El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, recently shared that the country’s adoption of Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender has not lived up to his initial hopes.
During an interview with Time magazine, published on August 29, Bukele admitted that while the adoption of Bitcoin in El Salvador has been a “net positive,” it hasn’t been as widespread as he anticipated.
He observed that many Salvadorans use the cryptocurrency, and large businesses, such as McDonald’s, accept it, yet overall adoption has fallen short of the government’s expectations.
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However, Bukele emphasized:
The positive aspect is that it is voluntary; we have never forced anyone to adopt it. We offered it as an option, and those who chose to use it have benefited from the rise in Bitcoin.
He acknowledged that more could be done to integrate Bitcoin into daily life but stressed that it is fine if people prefer not to use it, highlighting that El Salvador remains a free country.
Bukele also addressed criticism of his leadership style. Reflecting on being labeled authoritarian, he said:
Everything in life has a cost, and being called authoritarian doesn’t bother me much. I don’t like it, but it doesn’t keep me up at night either.
Bukele first attracted attention from the crypto community when he announced plans for El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender during the 2021 Bitcoin Conference in Miami.
Since then, he has pushed for initiatives to make the country a hub for cryptocurrency, including developing a “Bitcoin City” and launching a training program to educate Salvadoran public servants on BTC.
As Bukele is expected to remain in office until 2029, the future of Bitcoin in El Salvador remains a topic of global interest, even with the current challenges in achieving widespread adoption.
Gode is a Web3 Market Analyst who researches the most important industry events and interprets how they affect the wider Web3 space. Her formal education in media culture & digital rhetoric allows her to employ a methodical approach to evaluating critical Web3 news data, including large-scale events and the wider social sentiment within the ecosystem.Gode is a mutilingual professional, having studied in multiple universities all across Europe. This allows her to have a one-of-a-kind opportunity to analyze Web3 social sentiments spanning different cultures and languages and, in turn, develop a much deeper understanding of how the Web3 space is growing within different communities. With the rest of her team, Gode works to identify crucial crypto news patterns and provide unbiased and data-driven information.Gode’s passions include working and communicating with people, and when she’s not researching Web3 news, she spends her time traveling and watching true crime documentaries.
