- During a press conference at Blockchain Land Mexico 2022, Arley Lozano recounted the experience that Panda Group had in the development of the Chivo Wallet, the official Bitcoin and dollar wallet of the Government of El Salvador.
- Arley Lozano is the CEO of Panda Group, CEO of Xpay.Cash and Latam Business for Athenea Bitcoin.
- The CEO of Panda Group also mentioned the impact that the fall in cryptocurrency prices has had on the perception of the general public, cooling everyone’s heads.
Since October 5, the Blockchain Land in Nueva León, Mexico, where great powers of the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry have participated. Today we will tell you about some of the most important aspects pointed out by Arley Lozano, CEO of Panda Groupduring your participation.
For those who don’t know, Panda Group is a conglomerate of companies that was behind the development of the Chivo Wallet for El Salvador and the cryptocurrency ATMs for said country. Arley Lozano is the CEO of Panda Group, CEO of Xpay.Cash and Latam Business for Athenea Bitcoin.
An experience full of learning for Panda Group
During a press conference at the Blockchain Land Mexico 2022, Arley recounted the experience that Panda Group had in the development of the Chivo Wallet, the official Bitcoin and dollar wallet of the Government of El Salvador.
The Chivo Wallet was developed in 45 days with 21 hours of daily work, according to Lozano.. The Government of El Salvador had a deadline as well as quite rigorous guidelines on how the application should be launched.
“Panda Group is the only group that has managed to digitize a country in 45 days”, Arley Lozano is proud to say.
Chivo Wallet launch setbacks
The launch occurred on September 7, 2021 and was followed by many platform errors and “social hacks”, as Lozano named them. For those who don’t remember, Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, promised to give away $30 US dollars in Bitcoin for each person who opened their Chivo Wallet account.
Evidently, faced with an economic incentive, millions of people rushed to download the application and, as Lozano relates, the platform was not ready to deal with such traffic. However, according to Lozano, These types of errors are seen even in traditional banking applications because keeping such an application running during peak traffic is costly.
Even so, the Chivo Wallet not only experienced significant limitations in terms of the level of traffic processing, but the lack of knowledge about blockchain technology and Bitcoin reigned among the participants.
Ignorance about the technology plus an economic incentive led to a large number of cases of social hacking. Lozano reported that people or groups took advantage of the public’s little knowledge of Bitcoin and tricked them into giving up their US$30 in BTC in exchange for perhaps US$10 in cash.
Lozano emphasized that, at least for the moment, the preference for the paper of a fiduciary currency over something digital that, therefore, is not tangible, continues to predominate throughout the world. But alsothe little knowledge about blockchain technology and Bitcoin caused, according to Lozano, a conspiracy narrative against the Chivo Wallet to spread among the population.
In fact, the CEO of Panda Group recounted an anecdote in which a person told him that he did not use the Chivo Wallet because he had been told that this application stole his personal information, such as images, location, among others. Of course, Lozano assured that the Chivo Wallet does no such thing.
Even so, Lozano acknowledges that mistakes were made and they learned from the experience. Among some of the lessons learned from the launch of the Chivo Wallet is that, perhaps, with the launch of a beta in a small group of people, they could have reduced the errors before the official launch.
As for whether or not it was a failure, Lozano insisted that the Chivo Wallet is currently one of the main mechanisms through which Salvadorans receive remittances.
Despite this, Lozano acknowledges that people are still happy to use intermediaries and therefore Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies may sound scary. The truth is that Bitcoin is a big responsibility because it involves owning your own money, a responsibility that not everyone is willing to take on.
Falling prices and its impact on the adoption of cryptocurrencies
The CEO of Panda Group also mentioned the impact that the fall in cryptocurrency prices has had on the perception of the general public. In this sense, he assured that the price has cooled everyone’s head.
In fact, he mentioned that, before the price drop, Panda Group had a contract ready to sign with a country that claimed to be the second Savior. However, although he did not give names, he assured that one Central American and one European country were extremely interested.
But, after the fall in prices, many have stopped their foray into this market. Even so, Lozano believes that “the geopolitical context we are experiencing will lead us to a new rise in prices.”
“Bitcoin or Ethereum will close the year with a new price increase… Everyone is testing between different investment vehicles and, when they notice that the cryptocurrencies are at an entry price, the flow will resume and the cryptocurrencies will increase” Arley Lozano pointed out.
CBDCs are the future, but beware
Lozano is not only convinced that Bitcoin is the future of finance, but he also believes that the world will adopt CBDCs, or central bank digital currencies.
The problem is that, as was mentioned during his talk, CBDCs are double-edged swords because they give the government power that, until now, it does not have. This is the ability to know with greater precision how you consume, where you consume, where you are and stop counting.
When governments realize the potential power they can access with CBDCs, they will not hesitate to adopt it, Lozano said. “Control can become excessive, but Bitcoin will always exist,” Lozano commented. Certainly Bitcoin is traceable but, despite this, it is still much more private than traditional bank accounts.
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