According to a latest report, Bitcoin is struggling in El Salvador, a country in Central America. This was, in fact, the very first country which made Crypto asset legal tender. According to the US based nonprofit Research Organisation- National Bureau of Economic Research, it has been observed that the maximum number of people are yet to take up crypto payments freely. However, the businesses in the country seem to be quite optimistic that Bitcoin will be able to acquire mainstream traction gradually.
Back in September 2021, El Salvador was the first country in the world which allowed the public to use Bitcoin along with US dollars. They allowed this particular cryptocurrency for all transactions.
Researchers David Argente, Fernando E. Alvarez and Diana Van Patten came together and published a report on the matter titled “Are Cryptocurrencies Currencies? Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador”. In this report the trio revealed that they have spoken to more than 1,800 households in the country of El Salvador. And in this activity, they came to the conclusion that a very few people use it for transactions on a daily basis in El Salvador. The people who use it are mostly the young and the educated male population.
The report further claims that approximately only 20% of the respondents in El Salvador use Chivo (the state-sponsored wallet) and among those, a mere 10% are spending less cash and only 11% are reducing the usage of debit or credit cards. According to the Salvadorian government, they passed the Bitcoin law so that the citizens of the country would use Chivo wallet to pay their taxes or send remittances.
The citizens also received $30 worth in Bitcoin when they signed up for Chivo as a reward. However the report states that most of the users simply spent the Bitcoin and did not use the wallet any further.
Nonetheless, the government is still confident and optimistic that encouraging the El Salvador citizens to use Bitcoin will bring positive results eventually.
