I knew Bitcoin as legal tender wouldn’t work long term because most people don’t know how to use it. This is similar to people paying their debt in Pennies to piss off the impound yard or ticket agencies. But they have to take it since legal tender means a debt owed.
Making bitcoin legal tender I assume was more for publicity than actually solving any issues. And I wonder how many actual debts got paid by bitcoin, probably not many.
I agree with you that making bitcoin legal tender is inefficient and does not help the economy much. But I think El Salvador's legalization of bitcoin is serious, not just for publicity or attention purposes.
Although it can be said that they failed with their plan because the adoption rate of using bitcoin as a currency was quite low, they tried their best to implement and popularize it. They have implemented policies to promote widespread bitcoin adoption such as chivo wallet, tax exemption, bitcoin ATMs or building bitcoin cities...They were really serious and tried very hard, but the results were not as expected.