Almost a Third of Salvadorans Are Using the Bitcoin Wallet, Bukele Says
Some 2.1 million people are actively using Chivo, the president said.
Sep 27, 2021 at 8:09 p.m. UTC:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/PBTNNYFLZZCW7G5UVBDZH745NY.jpg)
Almost a third of Salvadorans are actively using the Chivo bitcoin wallet less than a month after the country adopted the cryptocurrency as legal tender, President Nayib Bukele said in a tweet.
- Some 2.1 million people are using the wallet, Bukele said in a tweet. That’s more users than any bank in the country, he said. El Salvador has a population of about 6.5 million people, according the CIA World Factbook.
- El Salvador started using bitcoin as legal tender on Sept. 7, three months after the country’s legislature passed the Bitcoin Law. It runs in parallel with the U.S. dollar, which has been the currency since 2001.
- El Salvador is using cryptocurrency wallet company BitGo to provide Chivo’s underlying technology.
- Earlier this month, demonstrators against the rollout in the capital San Salvador set fire to a Chivo ATM, designed to exchange dollars for bitcoin.
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Sheldon Reback is a CoinDesk news editor based in London. He owns a small amount of ether.
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