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10 sats \ 2 replies \ @Coinosphere 3 Sep 2022 \ on: Was El Salvador too early? bitcoin
El Salvador is doing absolutely great. The media and its backers (at least the IMF) are obviously wanting the experiment to fail, and they'll tell any lie they think might have a chance of happening to convince people it has failed. That won't be possible for much longer.
The fact is that tourism is WAY up in El Salvador, the national debt is rapidly being paid off, and all of the biggest companies down there (including McDonalds and lots of chains you use) find BTC easy to use and preferable to accepting dollars.
But if you watch the world media you'll only hear about the first few days a year ago when the Chivo wallet was having issues.
I doubt these big companies pay their employees in BTC.
And I doubt much of their turnover is in BTC.
But do they at least use BTC to pay each other?
And is their use of BTC increasing or not?
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Fair questions that are hard to quantify. Youtube's full of anecdotal data of Salvadorans using it, but we simply don't have that data either way. Many of us also understand that it's very hard to get that data without breaching privacy laws.
What we can see is growth of industries like tourism, that would be obvious places to use it. Tourism is way TF up. Like 2X up the national average! Plenty of evidence that this is Bitcoin tourism, too. So if all these tourists are paying in BTC, somebody sure AF is accepting it there.
What I'd really like to see now is remittance flow data. I'm hoping that Bukele has been sitting on that and will release it on the Bitcoin Law anniversary this week... Here's hoping!
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