🇸🇻 El Salvador’s Bitcoin Adoption: A Failure?

Discover the news of the week [View in Browser]( [Gif Ledger Bites]( [The Merge]( - the most awaited news in the crypto world - is now unfolding. How will it impact the ETH ecosystem? What does it mean for ETH miners? Will it affect Ledger users? [Learn More About The Merge →]( [Figures] [DeFi]( [Ledgerverse]( [In the know] [Bellatrix ETH upgrade is live: ETH/BTC ratio soars to 9 month high.]( ETH tokens are among the best performing tokens along with Binance’s BNB. Once The Merge is complete, the next upgrades could be the Surge, Verge, Purge and Splurge. [Dan Held, a Bitcoin influencer and Ledger partner, thinks The Merge ‘will add pressure to Bitcoin’s energy consumption.’]( He thinks that critics will point to Ethereum and say “this blockchain isn't using very much energy at all, and you're using a lot.” [Is Saudi Arabia preparing its own CBDC?]( Despite a cautious approach until now, the country’s Central Bank recently appointed a virtual assets lead. Are the Gulf State’s crypto ambitions rising? [OSMO lands in the Ledger Live app.]( Enjoy ease-of-use and airtight security while sending, receiving and even staking your OSMO, all within Ledger fortified ecosystem. [South Korea to institutionalize Security Tokens.]( Per Coindesk, the country’s financial regulators “plan to publish guidelines for security token issuance towards the end of 2022” and modify the country’s current electronic securities. [Nigeria & Binance in talks for a Digital City]( that is “similar to the Dubai virtual free zone,” per the Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority. Nigeria bets on new tech to diversify away from crude oil and benefit from an increasingly connected population. [Insight of the week] El Salvador’s Bitcoin Attempt… A Failure? We are now a year into El Salvador’s Bitcoin journey. [Back in September 2021]( the country made crypto legal tender as its government preloaded $30US worth of Bitcoin on Chivo to every salvadorans’ hot wallets. Behind the bold adoption, strong arguments prevailed, and still do. El Salvador’ economy heavily relies on the U.S. dollar, an inflationary currency to which Bitcoin can, at least theoretically, be an adequate response. Its economy copes with high remittance fees, an issue that Bitcoin can, again theoretically, solve for international transfers. At the time, your Ledger Biiiiiites newsletter argued that adoption was a full-scale test. But we underlined that the experiment would be rocky, too. No more fireworks. “No one really talks about Bitcoin here anymore. It’s kind of been forgotten.” Such are [the tough words]( of El Salvador’s Central Bank chief, Carlos Acevedo. Likewise, Bloomberg explained that “El Salvador had a Bitcoin Revolution,” but “hardly anybody showed up.” Three facts support the “failure” argument. First, Bitcoin obviously did not replace the U.S. dollar yet. Second, Salvadorans have hardly seized Bitcoin to shortcut traditional remittance rails. The Central Bank says that only 2% of them have been sent via crypto wallets. And third, the coin’s volatility spooked users. El Salvador’s Bitcoin purchases are now all at a loss. Yes, all of them. Watching the experiment, other countries remain cautious. One year ago, your Biiiiiites edition argued that El Salvador’s attempt could provide a blueprint for other countries. But such a thing hasn’t happened yet. The adoption, however, “hasn’t brought the financial ruin that some warned of either” per [Bloomberg](. A fair analysis is that El Salvador’s test is still unfolding. The path towards a country-wide Bitcoin adoption needs more than a year to fully develop. The first thing that needs to evolve may not be Salvadorans’ regard for Bitcoin but rather Bitcoin itself. That is, its stability, transaction throughput and capacity to circulate with low fees, fluid financial rails and user-friendly devices. Once mature, this digital currency could rewire El Salvador’s economy by making it less dependent on the dollar and decreasing remittance fees. An adequate question would now be: how will Salvadorans react to the next Bitcoin bull run? [I wanna know more] On Monday's Ledger Bitcoin Hour, Daniel Held chatted with Nik Bhatia about Layered Money. Listen to it. [Right here](. [Inside Ledger] Carly Preilly was [joined by]( Ian Rogers, CXO at Ledger, to debate on the future of crypto security. Crypto security misconceptions? Does self-custody limit Ledger's growth? How many Ledgers to sleep at night? It’s all [here.]( Wanna share our Biiiiiites with a friend ? [Send →]( [Images of the week] NFTs nowadays 🙈 [@PeterSmith]( How did you like our newsletter this week? 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