- World-first official crypto adoption gets off to rocky start.
- El Salvador’s government took country’s digital wallet offline to boost server capacity.
- Bitcoin plummets after El Salvador officially adopted it as legal currency.
The price of the world’s number one digital asset, bitcoin, plummeted as much as 16% to around $43,100 after breaking through $52,000 late Monday.
Bitcoin plunged after El Salvador’s government officially adopted it as the country’s legal currency. The world-first official crypto adoption was mired by mass protests on the streets and slew of technical glitches online.
Bitcoin crash has been attributed to a technological problem that forced El Salvador’s government to take the country’s new digital wallet Chivo offline while it feverishly scrambled to boost server capacity.
“We have disconnected it while increasing capacity of the image capture servers. The installation problems that some people had were for that reason,” President Nayib Bukele tweeted, commenting on the setback.
The cryptocurrency has managed to rebound since then, and was last down over 13% to trade at $45,512.
Meanwhile, a group of protesters rallying against the new bitcoin law took to the streets of the capital San Salvador. The activists were reportedly marching against the move due to lack of knowledge about the cryptocurrency and how the new bitcoin law will be implemented.
El Salvador stunned the crypto and wider world earlier this year after President Bukele announced plans to adopt bitcoin as legal tender alongside the US dollar, which has been used in the country since 2001.