Bitcoin became legal tender in El Salvador, and things are not going well

Proof of living in El Salvador:

https://twitter.com/samsungsv19/status/1438005259205595141

The Bitcoin Law went into effect seven days ago. As I previously stated, El Salvador was not prepared to handle a digital currency:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/pjcpcb/bitcoin_will_become_legal_tender_in_el_salvador/

The government of El Salvador spent around 202 million dollars to implement Bitcoin as a legal tender. To no one’s surprise, nothing worked. The main problem was that the Chivo ATMs were not fully functional, constantly crashing and in some places it didn’t have enough cash:

https://imgur.com/gallery/gctJdKI

https://imgur.com/gallery/EW96mcJ

For some unexplained reason, ATMs weren’t fully functional till September 10th. People are requesting the government how much was paid per ATM, including the contracts for the small “huts” that were built to house the Chivo ATMs. You see, it is against the law to award contracts directly, it has to go through a public contest. The government is hiding that, for unknown reasons.

Even worst, the Chivo Wallet as of this moment is still not available for the majority of devices:

https://imgur.com/gallery/tB4L2XS

What was the solution? Well, wait until everything works as expected. The President was the Chivo Tech Support guy, telling everyone to be patient and ask people to fill out a complaint form:

https://imgur.com/gallery/NOy13qv

What about the people? After all, this new law was for the benefit of the Salvadoran people, including those that send remittances. Unfortunately, the Chivo Wallet was plagued with bugs and errors, which made the people no longer trust Bitcoin:

https://imgur.com/gallery/24vlXzu

https://imgur.com/gallery/EeEtXNv

Even worst, the government was not taking criticism lightly:

https://imgur.com/gallery/toFIBFm

There is a large portion of the population that is not happy with this new Law, so they took the streets, and demanded Congress to repeal the Bitcoin Law:

https://imgur.com/gallery/EeEtXNv

The government response? Arresting critics without a warrant and denying access to a lawyer:

https://imgur.com/gallery/GSM7UaU

(I thought you guys were against being arrested without a warrant. Huh?)

Or threatening fast food restaurants because they were using another Wallets to accept Bitcoin payments instead of the Chivo Wallet:

https://imgur.com/gallery/LZaVvPx

Wasn’t Bitcoin about freedom from big banks and the government? By the way, that guy is a Congressman for the New Ideas party, an ally of President Bukele.

Is this over? Of course not, tomorrow is our Independence Day, and there will be an even bigger protest against the Bitcoin Law. For what purpose? Force El Salvador’s Congress to repeal the Bitcoin Law, or at least change the law to recognize Bitcoin as a legal asset not legal tender. Interestingly enough, no one here in El Salvador is against owning a cryptocurrency, in fact no one cares if you invest in Bitcoin, Doge, Ethereum, VET, Ada, ARGO, or even Shiba. It is just we knew this was going to be a disaster from day one, because the current Bitcoin Law was forcing us to the Chivo Wallet down our throats. That’s not the spirit of Bitcoin. All the secrecy surrounding this implementation of Bitcoin as legal tender is shady and it is getting to the point that people are just cashing out the Bonus and uninstalling the Chivo Wallet:

https://imgur.com/gallery/XsxwHAn

What will happen next? IF the protest manages to gather more than 20K people, we will see a change of the law. Why? It will be a big political hit, one that the current government will not recover. Bitcoin will be fine as it is, but many countries might think twice before actually using it as a legal tender