But in March, a survey released by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of El Salvador reported that 86% of the businesses contacted said they had never conducted a transaction using Bitcoin.

According to Bloomberg, (El Salvador’s Companies Barely Bother With Bitcoin) there too we see a similar picture. The offline population is just too big to see a good adoption rate anytime soon.

More than 90% of the 337 companies polled between January 15 and February 9 said Bitcoin adoption in the country had little to no impact on their sales. Of the businesses polled, 71% were classified as micro or small businesses, 13% as medium-sized companies and 16% as large, according to the survey.

[_act_]

In a short term this is a good transition from fiat to bitcoin.

Your post is definitely correct but the adoption is not a transition (moving away) because bitcoin is meant to just be an alternative, not that people are moving away from fiat towards bitcoin, but people are adopimg bitcoin just as an alternative to fiat as people are still substantially using fiat.

Not the entire local population, small groups of locals united together and they were protesting against the adoption of bitcoin...Once after the success of the adoption there is not much of opposition.

There was opposition because making a coin a legal tender in El Salvador according to their constitution means using it is mandatory, this could have confused some people that if they want to be payed in bitcoin, they have to accept it if they like or not. Salvadorans later were getting to know that the mandatory there is that Marchants in El Salvador should be accepting bitcoin but left to people to either pay in USD or bitcoin and also accept USD or bitcoin.

So, when the citizens know already that the government is not forcing them to use bitcoin that they still have their own choice to make, there shouldn't be protest anymore. Salvadoran government is not foricing citizens to buy, sell, hold, accept or use bitcoin, citizens have their own choice to make.

[Wiwo]

So many factors have affected El Salvador Bitcoin adoption and development which have resulted in the present state of things in El Salvador indeed the rate of adoption may be slow as mentioned just about 14% of businesses operating in El Salvador have used and adopted Bitcoin since it legal adoption by the government, well I don't expect anything out of the box to happen at this time and the 14% is still a good number because Bitcoin is not the primary currency but just a legal alternative.
What is more concerned about is the pace of the development of the Bitcoin city and Bitcoin bond, which have also witnessed some unforeseen set back as mentioned by the El Salvador finance minister on the 18th when the bond was expected to be launched between the 15th- 20th of March 2022 but there have been a delay in that direction the minister mentioned the global business atmosphere not friendly and this because of the Russia 🇷🇺 Ukraine war which has resulted in the delay in the El Salvador Bitcoin bond launch.

Last week, El Salvador Finance Minister Alejandro Zelaya - who previously said the bond sale could come between March 15 and March 20 - noted the war between Ukraine and Russia could slow the process. “We have the tools almost finished, but the international context will tell us,” he told a local TV station.

                                  .
                               

[stadus]

well I don't expect anything out of the box to happen at this time and the 14% is still a good number because Bitcoin is not the primary currency but just a legal alternative.

This.... And can we convert that percentage into an estimated amount on the industries that have adopted bitcoin? I'm pretty sure that 14% is millions of dollars of transactions, and therefore it will help to increase the adoption of crypto overall. Imagine if more countries will adopt bitcoin and legalize it, how big it would contribute to the circulation of bitcoin in the market.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…> This.... And can we convert that percentage into an estimated amount on the industries that have adopted bitcoin? I'm pretty sure that 14% is millions of dollars of transactions <…>

With the publicly available data, there’s no way to estimate the counter value in USD of the TXs carried out using BTC. The 14% figure represents the percentage of companies that answered this simple Boolean type question in the survey (translated):

Since bitcoin became legal tender, have you made any sales in bitcoin?

To a point, that on its own is deceiving, since it’s a yes (14%)/no (86%) type question, with no indication to volume, frequency nor amounts involved in the TXs (and that’s assuming that the companies are actually all ready to accept BTC as of now). A company may have answered a "yes" because they did accept a sole TX at some point, and therefore counted within the said 14% of companies that have transacted in BTC.

[Lucius]

Since El Salvador refused to condemn the aggression against Ukraine, I no longer see them as a kind of free and democratic country. I don't know what their economic relations are with Russia, but if I were an investor who has a lot of money and wanted to invest in those bonds, I would certainly give up after all. I believe that some other people think similarly, but that is the problem of El Salvador now - if they want to be on the wrong side of history, they are on the right track.

[AakZaki]

The decision of El Salvador to adopt bitcoin and sell bitcoin bonds came as a surprise to many individuals, organisations and countries. It also angered some elite countries but they couldn't have done nothing to stop it because El Salvador is a sovereign country.
~snip~

All the countries of the world are looking at El Salvador. Nayib's decision to oppose the IMF has become a gamble for those who don't believe in Bitcoin. Of course, this news increase in El Salvador's state income becomes good news if it happens. At least the positive impact has been felt by El Salvador. Especially if the price of Bitcoin becomes higher, I think they can make the country's finances better. Furthermore, if they succeed, then they will be an example country of bitcoin's legalization as a means of payment. Although I think they went through a difficult and long process they had to go through to succeed.

[Doan9269]

Since El Salvador refused to condemn the aggression against Ukraine, I no longer see them as a kind of free and democratic country.

The media outlet noted that the Organization of American States (OAS) held an extraordinary session late on Friday last week, with 24 of the 34 member countries – El Salvador not included

“El Salvador did not sign the declaration. [Its] representative Agustín Vásquez did not speak out. The Salvadoran government is the only one in the region that has not taken a position on this issue.”
https://cryptonews.com/news/el-salvadors-president-bukele-silent-ukraine-war.htm

According to reports, El-Savador maintain silence about the situation and it stand on not disclosing whose side it belong and not that it comes out to be identified with Russia's invassion, although this make it look suspicious to have been indecisive about the ongoing war while other regions have boldly come out to be identified as against the Ukraine invassion.

Two things can be drawn from President Nayib Bukele's action of being silence, possibly he may not want to interfere with any political propaganda with other regions if identified with them, this could be drawn from El-Savador's first step in deciding to make bitcoin a legal tender that El-Savador is autonomy in it leadership government, to me i see the country as being neutral and don't want to tie itself into associations with other regions but rather maintain its "stand alone" principle.

Secondly, we dont know the level of relationship or ties it had with Russia and the extent of MoU it signed with them in business and economy, and possibly we don't also know the past impact Russia has made on El-Savador in achieving it bitcoin legal tender. so to me i see El-Savador as being neutral without vesting on one side due to some reasons personal to him (Bukele) else if he had comes out boldly in public to support Russia then that isn't fare enough.

[_act_]

According to reports, El-Savador maintain silence about the situation and it stand on not disclosing whose side it belong and not that it comes out to be identified with Russia's invassion, although this make it look suspicious to have been indecisive about the ongoing war while other regions have boldly come out to be identified as against the Ukraine invassion.

Since El Salvador made bitcoin a legal tender, I have been following Nayib Bukele's on Twitter, I do receive notification of his latest tweets, it is clear that he has interest towards Russia about the ongoing Ukraine war.

This is enough to know his opinion:
https://mobile.twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1492740255123976193?lang=en

There was a vote that UN voted some weeks ago, almost all the the countries in United Nations voted in favour of Ukraine, but countries like China did not even support or oppose, but we all know how dictatorial president of China is supporting the dictatorial president of Russia about the invasion, he did not even called it invasion when the lying president of Russia invaded Ukraine.

Many people on Twitter commented that time that El Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele should just have focused on bitcoin instead of him commenting on war, which I even commented on that because bitcoin has been the reason I know a president called Nayib Bukele.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…> It also points out that they may be announced this month at some point, or default to April’s 2022 Bitcoin Conference in Miami, which Bukele will be attending. No certain date given however, but soon … <…>

Maybe not so soon …

The finance Minister of El Salvador, stated yesterday that they were postponing launching the bonds until the market turned more favourable, being currently not having the best of perspectives due to the global instability cause by the war taking place in Ukraine.

He didn’t pinpoint a specific new launching date, but hinted that it should be somewhere between May and September (presumably 2022 …).

See: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL6N2VP07Q

[Doan9269]

But I am happy read a great news of bitcoin making some percentage gain in tourism and about 10% in total GDP.

As you've stated that El-Savador is a sovereign country, because it was able to maintain the situation even when it was tough enough but it survived it, the country have already set a global record and now a tourist centre for bitcoin activities.

The finance Minister of El Salvador, stated yesterday that they were postponing launching the bonds until the market turned more favourable, being currently not having the best of perspectives due to the global instability cause by the war taking place in Ukraine.

I think another factor that might have led to the postponment is as a result of the dip in the recent price speculation and now that the market is going up again it much likely they may launch it earlier than September.

[_act_]

I think another factor that might have led to the postponment is as a result of the dip in the recent price speculation and now that the market is going up again it much likely they may launch it earlier than September.

I think it should more be because of the war. Although, Bitcoin have proven itself to be valuable during war in the past and also in this present Ukraine war. But El Salvador may find it difficult at that time because they can be thinking the war could escalate into world war 3 which could be a good reason for the delay at that time. Bitcoin has been helpful during war but nobody knows what could happen if world war 3 begins, although not likely again. It should not be because of price dip, even if bitcoin price dip the more, it is a blessing because it would rise back.