Unfortunately, there are disappointing statistics on money transfers from other countries to El Salvador using bitcoin. If in the first half of 2022 such transfers accounted for 1.7% of all money transfers to the country, then in the first half of 2023 this figure dropped to 1.2%. Only $46.7M was transferred using Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. At the same time, $4019M was sent to the country by conventional means of money transfer. So we have to admit that bitcoin payments, introduced by Bukele, who planned that the residents of El Salvador would save on commissions for money transfers, do not work at all yet.
This is of course very upsetting and unpleasant.
I understand that for many people in El Salvador working outside the country, apparently mainly in the USA, bitcoin transfers seem too complicated and not reliable. Apparently, it is more convenient for them to transfer money to relatives in the usual ways and pay these unreasonably high commissions to those companies that deal with such transfers.
source It does not seem fair to characterize the low adoption of bitcoin transfers into El Salvador as a complete failure, even though those numbers do show a pretty small usage of bitcoin to transfer value from other countries.
How was the static collected in the first place, I am sure the anti-El Salvador Bitcoin crusaders have employed the means of cutting out the vast majority of Bitcoin users who use decentralized networks to move money around in And out of the country, what is normally used for this shady statices are tools and data that does not reflect the actual reality of El Salvador Bitcoin usage and international money inflows via Bitcoin.
Such arguments are always expected but majority pf the expects know that Bitcoin transactions can not be 100% monitored and if this survey use the Chivo wallet as a toll for this statics, it then means that they have used a totally wrong tool and won't the accurate results just like they did in this situations.
The source article does not seem to specify its methodology including how it is measuring bitcoin wallets.. and who gives any shits about crypto wallets.. .. but like you mentioned Wiwo, it seems a bit difficult to measure transfers that are taking place within private wallets, and then maybe there would be some kind of reflection in the cashing out of the money (or the purchasing of goods/services) after the money were to come from outside of El Salvador and then reaching its destination person.
So if they are measuring bitcoin wallets from various kinds of central services and then saying that it only went up to 1% or 2% of the total that is being transferred, even though such capacities have been added to those third party wallets. It may well be interesting to figure out if there might be some kind of a methodology that might be in the ballpark of accurate rather than mere spinning of the topic in order to suggest that nothing is happening in El Salvador in respects to bitcoin.
To proclaim that even though bitcoin has come into the El Salvador space, Salvadoreans are going on with their lives and choosing dollars and they are not using the bitcoin services or getting involved in bitcoin... which seems to be a questionable assertion to suggest that a government's announcement and actions to liberalize abilities to use bitcoin is not resulting in any kind of significant/meaningful increased bitcoin usage.
Here's what I think. It is simply difficult and unusual for all those Salvadorans who work in the USA and accordingly receive a salary in $ to buy in the USA
BTC and then send it to relatives in El Salvador itself.
Firstly, losses on commissions when buying
BTC in the USA.
Secondly, relatives also have to somehow cash out
BTC into cash dollar bills. And even though there are no conversion fees in Chivo, it can still lead to some losses. So it turns out that few El Salvadors use this translation method.
Therefore, the percentage of such transfers is small.
Maybe, taking into account
BTC transactions not taken into account in the statistics, it is somewhat larger than these, 1.2 or 1.7%, but it is still small. In addition, it should be borne in mind that this article was published in one of the main newspapers of El Salvador.
However, it seems to me, and not without reason, that this is a newspaper that is opposed to President Bukele and often criticizes him.
Naturally, correspondents of this newspaper (La prensa grafica) also criticize everything related to Bukele's initiative about
BTC.
So, in reality, the numbers of transfers can be even higher, maybe even 3-4%, which, in my opinion, is a very good adoption, taking into account the current general technological level of development of El Salvador itself.
And in general, let's be more optimistic about this Bukele initiative.
He is a brave president and definitely does everything he can for the benefit of the people of this country.