Its actually a reflection on the current state of society, all the materialism and irrationality personified. The greed, the "hustle", a modern incarnation of snake oil.
Replacing one currency not under the government's control with another doesn't seem to achieve all that much, and arguably, picking a deflationary currency at that might be much worse.
Slight correction: They are replacing one currency that is not under their government's control, with one that is not under any government's control.
The downside of using the USD as a local currency is that the local central bank cannot set its own lending rates (markets will set rates at what the larger dollarized economy in the US is at) and has less control over monetary policy.
Salvadoran here
After dollarization happened in 2001, all loan interest rates went down. My parents paid their mortgage in a shorter time because of that.
That was true even when the Salvadoran Colon was stable for most of its history. It's been very close to 8.75 for the past 30 years.
El Salvador didn't dollarize due to inflation, as other countries have done (Ecuador or Zimbabwe).
The Salvadoran Colón was never an unstable currency.
One of the main advantages we had after dollarization was the lowering of loan interest rates.
I was too young to have loans at that time, but I recall my parents mentioning the repaid their mortgage in a shorter time because of that.
Also no foreign exchange risk with the major trading partner and the country where 2 million Salvadorans live: The U.S.
My guess is large movements of capital out of places like Iran, China, and Russia.
Later... someday or sooner... throw it through few a mixers, pass it around a few times, and, sure, it could become capital again, or convert to another currency, or stick it in real estate. But there's no need for that at this point. In some places the risk of losing 80% of it to the fluctuations of kleptocoins is actually better than the political risk, or the potential taxation burden.
But here we have a country, millions of peoples hard work and assets being converted to bitcoin. How exactly does demonstrate critical thinking, planning or heck, even a plan?
The countries that could make most use of these crypto ATMs have no access to them.
https://coinatmradar.com/country/64/bitcoin-atm-el-salvador/
Sending with Wise over multiple currencies is going to be much cheaper than sending currency to currency over BTC...
Banks are also safer and covered against fraud. Eg. the other article about Coinbase and it's depositors today.
Multiple things crypto "yes-claimers" ignore. But yeah, they "like" the volatility. Except when it drops ofc.