El Salvador’s government has been using Bitso’s custody and exchange services to acquire Bitcoin through the Mexican Bitso exchange.
According to an executive at the cryptocurrency exchange driving El Salvador’s government-backed Bitcoin (BTC) wallet, the wallet has seen substantial success in terms of usage.
As a result of BTC being legal cash in El Salvador, the Chivo wallet was introduced on September 7, 2021. Bitso, a Mexican cryptocurrency trading platform, provides custody and exchange services for Bitcoin on the official platform.
El Salvador’s government is using Bitso’s back-end technology to buy Bitcoin and assure that it is convertible to the US dollar, the company’s chief corporate and regulatory relations officer Felipe Vallejo told Cointelegraph on Friday.
In September, Vallejo added, Bitso started working with the government to give liquidity to the Chivo wallet. Furthermore, Bitso began operating in El Salvador via Chivo and continues to do so only there. Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia, on the other hand, are active participants in the trade.
After a rocky start, during which the wallet had technical problems and even went down, Vallejo claims that Chivo has been a huge success in the seven months afterwards.
For Vallejo, it’s been an eye-opening experience to watch how many people have started using the Chivo Wallet to make secure and convenient transactions. After receiving government incentives, 40% of people who downloaded the Chivo wallet continued to use it, according to a survey by the National Bureau of Economic Research. He made the following statement:
It seems to us that this is a rather strong indication of adoption. The more people in the area learn about cryptocurrencies and how to utilise them in their daily lives, the more likely they are to stick around on the app.”
20 percent of all Salvadorans continued to use the Chivo wallet after spending their free $30 bonus in BTC, according to Vallejo When compared to the use of conventional financial services in El Salvador, this should be seen as a “strong indicator of rising adoption. In 2017, just 29 percent of El Salvador’s adults had bank accounts, according to some reports.
Furthermore, the CEO emphasised the strength of Chivo’s acceptance in the context of other crypto exchanges. Chivo has 2.6 million users in El Salvador, which has a population of 6.49 million, according to Vallejo, who noted that Coinbase has 11.4 million active users as of Q4 2021.
By teaching individuals about crypto and blockchain, Bitso and Chivo want to raise the adoption rate. Bitcoin adoption in Latin America and throughout the world has been held back by a lack of information on the subject. At the same time, we expect to see a rise in the number of Salvadorans using the new technology, Vallejo added. He noted that Bitso has also been involved in education activities in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay.
Also Read: Indian IT Ministry Orders Crypto Exchanges To Keep Users’ Data For 5 Years
Wallets