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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.

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[Sayeds56]

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. 

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.

[TheNineClub]

What do we end up with? Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador failed. Why did this happen? It’s not about bitcoin, it’s about the approach, of course. Since this is still uncharted territory and this was the first time that bitcoin was recognized as legal tender by an entire state, I believe that the El Salvadorian government was very hasty in passing this law. The point is that you can't force people to voluntarily use bitcoin, especially when they're new to it. People themselves should want to use bitcoin, and the state should create an infrastructure around this desire to make using bitcoin even more comfortable at any level, as a transfer of money, paying taxes, etc.

I think that this case will be indicative for other states that also sought, following El Salvador, to accept bitcoin as legal tender. And that in order to implement this, everything will need to be very well checked and considered. The most optimal would be to first create a separate bitcoin zone in a single city or region and, based on its data, already make a decision on the introduction of bitcoin throughout the country. Need research and infrastructure, and then the adoption of a law. El Salvador did the exact opposite.

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.

[awik p]

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. 

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.

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

[Cryptmuster]

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.

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.

[fortuner]

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.

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.

[Abiky]

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.

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

[speedy963]

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.

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.

[pawanjain]

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.

[stomachgrowls]

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.

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.

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.

[KennyR]

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.

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.

[TheGhostMan]

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.

[n0ne]

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.

[amishmanish]

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
   

[Chato1977]

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.

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.

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.

[bitterguy28]

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.

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.

[Sayeds56]

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.

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.

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.

[pawanjain]

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.

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.

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.

[Abiky]

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.

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

[bittraffic]

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.

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

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.