The president acknowledged that bitcoin doesn’t have the adoption we expected, but attracted tourism and investment.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele confirmed that his government allocated $135 million for the purchase of bitcoin on El Salvador’s name since its adoption in September 2021.
El Salvador invested $135 million, now we have $400 million in bitcoin in the public wallet alone. We’ve done well as government. To the Salvadorans who used it and saved with him, he has done super well, for obvious reasons, for the increase in price, said the president in an interview with the magazineTime, published on Thursday, August 29.
The Bitcoin Office, a delegation created in 2022 to promote the use of cryptocurrency, reports that El Salvador has 5,857 bitcoins, which at the current price – of $60,366 – exceed $356 million.
El Salvador became the first country to adopt bitcoin as a legal tender, three years ago, on the premise that it would lower the cost of sending remittances and boost access to financial services in people who do not have traditional banking coverage.
Initially, the government built cashiers and threw the Chivo Wallet purse, with a $30 welcome bonus. However, several surveys conducted over the past three years confirm that few people used the app again after spending the money.
“Bbitcoin hasn’t had the adoption we were expecting,” Bukele acknowledged in the interview. “I expected more adoption, definitely, but we always are precious to be a free and free country in every way,” he added.
I feel it could have worked better, I think there’s still time to do some things, but it hasn’t left us anything wrong, on the contrary, it’s given us branding, it’s brought us investment, it’s brought us tourism.
Nayib Bukele
President of El Salvador
Bukele made a simile between the freedom Salvadorans have to use the cryptocurrency in routine operations and the freedom of opposition to demonstrate. Can’t you find a picture of a cop of our cop hitting someone with a macan, there’s no. I’m not saying we’re never going to do it, he said.
The president also knew that the adoption of the cryptocurrency generated some criticism, but that is part of the trade. One of the most controversial issues was the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s request to withdraw the category of legal tender for risks to the economy, interpreted by the government as interference and was even one of the brakes to sign a funding program in 2021.
The president insisted that the negative things that make us noise are non-existent – and, on the contrary, there were more benefits for the country due to the attraction of tourism and investments.
This article has been translated after first appearing in Diario El Mundo