In early September, the small Central American country became the first in the world to officially adopt bitcoin as legal tender. Without being unanimous, neither among the experts, nor among its inhabitants.
For the past few days, the most expensive hotels in the capital of El Salvador, as well as the boutique hotels for surfers on its Pacific coast, have been filled with young people who speak with an American accent. They came to see the arrival of bitcoin up close. With their T-shirts stamped with an orange capital B on the chest, they look like members of a cult.
This giant B is sometimes followed by a word, “Bitcoin” for some, “Bukele” for others: those who have chosen the second option, that of the name of the Salvadoran president, know that the success of cryptocurrency depends largely part of what will happen in this small Central American country.
For many experts, Nayib Bukele plays Monopoly with public finances. But for cryptocurrency fans, the so-called “millenial president” (he is 40 years old) has become an example of courage and audacity since Jack Mallers, the founder of Strike, a platform for buying and selling to sell bitcoins, gave him his blessing.
On June 6, Mallers, 27, showed up to the Bitcoin Conference 2021, in Miami, in a rapper's sweatshirt, cap and sneakers, and cried in front of hundreds of people while explaining all the beautiful things that cryptocurrencies are. can do for poor children.
A three-page law
The highlight of the gala was the broadcast of a pre-recorded video, where Nayib Bukele announced the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador. At those words, the audience literally went into a trance, jumping to their feet and cheering and screaming as if they had just seen a batsman kick the ball out of the stadium during a baseball game. A few days later, a three-page law was passed in El Salvador, setting a radically different economic course for one of the poorest countries on the continent.
Three months later and 5,000 kilometers away, Jorge Ovidio Ramírez, 55, sells freshly drawn goat's milk in the center of San Salvador. The most modern object next to it is a parasol. Bitcoin, “it’s not for us poor people, he says. Nobody hands out money just like that.”
A few steps from him, in Arce Street, Yesenia Ríos sells shoes. She confides:
I don't even know how to use the phone. My son is trying to teach me. I thought this currency was already working in other countries but I just found out that we are the first to use it. I don't know what this man [Bukele] based himself on to do that."