Since the state’s BTC wallet systems are down, El Salvador’s Bitcoin Day is plagued by operational difficulties.
Three months after El Salvador’s parliament enacted the landmark legislation, the country’s Bitcoin Law is officially in effect as of September 7.
The Central American country has become the first to recognize Bitcoin (BTC) as legal cash, according to a recent report by Bloomberg. “3 minutos para hacer historia — In 3 minutes, we make history,” El Salvador President Nayib Bukele wrote in a tweet earlier in the day, as translated.
However, the state-issued Chivo wallet has had server capacity errors on day one of El Salvador’s Bitcoin trial, which has hampered the project somewhat. President Bukele responded to the incident by saying:
“For a few moments it won’t work @chivowallet, we have disconnected it while increasing the capacity of the image capture servers. The installation problems that some people had were for that reason. We prefer to correct it before reconnecting it.”
The Central American country of El Salvador has purchased 200 Bitcoin, bringing its total Bitcoin holdings to 400 “coins,” as previously reported by Cointelegraph. Earlier this month, the country’s government approved a $150 million Bitcoin fund to ease the conversion of Bitcoins into United States dollars.
As a result, more large-scale Bitcoin acquisitions are planned, with the president even indicating that the country’s BTC acquisition will be increased in the future.
Several hundred Bitcoiners have expressed their support for the Central American country since the vote in June. On Tuesday, multiple Bitcoin proponents throughout Latin America and around the world are scheduled to come together to make a solidarity buy of $30 BTC to honor the occasion.
Individuals associated with bitcoin, such as MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor and Human Rights Foundation Chief Strategy Officer Alex Gladstein, have lent their support to the initiative.
According to Konstantin Anissimov, managing director of cryptocurrency exchange CEX.IO, El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin supports Bitcoin as a currency. The cryptocurrency Bitcoin, according to Anissimov, provides significant financial assistance to countries with weak economies, such as El Salvador.
“The big advantage Bitcoin will have for these economies is that they will not have any debt to pay to anyone. It also means that these countries will offer excellent opportunities for the adoption of cryptocurrencies and for crypto startups. This will eventually boost taxation and can become a growth point for this country.”
El Salvador’s quest for Bitcoin acceptance has been welcomed with both excitement and opposition from both within and beyond the country, according to media reports. Back in August, some seniors demonstrated against the Bitcoin Law, fearing that the government will pay their pensions in Bitcoin rather than in the United States dollar.
An estimated 70 percent of the country’s populace is opposed to the use of Bitcoin as legal cash, according to media reports. El Salvador has also been warned against utilizing bitcoin as legal cash by international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
El Salvador’s Bitcoin adoption strategy was slammed by Mark Mobius of Mobius Capital Partners in an interview with Bloomberg published on Tuesday, claiming that the country was “clinging to the last thread of hope.”
