El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment turns 5: ‘It was for us, not them’

The article reviews El Salvador’s five-year Bitcoin legal-tender experiment and concludes it largely failed to deliver on its original economic promises. Bitcoin adoption among locals remained limited, it did not meaningfully bank the unbanked, and it had minimal impact on remittances or foreign investment. The government has since scaled back the program under IMF pressure, making Bitcoin acceptance voluntary and limiting public-sector involvement. Despite weak domestic utility, the experiment significantly boosted Bitcoin’s global profile by proving a sovereign state could adopt BTC and by turning El Salvador into a symbolic center of the Bitcoin movement. The piece suggests the biggest market impact is narrative: Bitcoin gained a geopolitical proof of concept, even as real-world usage in El Salvador stayed small.