El Salvador’s Bitcoin Wallet Revamped Along With 1500 New BTC ATMs

The first country in the world to legalize Bitcoin as a tender is also the first to be taking hits from the biggest names in the industry. But El Salvador nonchalantly continues to work on its approach of making crypto an essential but also practically efficient part of its citizens’ lives.

Bitcoin Wallet in Trouble?

The government of El Salvador issued a statement in which they stated that the government will be appointing another firm for its wallet Chivo. The announcement read,

“The Government of President Nayib Bukele informs that the American company AlphaPoint is providing technology for Chivo Wallet, the first national digital wallet in the world. AlphaPoint, which provides financial technology to institutions globally, is adding its expertise to offer financial services and access to Bitcoin for millions of Salvadorans who are actively using the Chivo wallet.”

The decision in the making was the result of a barrage of problems being faced by its users ranging from duplicacy to the disappearance of funds from their wallets. And this couldn’t be taken lightly given almost 61% of the country’s population signed up on the wallet. 

As of January 19, according to a tweet from El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, out of the population of 6.5 million people (including those below 18 who couldn’t use the app), the national wallet Chivo had over 4 million people on it already.

Thus it was more than necessary to do something about the persisting issues ASAP and for the same reason, AplhaPoint has been hired to provide backend and frontend support for the entire wallet ecosystem.

In accordance with the announcement, the CEO of AlphaPoint, Igor Telyatnikov said,

“El Salvador and President Bukele are truly leading globally with this first major experiment in Bitcoin adoption at a country-wide level…No one else has attempted to execute a project of this size. We at AlphaPoint are honored to be involved in the process and provide the scalable and reliable solutions needed for this massive undertaking. “

In line with these efforts, El Salvador also announced that they are looking into offering Bitcoin-backed loans for businesses in the country which would also be implemented using the Chivo wallet.

Furthermore, the government is also in the process of deploying 1500 BTC ATM machines soon to facilitate the use of Bitcoin for the citizens.

Is Bitcoin in Agreement?

Considering the travesty the market went through recently it might seem rather unlikely, but the king coin is actually doing pretty well at the moment. Trading at $38.4k, Bitcoin has managed to recover by 10.39% in almost 10 days.

Although at the time of writing the market painted a red candle, as long as it keeps above $38k, there isn’t much to be concerned about.