2 in 10 People in El Salvador Still Using Government’s Chivo Bitcoin App – Survey

cryptonews.com:

A survey has found that Salvadorans are using the state-run Chivo bitcoin (BTC) app and wallet sparingly if at all, with most simply downloading it to receive a USD 30 worth of bitcoin as a golden hello before returning to using the dollar.

The survey was conducted by the United States’ National Bureau of Economic Research, in association with Cid Gallup. Details were published by Bloomberg, which concluded that this was evidence that BTC had failed to “take root” in the Central American nation.

The survey saw 1,800 adults in the country interviewed “face-to-face” in February this year, and asked about how they use the wallet. Only 20% of respondents said they continued to use the Chivo Wallet after making use of the USD 30 giveaway, the survey authors concluded, adding that “virtually no one” had “installed Chivo on their phone in 2022.”

The authors added:

“The most important reason not to download the app, conditional on knowing about it, is that users prefer to use cash, which was followed by trust issues – respondents did not trust the system or bitcoin itself.”

The authors also reported finding “no evidence” that the Chivo wallet was being used to pay taxes and remittances “at a significant scale.”

The media outlet pointed out that this data was “in line” with data from El Salvador’s central bank that showed that “only 1.6% of remittances were sent through digital wallets in 2022.”

In the business sector, 20% of businesses reported accepting bitcoin as a form of payment, with most of these being “large firms. The study authors were quoted as adding that “on average, 5% of all sales were in bitcoin “and most transactions were converted to dollars.”

The media outlet El Diario de Hoy reported that per the Central Reserve Bank