El Salvador, a country that has become infamous for being the first sovereign nation to accept bitcoin as a legal tender, continues its journey through uncharted waters. To make this move a reality, the country had launched its own government-approved bitcoin wallet, Chivo for carrying out crypto transactions in the country. Encouraging residents to accept the wallet by offering a $30 bonus on sign-up.
“Bitcoin Day” has since come and gone since then and El Salvadoran citizens are settling into using the cryptocurrency as a legal tender alongside the US dollar. However, there have been some kinks to work out with the bitcoin wallet, and one of those kinks being the ability to function properly for all of the residents of the country has led to the relaunch of the Chivo wallet.
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Chivo Wallet Relaunch
Since Chivo first launched last year, it has quickly grown in the number of active users. It eventually grew to 2.1 million users, a milestone that was celebrated by the president. However, this had started to present problems with stability and scalability. As with any good wallet, the Chivo wallet has to be able to expand to accommodate a large number of users, giving rise to the relaunch.
This new version of the app will allow more users to be able to access and use it seamlessly. It will eliminate the stability issues that arose with the first version. Thus making it a better fit for the expected more than 4 million users that will be using bitcoin as legal tender in the country. Users have been experiencing issues like missing funds, system issues, fradulent transfers, etc, which will be handled with the relaunch.
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The El Salvadorian government is said to have partnered with AlphaPoint, a white label infrastructure provider that will work on making sure the Chivo wallet is always running and stable, as well as handling issues regarding scalability and social impact. This relaunch will solve a variety of existing issues, as well as add new features to provide a better user experience.
“El Salvador and President Bukele are truly leading globally with this first major experiment in Bitcoin adoption at a country-wide level. We are honored to be involved in the process and provide the scalable and reliable solutions needed for this massive undertaking,” said Igor Telyantnikov, CEO/Founder of AlphaPoint.
El Salvador To Install 1,500 Bitcoin ATMs
In addition to the Chivo app relaunch, El Salvador has announced that it plans to deploy more ATMs to make bitcoin accessible to residents. The acceptance of bitcoin as legal tender had come with the installation of multiple bitcoin ATMs around the country to enable easy and swift payments. But the country is taking another step towards securing its title as bitcoin capital of the world.
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El Salvador will add another 1,500 Bitcoin ATMs around the country, to be deployed in different locations. The country is putting these ATMs in place “to more readily serve the population of El Salvador, the statement read.
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