On ‘Bitcoin Beach’, tourists and residents hail El Salvador’s adoption of cryptocurrency

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By Wilfredo Pineda

EL ZONTE, El Salvador (Reuters) – In the Salvadoran seaside town of El Zonte, a surfing hotspot known as “Bitcoin Beach,” tourists and some residents have announced the president’s decision to make the nation a ‘Central America the first in the world to adopt cryptocurrency https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/el-salvador-leads-world-into-cryptocurrency-bitcoin-legal-tender-2021-09-07 as legal tender.

Many businesses on the popular vacation site adopted bitcoin three years ago, after an anonymous donation of digital currency kicked off the Bitcoin Beach project.

Nowadays, everyone from Canadian tourists to local construction workers trades or receives salaries in bitcoin, a dynamic that President Nayib Bukele has hailed in his drive to embrace cryptocurrency at home. nationwide.

“We are all paid in bitcoin and for us it is better,” said Gilberto Valenzuela, construction worker.

Canadian tourist Simon, who declined to give his last name, agreed.

“I pay almost everything here in bitcoin,” he said. “So it’s actually very, very easy.”

Beyond the tourism-dependent economy of El Zonte, proponents of bitcoin adoption say it will help Salvadorians save hundreds of millions of dollars a year on remittance commissions, everything by providing access to financial services to those who do not have a bank account.

But critics of bitcoin adoption say the move could fuel money laundering and financial instability, and that the poorest may struggle to access the technology needed to make bitcoin work in El Salvador, where almost half of the population does not have internet and many others have only sporadic access. .

Fintech Bitso, a cryptocurrency platform, said on Tuesday that it would be the primary service provider for Chivo, the bitcoin digital wallet launched in El Salvador.

Earlier on Tuesday, Salvadorans trying to download the Chivo digital wallet, which the government promoted by promising $ 30 worth of bitcoin for each user, discovered that it was not available on popular app stores. Then Bukele tweeted that the government temporarily unplugged it, in order to connect more servers to keep up with the demand.

(Reporting by Wilfredo Pineda in El Zonte, El Salvador; writing by Laura Gottesdiener; editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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