on the crypto
Tuesday, the price of Bitcoin (find out how buy Bitcoins) plummeted to a low in nearly a month, going from $ 52.000 to less than $ 43.000 at one point.
An opposition politician said the fall lost 3 million dollars to one of the poorest countries in Latin America.
Is the dream already over?
The launch of bitcoin in El Salvador was far from what President Nayib Bukele would have predicted when he began his daring experiment.
Platforms like Apple and Huawei didn't offer the government-backed digital wallet, known as Chivo, and the servers were taken offline after they couldn't keep up with user registrations.
But, as the day progressed, Chivo began appearing on multiple platforms and was accepted by the likes of Starbucks and McDonald's.
The government even gave Salvadorans $ 30 each in Bitcoin to encourage adoption. He says bitcoin could save the country $ 400 million a year in transaction fees on funds sent from overseas.
However, using data from the World Bank and the government, the BBC calculates this is closer to $ 170 million.
"We have to break the paradigms of the past," President Bukele tweeted. "El Salvador has the right to advance towards the world that matters".
The opposition attacks
Ed Hernandez runs a family shop in San Salvador where customers buy basic necessities like rice, beans and cleaning products. It is truly "on-board".
"During the pandemic, it will be nice not to use physical cash," he told the BBC, adding that it protects him from customers who pay with counterfeit banknotes.
What wasn't good timing for El Salvador, however, was the slump Bitcoin suffered on its first day as legal tender, dropping 20% at one point.
"It was a bad day for President Bukele, his government and his Bitcoin experiment," opposition politician Johnny Wright Sol told the BBC.
“Most of the population knows very little about cryptocurrencies. What we do know is that this is a very volatile market. Today it has certainly been made manifest ”.
The optimism of the neighborhood shopkeeper
Wright Sol claimed that Bitcoin was not a suitable national currency and was hastily passed: “The Bitcoin bill was passed in parliament with almost no debate. It only took about five hours to get approved.
“We are not cryptocurrency or Bitcoin haters, but we don't believe it should be mandatory for companies to be forced to accept Bitcoin in payment.
"The state supports these payments and takes the risk, but in the end we taxpayers are the whole state."
Mr. Wright Sol is not the only critic. More than 1.000 protesters gathered in front of the country's supreme court, where fireworks were set off and tires burned.
In addition to financial instability, some say adopting Bitcoin could fuel illicit transactions.
But Hernandez, the shopkeeper, is not discouraged by volatility: “I see it as a risk, yes, but like everything in life, there is a risk. When we have a shop, sometimes we buy a product and don't sell it. When others see a crisis, however, I see an opportunity ”.
