El Salvador is officially in the green on its bitcoin purchase, with its holdings of 700 bitcoin sitting at a value of around $43 million at press time. Meanwhile, the country's own Bitcoin wallet Chivo is seeing increased adoption rates.
On Friday, as Bitcoin shot above $60,000 for the first time since mid-April, Chivo received 24,076 remittances totalling $3,069,761.05, El Salvador's president Nayib Bukele revealed in a Tweet.
Chivo was launched in September when the Central American country became the world's first to officially make Bitcoin a parallel legal tender. Despite initial technical issues upon its rollout, the app saw rapid adoption across the population, with over 2.1 million Salvadorans actively using it by late September. By that point, Chivo counted more customers than any bank in the country, according to Bukele.
Salvadorans who have been HODLing the $30 bitcoin bonus they received when they signed up for the government-provided wallet are currently enjoying a U.S. dollar value increase of around 19%, meaning their bonus is currently worth over $35.
Bukele and his government became the target of criticism on September 7th, when the market took Bitcoin's price diving below $50,000; volatility has been a major point of concern for skeptics of El Salvador's Bitcoin Law. While merchants are obligated by law to accept bitcoin for their products and services, Chivo is designed to allow Salvadorans to convert their bitcoin to U.S. dollars immediately upon receipt if they wish.
Yet the public's interest in Bitcoin appears to be growing: in early October, Bukele shared on Twitter that "Salvadorans are inserting more cash (to buy #bitcoin) than what they are withdrawing from the @chivowallet ATMs."