INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
El Salvador became the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender.There are now more than half a million people using El Salvador's
bitcoin wallet, President Nayib Bukele announced.The country of 6.6 million people this month became the first to adopt bitcoin as legal
tender alongside the US dollar, which has been the official currency for two decades."We currently have more than half a million users (of
the Chivo wallet)," Bukele tweeted late Monday.The "Chivo Wallet" is an electronic application that Salvadorans can download -- earning a
$30 equivalent sign-up bonus in the process -- to make cryptocurrency transactions.Bukele added that the wallet's technical errors had
mostly been resolved, and the software would be fully operational in days.The initial rollout had met with difficulties as the Chivo
software had crashed, with bitcoin losing some 17 percent of its value at one point.But Bukele wrote in his Twitter thread that "every day
more and more businesses accept payments in bitcoin or dollars".The government says the project will give many Salvadorans access to banking
services for the first time, and hopes it will shave millions off commissions on remittances, which account for more than a fifth of the
country's GDP.But experts and regulators have highlighted concerns about the cryptocurrency's notorious volatility, its potential impact
on price inflation in a nation with high poverty and unemployment, and the lack of protection for users.(This story has not been edited by
TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
