Bitcoin became legal tender over a year ago in El Salvador, and this didn't end well

In September 2021 El Salvador become the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. President Nayib Bukele also spent over $420 million dollars of public money to buy Bitcoin as an investment, and build the necessary infrastructure for the Chivo Wallet, a state custodial wallet. Since then, Bitcoin adoption has been negligible, their sovereign Bitcoin holdings have declined in value by over 58%. Salvadoran bonds are trading for pennies on the dollar, and the economy is on the brink of an economic catastrophe. In addition to that, crypto remittances represent only a 2% of all remittances, which is a failure because Nayib Bukele expected to be 20% by September 2022.

What happened to El Salvador's Bitcoin experiment and why was it such a failure? What happened to the Volcano Bonds? What about Bitcoin City? 

Even though 90% of businesses across the country accept Bitcoin, almost no one uses it. The government of El Salvador tried to increase adoption by offering a $30 dollars airdrop and Chivo Wallet discounts at gas stations. However, none of that worked since salvadorans prefer using FIAT for their daily economic activities. Nayib Bukele promised to install over 1,000 Bitcoin ATMs, however due to legal ongoing issues with Athena only 200 ATMs were installed. Early this year, AlphaPoint fixed the majority of Chivo Wallet issues but it was too little too late. People were losing thousands of dollars because of missing transactions on the Chivo Wallet, and sometimes the Bitcoin ATMs were low on cash which represented a problem for people who were trying to withdrawn remittances sent from abroad.

Back in November 2021, Bukele promised to release the Volcano Bonds, which were supposed to be a game changer for countries that needed to get funds. He also promised to build Bitcoin City and to purchase $500 million dollars worth of Bitcoin. None of that happened because the Volcano Bonds are dead-on-arrival. BlockStream is no longer involved, a crypto securities law was not approved by Salvadoran Congress, and the Bitcoin price crashed. 

Bukele kept "buying the dip", using taxpayers' money of course. El Salvador is down over $58 million dollars, which it is a huge amount of money for a poor country.

People are no longer protesting about the Bitcoin Law, instead are demanding information about how much money was used to fund this experiment. Nayib Bukele has been classifying any information regarding the implementation of Bitcoin as legal tender until 2029. As of right now, no one knows who holds the keys of the wallet that holds the Bitcoins purchased by Bukele. In fact, no one knows if any Bitcoin was purchased at all! We have to blindly trust Bukele tweets.

Look, I've been accused of being funded by George Soros, being a NoCoiner, a ButtCoiner, and even of being paid by one of El Salvador's opposition parties. None of that is true (I even hold Solana, Algo, Voyager, ETH, BTC, VET). You can't ignore all the red flags around the implementation of Bitcoin in El Salvador. You can't ignore all the corruption and shady things that surround President Nayib Bukele. As much as I want Bitcoin to be adopted by regular folks, this is not the way. Supporting a undemocratic regime just because it hypes Bitcoin is not ok.

Bitcoin is here to stay.