Experts raised concerns in June about the hasty adoption of the new currency and the rapid execution of new technology on a national scale.
The bold move, largely celebrated by the international Bitcoin community, found a more skeptical reception at home and in the traditional financial world amid concerns that it could bring instability and unnecessary risk to the Central American country’s fragile economy.
Mr. Bukele, a tech-savvy millennial, has pitched the digital currency’s adoption as a way of bringing more Salvadorans, about 70 percent of whom don’t have bank accounts, into the formal economy. Using the cryptocurrency would make it faster and cheaper to get remittances from abroad, he has argued, and could free the indebted nation from the hold of the traditional global financial system.
Making Bitcoin legal tender — alongside the U.S. dollar, which the country has relied on since 2001 — is also part of Mr. Bukele’s charm offensive toward crypto entrepreneurs, who often seem like his primary audience. But the technical issues only highlight the practical worries of even avid crypto enthusiasts. The project also highlights philosophical questions about the national adoption of a currency that was designed to thwart total governmental control over money.
Some worry that the problems with the Salvadoran project could undermine wider adoption, but Bitcoin’s most vocal proponents are trying to generate excitement by lending their support to the effort.
