.....I believe that there is a genuine negativity toward Bitcoin on the street in El Salvador. I've come to believe that this is in large part a result of a dedicated effort on the part of 'mainstream media' who are very much in service to the controllers of the 'collective west' (basically the USD-backed financial concerns) and oligarchical local classes which pretty much every country has. If more people had hands-on experience participating in the machinery of operation they would probably develop a much higher degree of discernment in terms of information intake. The fallout would probably be good for some and bad for others. Traditionally leaderships tend to want a complaint and manageable population to 'govern' over...and often go to great lengths to achieve this.
Absolutely right.
Such skepticism towards the new technology is inspired by those very political and oligarchic structures that you wrote about.
And the result of their activity among the masses of the population is quite consistent with such mass processing of public opinion.
Recently, I read in one of the publications of El Salvador that is opposed to President Bukele that the statistics use of bitcoins as a payment method among the population was calculated as follows:
In 2021 - 25,7%,
in 2022 - 21%,
in 2023 - 12%,
in 2024 - 8,1%
Here is this article in this.
Even if this is a correct objective study (which I personally doubt!) then the process of decreasing Bitcoin use has already practically reached a minimum.
And I just think that this is already the minimum use and now this percentage will start to increase. Slower, of course, than it fell over 3 years, but still, the use of bitcoin will gradually increase.
Just do not forget that educational programs on blockchain will in any case bring prepared young people to the payments market.
But, we will see, this also depends on interaction with this very oligarchic group and politicians.
But I still hope for the courage of President Bukele and his concern for the interests of his country and its population.
It does not even make logical sense. It is like the article is just making up data... they asked people in a supposed representative way whether they used bitcoin, and was the way that they conducted the survey in 2024 similar to the previous years.
Do they have any other harder data related to if people hold bitcoin or showing transactions in the country to the extent to which transactions matter versus holding bitcoin and knowing about bitcoin and/or a variety of other ways of measuring involvement in bitcoin and potential changes in involvement in bitcoin over the past 4-ish years. How the hell are they supposedly getting 25% of the population using bitcoin in 2021, when it was barely introduced? Sure, every citizen had a right to get $30 through the Chivo wallet in 2021-ish, and maybe that went into 2022, so maybe in 2021 and 2022, they were asking about whether people were claiming their $30 through the Chivo wallet? The data of the article sounds a wee bit contrived to the extent that there might be attempts to actually measure in consistent ways across time.