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Comment by the_af | Hacker News Reader

From the article:

> Salvadorans, with the exception of a few, never embraced Bukele’s initiative, who enjoys enormous popularity for his war against gangs, which dropped homicides to historic lows in El Salvador. A recent survey by the Central American University (UCA) revealed that 92% of Salvadorans did not use bitcoin in their transactions in 2024.

I would say this points to an actual failed experiment, if true.

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Homicides are at historic lows because they stopped counting bodies found in mass graves and murders in prison.

8% is quite a lot though.

Depends for what. What were Bukele's stated goals? Only with this in mind can we decide whether 8% is high or low.

8% of people used it at least one time in an entire year.

In a place where people (who have on average very low incomes) were given $30 worth of bitcoin by their government just for signing up to a wallet app, so a very, very large proportion of the populous (compared to any other country on Earth) already had an app and wallet set up and ready to go. That's not a lot. That's a clear indication that the experiment simply didn't work.

This "everything's going great as long as you squint hard enough" stuff is why people don't give cryptocurrency proponents the time of day. At some point admitting you've lost actually better preserves your ability to be heard at the next debate.

When I consider 8% to be high and you don't, that makes me more skeptical of mainstream adoption as a currency than you are.

Doing better than Firefox

I'd be surprised if anyone really used it there, for technical reasons alone, and not even considering the risk part. BTC is still not easy to use.

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