El Salvador President Nayib Bukele Concedes Bitcoin Adoption Has Fallen Short Despite $265 Million Profits

In a recent interview, El Salvador’s Bitcoin-loving president Nayib Bukele discussed the impact of his BTC gamble after adopting the maiden cryptocurrency as legal tender. While Bukele acknowledged that Bitcoin had not witnessed the widespread adoption in the country as he would have liked, he emphasized that his BTC strategy has been “net positive.”

Bitcoin Experiment A Mixed Bag, Bukele Opines

In an interview with TIME magazine published Aug.29, Nayib Bukele said his Bitcoin bet has had mixed results so far.

“Yes and no, a lot more could definitely be done,” Bukele stated in response to the interviewer’s question about whether Bitcoin adoption in the tiny Central American nation has been a resounding success.

“Bitcoin hasn’t had the widespread adoption we hoped for. Many Salvadorans use it. The majority of large businesses in the country have it, Bukele explained. “You can go to a McDonald’s, a supermarket, or a hotel and pay with Bitcoin. It hasn’t had the adoption we expected.”

Bukele pointed out the voluntary nature of Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador, stressing that no one has ever been forced into embracing it. Instead, those who chose to use Bitcoin have reaped the benefits of its surging price.

“If [Salvadorans] use it now, they will probably have gains in the future,” he told TIME. “If they do not want to use it, this is a free country. I expected more adoption, definitely, but we always prided ourselves on being a free country, free in every way,” the eccentric president stated. 

Optimism Amid Difficulties

President Bukele passed the bill to legalize Bitcoin as legal tender — alongside the US dollar — in El Salvador to much fanfare in 2021. This meant that businesses needed to accept the world’s largest crypto by market cap if they had the necessary technological means to do so. 

The millennial leader has also spent $135 million in acquiring Bitcoin to put on El Salvador’s balance sheet, now valued at nearly $400 million. This means the country is sitting on unrealized profits of around $265 million in its public wallet. 

According to Bukele, positioning El Salvador as a Bitcoin-friendly country has not only benefited the government financially but also attracted international attention and investments despite continuous criticism from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“It gave us branding, it brought us investments, it brought us tourism,” he opined. “I do believe that the positive outcomes outweigh the negative, and the issues that have been highlighted are relatively minor.”

Bukele admitted that although the Bitcoin gamble “could have worked better, and there is still time to make some improvements,” it hadn’t resulted in “anything negative.”

He also highlighted El Salvador’s “First Mover” advantage, citing the expanding footprint of Wall Street companies in the crypto sector and Bitcoin taking center stage in this year’s U.S. presidential election.

“I’m not going to say it’s the currency of the future, but there’s a lot of future in that currency,” the Salvadoran president optimistically concluded.