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El Salvador’s Bitcoin legal tender experiment marks five years
Research cited by Cointelegraph says Salvadorans who adopted Bitcoin were mostly young, urban and already banked, with “mass adoption” not occurring.
El Salvador’s five year Bitcoin legal tender experiment, launched in 2021, has fallen short of several promises for local residents, even as it boosted Bitcoin’s global visibility, Cointelegraph reports. In 2021, President Nayib Bukele announced the plan at a Bitcoin conference in Miami, pitching it as a way to bank the unbanked, reduce remittance costs, and attract investment to the Central American country. According to Cointelegraph, research led by Dr. Tobias Boos and colleagues, published in 2025, found that Bitcoin adopters tended to be young, male, urban, more highly educated, and already banked. Boos concluded that mass adoption by citizens did not occur. Cointelegraph also points to World Bank data showing that in 2021 El Salvador had among the region’s lowest banking access levels, with 35.9% of people over age 15 holding a bank account. The outlet adds that the government’s Chivo Bitcoin wallet could transfer funds to bank accounts but did not remove barriers keeping unbanked Salvadorans from accessing the financial system.
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