El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as legal tender in September 2021, but five years later, results fall far short of initial promises. Cryptocurrency transfers accounted for only 1% of remittances in 2024, down from a peak of 1.7% in 2020-2021, and the Chivo wallet failed to solve the problem of unbanked Salvadorans. In February 2025, a $1.4 billion agreement with the International Monetary Fund forced the government to make Bitcoin acceptance voluntary and limit its involvement in cryptocurrency-related activities. The IMF found no evidence of a beneficial use case for the unbanked. However, the experiment gave El Salvador unprecedented global visibility in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
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