After six months, El Salvador's Bitcoin experiment seems headed for failure
Mar 16, 2022
By Anna-Cat Brigida and Leo Schwartz
When El Salvador officially made Bitcoin legal tender in September 2021, José Bonilla was one of the first citizens to sign up for a government-backed digital wallet that lets anyone use the cryptocurrency. The 23-year-old Salvadoran, who runs a shoe store with his family in the tourist town of Concepción de Ataco, was looking forward to trying out the technology. He’d heard that it would reduce costs and speed up payments.
After a few days of overcoming technical glitches, Bonilla was up and running and accepting payments in Bitcoin from customers.
But the shine soon wore off. By February 2022, Bonilla’s list of complaints about Bitcoin was long: the only available Bitcoin ATM was too far away, the government helpline was slow, and the price was too volatile. One day, he lost a $25 transaction from a customer to technical issues and never heard back from the digital wallet’s customer service team. “I decided not to use it any more,” he said.
. . .
When President Nayib Bukele first announced the Bitcoin law in June 2021, he made a grand promise to his citizens. Adopting Bitcoin, he said, would digitize the economy, decrease dependence on the U.S. dollar, lower remittance fees — which account for about 20% of the country’s gross domestic product — and drive investment. El Salvador could become the first country to prove the transformative power of cryptocurrency on a national scale.
More:
https://cuencahighlife.com/after-six-months-el-salvadors-bitcoin-experiment-seems-headed-for-failure/
President Nayib Bukele
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