El Salvador’s Chivo BTC App Largely Disused & ATM Booths ‘Empty’ – Report

cryptonews.com:

Under 2% of remittances made to El Salvador make use of the state-operated Chivo bitcoin (BTC) app and wallet – and bitcoin ATM booths in the nation are “empty” less than a year after their launch, a new report has claimed. But the government claims that the app is still popular among many citizens.

El Diario de Hoy, one of El Salvador’s leading newspapers, reported that “few Salvadorans use the Chivo app and the ATMs to receive remittances.”

The media outlet is generally opposed to the government of President Nayib Bukele and his bitcoin adoption plans. It quoted data from the Central Reserve Bank that shows that between September 2021 and June 2022, USD 120.46 million entered the country via crypto wallets. That represents just 1.8% of the USD 6.4 billion total remittances sent to the nation – mostly from overseas-based Salvadorans – in the same period.

The figures also show that USD 29.68 million was remitted in BTC via the crypto wallets in October 2021 – one month after bitcoin was adopted as legal tender in El Salvador. Since then, however, senders have remitted no more than USD 20 million per month. In some months, that figure fell to around the USD 10 million mark.

But while the media outlet appeared keen to paint a picture of a fast decline in BTC remittances, one month’s data did stand out: in May this year, USD 15.6 million worth of BTC was remitted to El Salvador from overseas, marking a large rise from the previous month. The media outlet remarked that remittances are often generally higher than usual in May, the month in which Mother’s Day falls.

But, optimists may claim, this would still indicate that a small but significant minority of people are already choosing BTC as a remittance tool just ten months after