El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has been an outspoken and strenuous advocate for Bitcoin. While he has long battled with critics, he has now admitted that his Bitcoin experiment has not gone exactly as planned.
In an interview with TIME magazine published Thursday, the “world’s coolest dictator”—as Bukele once described himself—conceded that more people in the tiny Central American country could be using the cryptocurrency.
“Bitcoin hasn’t had the widespread adoption we hoped for,” he said, according to the publication.
“It hasn’t had the adoption we expected,” Bukele continued. “The positive aspect is that it is voluntary—we have never forced anyone to adopt it.”
President Bukele announced in 2021 that Bitcoin would be made legal tender—alongside the U.S. dollar. The policy means that businesses need to accept the cryptocurrency if they have the technological means to do so.
The eccentric leader—a darling of the American and libertarian right—also started buying the cryptocurrency to put on the government’s balance sheet.
Decrypt visited the country that year, and adoption was slow: many businesses did not yet accept it (except for major franchises like McDonald’s), and Salvadorans seemed indifferent to the complex technology.
The policy has also been criticized by the IMF and U.S. politicians—but President Bukele has carried on full-stream ahead.
El Salvador now holds 5,857.76 BTC worth $348,202,738, according to a government website.
The millennial leader said that Salvadorans have the chance to save an asset regarded by some as a store of value. The government gifted citizens $30 in Bitcoin back in 2021.
“If [Salvadorans] use it now, they will probably have gains in the future,” he told TIME. “If they do not want to use it, this is a free country. I expected more adoption, definitely, but we always prided ourselves on being a free country, free in every way.”
President Bukele said that although the Bitcoin experiment “could have worked better, and there is still time to make some improvements,” it hadn’t resulted in “anything negative.”
The leader still enjoys massive popularity at home for other policies. Crime in the country has plunged since he launched a massive crackdown on the nation’s hyper-violent street gangs by imprisoning 1% of the population.
Bukele added in today’s interview that Salvadoran authorities under his watch didn’t imprison criminals to punish them but to protect citizens. “[The gangs] cannot be in the community besieging their neighbors,” he said.
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