Buying/Selling & Using Bitcoin in El Salvador.

[AprilioMP]

I didnt expect everybody to use, but as its legal it at-least lets business owners accept payment, which is the beginning to implementation.

Other countries outside El Salvador also accept Bitcoin payments for their business. So El Salvador, which has legal tender status, I know for sure has a Bitcoin ATM even though I come from Indonesia, even though I found it from several article sources.

If in business accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment makes things easier, why don't they do it without experiencing difficulties.

[1714995633]

1714995633

[Potato Chips]

This may be anecdotal but, couple of months ago, someone posted about their El salvador trip in r/bitcoin, see: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/17otops/just_got_back_from_el_salvador_thoughts_on_bitcoin/

With most folks being unbanked and cash being the the most common payment method, tbh, I would not expect most merchants are accepting bitcoin since it's not easy to come from those so have your fiat ready at all times and plan a nice itenerary surrounding bitcoin accepted shops.

[yhiaali3]

A good and curious question. Yes, certainly in theory, Bitcoin has been officially accepted in El Salvador and citizens can buy anything even from grocery stores with Bitcoin, but in practice on the ground, has this really happened? We need someone living in El Salvador to tell us the facts.

Implementation on the ground is somewhat difficult, because El Salvador is a small and poor country and does not have the appropriate infrastructure to use Bitcoin perfectly. There is also a problem with Bitcoin itself, as it is not yet suitable for small and quick daily transactions.

[FinePoine0]

Bitcoin in El Salvador is a buy only idea, because since 2021 they have started holding bitcoins and until today their bitcoin holdings have a profit of 50% to 60% above every bitcoin. Therefore, the government of El Salvador, Naib Bukele, said that he will not make a decision to sell the accumulated bitcoins now. He has thought about holding for a long time and I like his thinking. The more bitcoins you accumulate, the more benefits you stand to earn. At present, the government of El Salvador sees the decision to hold Bitcoin as the most important.

[leonair]

I know about the news and it being made legal tender, but has anybody first hand experience of using btc in el salvador?

Can you simply go to a money counter, atm, restaurant, and buy/sell/use btc?

news & reality are mostly different things.

Bitcoin is legal in El Salvador and Bitcoin is treated like FIAT money, so using ATMs or other services is normal there.  However, those who want to fake Tax and try to fake TAX may try to keep themselves hidden by using decentralized wallets, but it is doubtful whether it is possible to keep their Bitcoin transactions hidden there. Because before keeping the bitcoins in non-custodial wallet, they have to buy bitcoins through a banking sector and from then on they will fall on the trucking list. so it is better there to use bitcoin openly without trying make them hidden

[Maus0728]

The fact that bitcoin is Legal tender is forced all companies to accept them to settle payments, they may argue that they do not have devices to accept bitcoin, but in theory,there must be places that accepts bitcoin in any city you visit in El Salvador at the least hotels and destinations that tourists visit.

That should be the way I think, if you want to adopt bitcoin as a legal tender, you don't just say that it's a legal tender and go your own merry way because people need conditioning and there's times that they don't work the way that we want them to work. I think El Salvador putting some pressure into adoption of bitcoin in the country is a good thing because that way, people would know and when people know, they'll get curious and with more curious people, you'll probably going to see more people that will try and invest in bitcoin, of course that is if they did their research.

Hotels may sell bitcoin for dollars and rarely keep them.

They're a business and they need to pay the upkeep costs for maintaining the hotel and wouldn't this be better for the market, bitcoin being constantly moved around?

[Princess Leah]

But honestly, it's going to be a very interesting experience to see how people use Bitcoin as their day-to-day legal tender for transactions, businesses, and investments in El Salvador. However, there are practical considerations to address. For instance, how will marketers accurately evaluate the cost of their products for buyers using Bitcoin? Similarly, how will buyers stay informed about the current prices and determine when it's advantageous to use Bitcoin or not? Given the volatile nature of the Bitcoin market, there may be misunderstandings between buyers and sellers.

Unfortunately, I cannot provide firsthand information on how the people of El Salvador are using Bitcoin since I am not physically there. That is why, like others in this thread have suggested, it would be great to hear from citizens in El Salvador about their experiences with using Bitcoin as legal tender. Are they using cryptocurrency through stable coins for transactions, or are they using Bitcoin directly?

From the perspective of traders and investors, how do they come to an agreement on the value of the investment? Understanding the potential return on investment (ROI) and other factors is crucial when dealing with the volatility of the Bitcoin market. Without a clear understanding of market trends, it's challenging to predict profitability when investing in Bitcoin.

Just like you said, the best people that could give suitable answers to your questions are the El Salvadorians presently staying there. But I believe that for them to decide on making BTC as one of their legal tender or mode of transaction, they must have weighed the the benefits and loss it could yield to their economy hence they took the steps, but even though their might not be much El Salvadorians here in the forum to reveal that, you could also DYOR to get the answers to your questions.

 Asides accepting bitcoin as a legal tender, I think they also use the USD and with that there's a possibility that they could be carrying our transactions and other financial activities with the BTC and with dollar rate to come in agreement between customers and traders. However in a case where bitcoin is used directly then I think they might be using the current bitcoin price at the given time of purchasing good and service, although I doubt that and believe it's the latter since USDT is a stable coin.

[Promocodeudo]

I know about the news and it being made legal tender, but has anybody first hand experience of using btc in el salvador?

Can you simply go to a money counter, atm, restaurant, and buy/sell/use btc?

news & reality are mostly different things.

OP, when this particular of El Salvador making Bitcoin a legal tender in their country broke out many Bitcoin enthusiasts was very happy because such move will be a good foundation for more acceptance of Bitcoin in both other countries and institutions but what I don't know is if they have being using it as a means of payment of good and services rendered to persons in the country.
OP asked good question, this question is just like a survey and I believe that any forum user with such information will tell us here.
Even as we don't know if this legal tender and the acceptance has been approved accurately we should also know that there will be some limitation currently for the users because the transaction fees.

[blckhawk]

I don't know if we have an active member who is from El Salvador or visited El Salvador when they made Bitcoin a legal tender, perhaps try going through this tread El Salvador has become the first country to make #Bitcoin legal tender! 🇸🇻, you might find someone there talking about their experience using Bitcoin in El Salvador.

If there's one member, they would've talked about it a long time ago even during the process of the legalization of bitcoin in the country but there seems to be no indication of any of that and there's like 6.3 million people in the country and in a global scale especially in a forum like this that's part obscure but famous among the bitcoin circle, I think that they're a little too less to be stumbling upon this even if they know about bitcoin, some have probably known about bitcoin not in a traditional way which is searching through their browsers on the Internet, with how it became a legal tender, I do think that they've learned it by how the people are using it.

[terrific]

I know about the news and it being made legal tender, but has anybody first hand experience of using btc in el salvador?

Can you simply go to a money counter, atm, restaurant, and buy/sell/use btc?

news & reality are mostly different things.

I have watched some videos that you can use it to pay services despite that many citizens still not aware of what btc is.
The one that I have seen is able to purchase from the locals and pay it with btc and get to pay the bills. Just like us, they're normally using it with anything that we can purchase with it despite not being there physically.

[Marvell1]

I know about the news and it being made legal tender, but has anybody first hand experience of using btc in el salvador?

Can you simply go to a money counter, atm, restaurant, and buy/sell/use btc?

news & reality are mostly different things.

I have watched some videos that you can use it to pay services despite that many citizens still not aware of what btc is.
The one that I have seen is able to purchase from the locals and pay it with btc and get to pay the bills. Just like us, they're normally using it with anything that we can purchase with it despite not being there physically.

Can you give us videos you've seen about El Salvador? El Salvador has accepted bitcoin as legal tender, meaning it is the currency used in that country. But what people wonder is will more people use bitcoin as their everyday payment currency? And will all stores, restaurants...accept bitcoin or are there still many stores not ready for it? There was no one here who lived in El Salvador or had been there to tell us.

But I remember, many people declared that they were fed up with their country banning bitcoin and they wanted to move to a country where bitcoin was legal. After over a year, I still haven't seen anyone update that they've been to El Salvador or any other country where bitcoin is legal. Perhaps only those people can tell us the answer.

[kryptqnick]

It costs a lot of accommodation to go and experience it directly, instead of having to go there, I would rather use the money to accumulate more Bitcoins.

News and reality sometimes don't match, but in the case of El Salvador making Bitcoin legal tender, that's not bullshit. I didn't experience it directly, but we can see it from video evidence from uploaders on YouTube.

- Trying to buy food with Bitcoin in El Salvador
- Using BITCOIN in EL SALVADOR | First Impressions
- The TRUTH about BITCOIN in EL SALVADOR (Bitcoin Beach Tour)

Even though the country has officially made Bitcoin legal tender, quite a few El Salvadorans are not happy and prefer not to implement Bitcoin in their businesses. You can see that from a short interview in The Infuriating Reality of Using Bitcoin in El Salvador by Bloomberg Quicktake.

Thank you for this! The videos are very practical because they show real experience of a person, and it's very convenient that the videos are in English. It seems that it really works, there's infrastructure for it available. But you need some sort of wallet that allows fast transactions (an official custodial wallet by El Salvador, or a lightning wallet that one of the vloggers used in the videos). There's also a detailed Bitcoin ATM experience in the second video, which some people might find interesting as well. Interesting that the guy in the first video tried a couple of places, but their Bitcoin QR codes didn't work for him. So it's not all that smooth and simple.

[Patikno]

It costs a lot of accommodation to go and experience it directly, instead of having to go there, I would rather use the money to accumulate more Bitcoins.

News and reality sometimes don't match, but in the case of El Salvador making Bitcoin legal tender, that's not bullshit. I didn't experience it directly, but we can see it from video evidence from uploaders on YouTube.

- Trying to buy food with Bitcoin in El Salvador
- Using BITCOIN in EL SALVADOR | First Impressions
- The TRUTH about BITCOIN in EL SALVADOR (Bitcoin Beach Tour)

Even though the country has officially made Bitcoin legal tender, quite a few El Salvadorans are not happy and prefer not to implement Bitcoin in their businesses. You can see that from a short interview in The Infuriating Reality of Using Bitcoin in El Salvador by Bloomberg Quicktake.

Thank you for this! The videos are very practical because they show real experience of a person, and it's very convenient that the videos are in English. It seems that it really works, there's infrastructure for it available. But you need some sort of wallet that allows fast transactions (an official custodial wallet by El Salvador, or a lightning wallet that one of the vloggers used in the videos). There's also a detailed Bitcoin ATM experience in the second video, which some people might find interesting as well. Interesting that the guy in the first video tried a couple of places, but their Bitcoin QR codes didn't work for him. So it's not all that smooth and simple.

That's all I got about transactions using Bitcoin in El Salvador, not everything went smoothly because the average conventional shop doesn't really support Bitcoin. Only modern shops will run smoothly, such as buying coffee at Starbucks with Bitcoin as in the second video. Unfortunately we don't have users from this country to provide a more real experience regarding the conditions there.

Do you know the latest news about El Salvador? it was about the president who would buy 1 Bitcoin every day.

[Zanab247]

Bitcoin in El Salvador is a buy only idea, because since 2021 they have started holding bitcoins and until today their bitcoin holdings have a profit of 50% to 60% above every bitcoin. Therefore, the government of El Salvador, Naib Bukele, said that he will not make a decision to sell the accumulated bitcoins now. He has thought about holding for a long time and I like his thinking. The more bitcoins you accumulate, the more benefits you stand to earn. At present, the government of El Salvador sees the decision to hold Bitcoin as the most important.

El Salvador country was the first country that make BTC legal tender and it has make bitcoiners to use their BTC positive to build up a good business that will make them to introduce BTC as a payment to attract more customers in the country.

The best step a government will take is to buy a huge amount of BTC and hodl for long which is what El Salvador government did in the past to enable to developed some of the things in the country that is attracting foreigner to come into the country to establish business.

[adpinbr]

Yes, Bitcoin has been accepted as a day to day transaction in El Salvador yes people are using it and it working perfectly because of how easy and simple it is, one thing about bitcoin is that nobody monitors your transactions and you are the only one that is in charge of your account which is know as your (bitcoin wallet) their is this joy you get when you understand that the government has nothing to do with your daily transactions that is when you understand bitcoin and using a decentralized wallet to do your personal transactions, nobody watches you.

[Bonny070]

although they are rumours that el Salvador citizen buy and sell in there country, if el Salvador lagalis bitcoin that's a welcoming in there country. i know many countries had about bitcoin, but el Salvador introduced uses of bitcoin for buy and selling is good. my country we acknowledge bitcoin, but the government of the day have not legalis it in my Nigeria.i hope my Nigeria will do the same as el Salvador. I'm looking forward to see the same thing in my country Nigeria.

[Distinctin]

That question can only answered by the people of El Salvador, that's the only valid answer to this question anyway. Other people that's living outside the country like me isn't going to be able to answer that, maybe those that have visited the country might be able to tell you but others would either lie or speculate about the situation, it's going to be difficult to do so OP since there's not a lot of members here that are willing to reveal that they're from El Salvador or maybe there's no people in this forum that's from El Salvador, it's a small country after all.

Absolutely. Only the residents of El Salvador can answer that and can even add more information on how they are able to utilize bitcoin at their convenience. But the fact that bitcoin has already been considered as a legal tender in El Salvador, then I’m sure that they are already using it as a payment currency on their everyday living, even though USD is their official currency. However, it’s still different when someone from El Salvador will answer that question, at least we can be sure that he’s stating based on his personal experience, and not just from his own researches.

[Blitzboy]

That question can only answered by the people of El Salvador, that's the only valid answer to this question anyway. Other people that's living outside the country like me isn't going to be able to answer that, maybe those that have visited the country might be able to tell you but others would either lie or speculate about the situation, it's going to be difficult to do so OP since there's not a lot of members here that are willing to reveal that they're from El Salvador or maybe there's no people in this forum that's from El Salvador, it's a small country after all.

But honestly, it's going to be a very interesting experience to see how people use Bitcoin as their day-to-day legal tender for transactions, businesses, and investments in El Salvador. However, there are practical considerations to address. For instance, how will marketers accurately evaluate the cost of their products for buyers using Bitcoin? Similarly, how will buyers stay informed about the current prices and determine when it's advantageous to use Bitcoin or not? Given the volatile nature of the Bitcoin market, there may be misunderstandings between buyers and sellers.

Unfortunately, I cannot provide firsthand information on how the people of El Salvador are using Bitcoin since I am not physically there. That is why, like others in this thread have suggested, it would be great to hear from citizens in El Salvador about their experiences with using Bitcoin as legal tender. Are they using cryptocurrency through stable coins for transactions, or are they using Bitcoin directly?

From the perspective of traders and investors, how do they come to an agreement on the value of the investment? Understanding the potential return on investment (ROI) and other factors is crucial when dealing with the volatility of the Bitcoin market. Without a clear understanding of market trends, it's challenging to predict profitability when investing in Bitcoin.

Its like opening the future of finance in our backyard. Marketers must be precise when pricing Bitcoin. They must be tech-savvy, use real-time data, and stay ahead. Imagine Wall Street for daily life. For purchasers, staying informed is wise and necessary. With Bitcoin's price swings, you must know when to hold and fold. Use apps, notifications, etc. Using technology to your advantage.

Bitcoin or stablecoins provide our El Salvadoran friends options and stability. Direct Bitcoin transactions offer freedom, whereas stablecoins provide stability. A roller coaster and a picturesque train journey are both thrilling, but the experience is very different. Investors and traders, listen: Negotiation and information are key to value agreement. The market's volatility presents an opportunity. Do your research, recognize the hazards, and start. Remember, no risk, no reward.

[The Cryptovator]

It must be accepted everywhere when it's legal tender. Legal tender means you are obliged to accept something when a second party offers it, For example, your fiat is legal tender, wherever you offer to exchange something, they are obliged to accept your fiat. El Salvador accepts Bitcoin as legal tender, and they have to accept it everywhere besides their native currency's. I haven't visited El Salvador, but these are the basic rules of legal tender. You may search on Google for how legal tender works. Also, you may find some other data on how El Salvador Bitcoin payments work. 

[Russlenat]

A good and curious question. Yes, certainly in theory, Bitcoin has been officially accepted in El Salvador and citizens can buy anything even from grocery stores with Bitcoin, but in practice on the ground, has this really happened? We need someone living in El Salvador to tell us the facts.

Implementation on the ground is somewhat difficult, because El Salvador is a small and poor country and does not have the appropriate infrastructure to use Bitcoin perfectly. There is also a problem with Bitcoin itself, as it is not yet suitable for small and quick daily transactions.

I believe implementing bitcoin would not be easy especially if it’s a small country and the people are still naive about the current innovation and technology like bitcoin. The struggle is actually real in the beginning. But Bukele made it despite of the strikes at first, and now the people are slowly enjoying the advantages of bitcoin. But if ask if they are actually using it on a daily basis, then only a responsible citizen of El Salvador can prove that, since all we have right now are just speculations coming from the news that concern El Salvador.