Has El Salvador’s Bitcoin Bet Been a Success?
Connor Sephton is a journalist based in London, who also works for Sky News and the BBC as a radio newsreader and online reporter. He has covered crypto since 2018 — reporting from major conferences...
Elena is the Features Lead at Cryptonews.com. With a Master's degree in science journalism from City University, London, she is passionate about exploring complex topics in the world of technology.
Key takeaways:
September 7, 2021 was one of the most significant days in Bitcoin’s history.
El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt BTC as legal tender — defying warnings from the International Monetary Fund.
It was a rapid rollout for the dramatic new policy, especially considering it had been announced by President Nayib Bukele just three months earlier.
Every single Salvadoran citizen could claim $30 in free Bitcoin if they downloaded the government’s Chivo app.
Meanwhile, Bukele excited the crypto markets by regularly announcing that the country was buying thousands of BTC to hold in reserve.
It was a seismic moment for the small Central American nation — not to mention the Bitcoiners working tirelessly to push this digital asset into the mainstream.
But both have faced huge challenges over the past three years.
Bukele embarked on an unprecedented and brutal security crackdown in his “war on gangs” — arresting tens of thousands of people and raising humanitarian concerns. Bitcoin tweets came few and far between as he grappled with the grim realities facing his country, and a controversial constitutional change meant he was elected for a second term.
Although Bitcoin hit fresh highs of $69,000 in November 2021, a punishing bear market soon followed. It lost 75% of its value over the next 12 months, and the
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