In summary
- El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has admitted that his experiment with Bitcoin has not had the widespread adoption he had hoped for.
- Bukele acknowledged that fewer people in the country are using Cryptocurrency, but stressed that its adoption is voluntary.
- Although the experiment has not gone as planned, Bukele said that it has not resulted in anything negative and that there is still time to make improvements.
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has been an outspoken and fervent proponent of Bitcoin. While he has long battled with critics, he has now admitted that his Bitcoin experiment hasn’t gone exactly as planned.
In an interview with TIME magazine published Thursday, the “world’s coolest dictator,” as Bukele once described himself, acknowledged that fewer people in the small Central American country might be using cryptocurrency.
“Bitcoin has not had the mainstream adoption we had hoped for,” he said, according to the publication.
“It hasn’t had the adoption we expected,” Bukele continued. “The positive aspect is that it’s voluntary—we’ve never forced anyone to adopt it.”
President Bukele announced in 2021 that Bitcoin would become legal tender—alongside the U.S. dollar. The policy implies that businesses must accept the cryptocurrency if they have the technological means to do so.
The eccentric leader—a favorite of the American right and libertarians—also began buying the cryptocurrency to put on the government’s balance sheet.
Decrypt visited the country that year, and adoption was slow: many businesses still didn’t accept it (except for big franchises like McDonald’s), and Salvadorans seemed indifferent to the complex technology.
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The policy has also been criticized by the IMF and US politicians—but President Bukele has pressed ahead full steam ahead.
El Salvador now holds 5,857.76 BTC valued at $348,202,738, according to a government website.
The millennial leader said Salvadorans have the opportunity to hold an asset considered by some to be a store of value. The government gave citizens $30 worth of Bitcoin in 2021.
“If[Salvadorans]use it now, they’ll probably make money in the future,” he told TIME. “If they don’t want to use it, this is a free country. I expected more adoption, definitely, but we always prided ourselves on being a free country, free in every sense.”
President Bukele said that although the Bitcoin experiment “could have worked better, and there is still time to make some improvements,” it had not resulted in “anything negative.”
The leader still enjoys huge popularity at home for other policies. Crime in the country has declined since he launched an intense crackdown on the country’s hyper-violent street gangs by jailing 1% of the population.
Bukele added in the interview with TIME that Salvadoran authorities under his supervision did not imprison criminals to punish them, but to protect citizens. “(Gangs) cannot be in the community harassing their neighbors,” he said.
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