Bukele made this announcement just the day El Salvador closes an event called Adopting Bitcoin, where people related to cryptocurrency meet behind closed doors.
In September 2021, when El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender on par with the dollar, it was around 45,000 dollars; then in November it hit $68,000 and currently trades around $16,691.
Taking advantage of the price collapse, Bukele bought 80 bitcoins in July with state funds at $19,000 each, with which El Salvador accumulates 2,381 units and an investment of $107.1 million.
With the current value of bitcoin, the investment in El Salvador has fallen a little more than 67 million dollars, that is, 62.89% of the investment value.
Bitcoin, according to a survey by the Jesuit Central American University (UCA) carried out in September and published in October, is not used by 75.6% of Salvadorans who were consulted, while 24.4% indicated that they used the cryptocurrency in transactions.
Bitcoin “is the most unpopular measure of the Nayib Bukele government, the most criticized and the worst evaluated,” said the rector of the UCA, Andreu Oliva, when he presented the results of the survey.
In addition, 77 out of 100 Salvadorans believed that the president “should not continue spending public money to continue buying bitcoin.”
With the adoption of bitcoin, Bukele sought “financial inclusion” for the majority of the population and facilitate the sending of family remittances from abroad. But the measure was questioned by the World Bank and the IMF, which warned about the high volatility of the cryptocurrency.