Protesters Take to El Salvador Streets against Bitcoin Adoption as Legal Tender

El Salvador‘s historic move on adopting bitcoin as legal tender on Tuesday hit a bump of angry protest and the glitches in a mobile application specifically designed for Salvadorans as Bitcoin wallets.

 

More than a thousand of protesters in El Salvador took it to the street in front of the Supreme Court building to protest the adoption of bitcoin as its legal tender, saying the currency would not work on street vendors, bus drivers or shopkeepers, and that the move was ideally designed for big investors. Some protesters came out to oppose the move on a lack of knowledge on this digital currency and the rush on making it official without Salvadorans having a say in it.

The country made a historical move on Tuesday by officially making the world’s most popular digital currency as its legal tender that comes together with a government-run bitcoin wallet for the citizens called Chivo, which means “cool”, and will be loaded with $30 once downloaded successfully. However, the app was later taken offline to increase its capacity.

 

Bitcoin fell sharply on Tuesday in early session in the morning after facing a big sale and a glitch in the crypto-trading platform, and then a salvo after the announcement from El Salvador. The price fell as much as 17%, then recovered some stance to down 9% on Tuesday. The trading session on Wednesday shows that the price is paring some of the losses. Anything related to cryptocurrencies also plunged on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, some analysts pointed out that the recent surge in bitcoin that hit $52,000 on Monday already priced in over the move by El Salvador’s government as agenda of making it as the official currency passed the law on June 9 and some traders could be selling off bitcoin as the government bought 400 bitcoins.

 

Naeem Aslam, the chief analyst at AvaTrade, wrote in a note saying that when looking closely, traders have actually bought the dip as the price hovered around its 50-day moving average.

In addition, El Salvador’s government also bought the dip on Tuesday, following its earlier move of purchasing 400 BTC a day prior to the official announcement.