A sense of unease has been felt across the country of 6.4 million people, as El Salvador will, on Tuesday, become the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender.
Reuters published news of a large section of the Salvadoran people protesting against allowing cash transactions using the digital currency Bitcoin. No official has donated an explanation of how it works or the benefits it might bring.
A survey conducted by the University of Central America (UCA) on Thursday showed that most Salvadorans do not agree with the government’s decision to adopt bitcoin as a legal currency, as many do not understand how the digital currency is used and do not trust the project. The poll showed that at least 67.9% of the 1,281 people surveyed do not generally agree or do not agree at all with the use of Bitcoin as legal currency, and according to the survey conducted by the aforementioned university (a Jesuit university based in El Salvador), more than 32% of people stated that they They agree to a certain extent with the procedure to be implemented.
The study was released days before the government is due to formalize cryptocurrency as legal tender in El Salvador on September 7, a plan announced by President Nayib Bukele in June. 10 people do not have a clear understanding of the mechanism of trading the “Bitcoin” currency or its general concept, and 8 out of 10 said they do not trust very much or not at all in its use, and 7 out of 10 people who participated in the survey believe that lawmakers should repeal the law that allows trading digital currency.
“What we can see in this survey, in addition to this broad rejection of the application of bitcoin as legal tender, is that for the first time we have found significant disagreement between the population and the decisions made by the legislature and the president,” said UCA Dean Andrew Oliva.
The government did not immediately respond to the results of the survey, as Bukele and his government justified the measure as a way to boost jobs and economic development by making El Salvador less dependent on the US dollar, but the survey showed the opposite, as most Salvadorans believe that the main beneficiaries will be wealthy people, foreign investors, the government and men Business.
It is noteworthy that the legal status of Bitcoin and digital currencies in general varies from one country to another, as some countries do not distinguish Bitcoin as a tradable currency, such as Turkey, Ghana, China and Russia, and some countries allow its trading, such as the European Union and the United States