Bukele: Bitcoin Hasn’t Had the Widespread Adoption We Hoped For

[TomPluz]

El Salvador’s pro-crypto president Nayib Bukele said that despite Bitcoin’s strong presence in the Central American nation’s economic growth, adoption hasn’t met the expectations.

Bukele, latest to feature on TIME magazine cover, noted that the country’s Bitcoin strategy is generally “net positive.” However, Bitcoin adoption rate has fallen short.

He said that the digital asset has played a major role in the lives of many Salvadorans in day-to-day payments. The country has never forced anyone to adopt it, rather, offered it as an option, the president noted.

“It hasn’t had the adoption we expected,” he added. “I expected more adoption, definitely, but we always prided ourselves on being a free country, free in every way.” Bukele also advocated people to use Bitcoin now, as they “will probably have gains in the future.”

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How should we take the reality of the things happening in El Salvador as far as its adoption of Bitcoin  as a national currency? As for me, this is telling us that Bitcoin may be harder to be adopted as a currency just like the usual fiat money we know and it is principally because of its volatility.

Can we then say that Bitcoin is good for holding and not for the usual payments like buying groceries or buying a cup of coffee all because we may feel we are letting go of an opportunity that in the next day the value of Bitcoin would go up?

[yhiaali3]

Unfortunately yes, most people who have seen the incredible rise of Bitcoin will not give up their expensive Bitcoin for a cup of coffee or a piece of pizza as the early adopters of Bitcoin did when its price was very low.

Back then, the early pioneers of Bitcoin believed in it as a currency that would change the future of the world, but today the view of Bitcoin has changed. Most people now see it as a profitable long-term investment and not a daily peer-to-peer payment method as Satoshi intended.

That's why you will find that most people will not use Bitcoin to buy simple daily necessities.

[target]

Yes. As much as we could disagree for BTC not to be great for making transactions daily.  Its not really ideal for such usage. What it could be used these days is to make good profit when the price goes up which means its still the USD that works best.

If ever there come a time adoption spreads like everyone in the locals using BTC, you can just hope the transaction fee is just 1 satoshi.

[Kemarit]

At least though he has been honest about it. But it you look at it though, it is still in it's infancy, even if we look historically, Bitcoin hasn't been adoption world wide as well. There are still a lot of countries or government around the world that is still in the middle ground as far as adoption goes.

So I'm not surprise though and probably it will take another ten years or more to see what is the numbers. But I do hope that Bukele will not give up his dreams to make Bitcoin be an option in his countries and so with other nations around the world that is pro-Bitcoin. Still a lot of challenges to them and for Bitcoin to get recognized.

[Bobcrypto]

In my opinion, Bitcoin has performed excellently well in it's few years of launched, about 14 years ago, and adoptions so far can not be rated low, at leat, it has gone a little higher in recent times. Adoptions is always a continuous thing, at certain points it may look low but it is actually going up gradually and will be on the moon.
The Bitcoin community is still very young, I believe that with time more countries will come onboard; there should not be weak mind on current levels of adoptions because there shall be increase adoptions in near future.

[ABCbits]

People already know this fact for years, where only few Bitcoin enthusiast would actually use their BTC to pay for goods/services. And while people could convert certain amount of fiat to Bitcoin and shortly later then use the Bitcoin for payment, the additional steps and fees aren't worth it.

[robelneo]

Can we then say that Bitcoin is good for holding and not for the usual payments like buying groceries or buying a cup of coffee all because we may feel we are letting go of an opportunity that in the next day the value of Bitcoin would go up?

Yes we can conclude that because part of the community is not on using Bitcoin in a day-to-day basis but more on holding it for profit as logn as the volatility is high and the market is stable, people will prefer fiat over Bitcoin, its hard to educate people about using Bitcoin in a day to day transaction when in the back of your mind you can make a profit by holding it instead of using it.
This experience is an eye opener that we cannot use Bitcoin as one currency, the ideal is that Bitcoin and fiat co exist.

[Lucius]

What he admits today has been known for a long time, but the fact is that in this particular case it is not only Bitcoin that is the problem, considering that ES is a country where the majority of the population is engaged in agriculture, which means that they work hard every day and that they may rely a lot on trade through commodity exchange, and less on money trading.

In addition, as president, he advocated the idea of ​​BTC being something that will serve for cheaper sending of remittances, considering that they have a lot of expats, especially in countries like the US. As far as I know, Chivo ATMs have been installed in all major US cities, but old habits die hard, and the volatility of BTC obviously discourages many from sending money home that way.

Bitcoin can be a good option for payment, although you should always consider the fees and the fact that confirmations for on-chain transactions are not instant. Of course, LN is something that can overcome these problems, but I think that most people (generally) find paying with BTC complicated and do not see any advantage in it.

[MrSpasybo]

How should we take the reality of the things happening in El Salvador as far as its adoption of Bitcoin  as a national currency? As for me, this is telling us that Bitcoin may be harder to be adopted as a currency just like the usual fiat money we know and it is principally because of its volatility.

Can we then say that Bitcoin is good for holding and not for the usual payments like buying groceries or buying a cup of coffee all because we may feel we are letting go of an opportunity that in the next day the value of Bitcoin would go up?

This is completely normal and has been predicted: BTC isn't really used frequently for micropayments, it's often seen as an investment asset. When the market is positive, people prefer to hold because they're afraid that if they use it for payments today, they'll lose out on profits tomorrow. When the market is negative, people fear that the BTC in their hands will lose value. In the end, BTC is only really bought and sold by traders or stored by long-term investors, not used to buy bread or fried chicken ^^

We're still in the early stages of the crypto era, and it's difficult for people to use BTC as frequently as they've been accustomed to using fiat for the past few decades. But we don't need to worry too much about this, everything takes time to become familiar in life, including higher prices for necessities, or the price of goods calculated in satoshi.

[electronicash]

more than a decade past, only less than 10% of the people around the world have touched Bitcoin. Binance itself has announced they got a massive milestone of 200M users but the population of the world is more than 8Billion. we just can expect adoption at rate but at least in the online community there is a constant transactions going on to keep the economy going.

but i remember El Salvador boasted about their Bitcoin City and the Bitcoin beach where Max Keiser been podcasting about. if it ain't working, i guess they need to airdrop $30 Bitcoin once gain to each wallet. 

[dkbit98]

I think that Bukele and his sponsors made a biggest mistake when they created fully custodial bitcoin Chivo wallet, instead of educating people about importance of non-custodial wallets.
They are also forcing Lightning Network in same Chivo wallet, and that project is total disaster pushed and promoted by several people on top.
If he wants to increase adoption he should accept Bitcoin payments in all stores and government services, but he can't force people to use Bitcoin.

[Z-tight]

People who cared to look for facts have known this for a very long time, people only downloaded the custodial chivo wallet so they can get the $30 bonus from it, people in El Salvador do not use BTC. I am not even sure if many people over there really understand what BTC is and if they can use self custodial BTC wallets like Electrum, BlueWallet, etc.

The government should focus on teaching people how to use BTC in the self custodial and decentralized way, that is the only way they can truly appreciate BTC and use it.

[Zed0X]

Putting the issue of the custodial wallet aside, I would be hesitant to use BTC for everyday spending as well if I know the value could increase more in the future. As for merchants who accepts BTC, they probably prefer to convert them immediately because they don't want to be caught in the volatility.

[SamReomo]

To be honest, Bitcoin couldn't be taken as primary currency of a country because of its volatile nature and the fees associated with Bitcoin transactions. It can be used as a secondary currency where citizens get option to receive payments in Bitcoin but not as a primary currency.

I believe for primary currency CBDC's might work but still that approach isn't going to be a good one because we all know that there can be bugs and errors in code base of a cryptocurrency and if someone finds a vulnerability and exploits it then most people will end up losing their money.

So in my opinion Bitcoin and any other cryptocurrency or CBDC can be option way of payment in a country and should get promoted on national basis by the government of that country but people should still have option to choose fiat over it if they life.

[Asiska02]

How should we take the reality of the things happening in El Salvador as far as its adoption of Bitcoin  as a national currency? As for me, this is telling us that Bitcoin may be harder to be adopted as a currency just like the usual fiat money we know and it is principally because of its volatility.

Let’s even say that bitcoin is not a volatile currency, do you still think it’ll be easier to be adopted by the government? The government will never allow any decentralized digital currency to be used more over theirs because that will kill the value of their own currencies faster. They’re typically against it and will use the volatile nature of it as one of the reasons they’ll not adopt it.

Can we then say that Bitcoin is good for holding and not for the usual payments like buying groceries or buying a cup of coffee all because we may feel we are letting go of an opportunity that in the next day the value of Bitcoin would go up?

The main purpose may be for the former but the later is more adopted and that has enabled more people to cherish the currency more and adopted it. The mass adoption of it came often from the people that have embraced it for use as an investable asset and not a currency to be used for daily expenses and transactions. The primary purpose of bitcoin is to serve as alternative to fiat currency but today, as it stands as alternative to it, bitcoin enthusiasts have also leverage into using it for investment purposes.