Bitcoin Slump Disrupts Bukele’s Digital Utopia
What happens to a crypto dream deferred?
Illustration: 731; APHOTOGRAFIA, Oscar Rivera and seamartini via Getty Images
The future was pitched as utopia: Adopting Bitcoin would catapult El Salvador into a techno-libertarian paradise, banking the unbanked, attracting global innovators and financing futuristic projects, from a popular digital wallet to smart cities and Volcano bonds.
That was the grand promise sold by Nayib Bukele when in 2021 the country became the world’s first to make the cryptocurrency legal tender. Five years on, however, little of Bitcoin’s upside has materialized while the costs — financial and reputational — keep piling up. The slump in Bitcoin’s price, roughly halved from its October peak, has exposed the reckless risks the tech-savvy millennial president has taken in pursuit of his crypto obsession.