El Salvador citizens report disappearing funds from their Chivo wallets

According to several Salvadorans posting on social media, some of the funds from El Salvador’s state-issued Chivo wallets have gone missing.

Following the government’s establishment of Bitcoin (BTC) wallets, at least 50 Salvadorans have claimed losses amounting to over $96,000, according to a December 16 Twitter thread initiated by user “the commissioner.” Some of these lost transfers were as low as $61, while others claimed to be losing thousands of dollars or more.

Hilo con algunos afectados por la Chivo Gualet.

1- $16,000 pic.twitter.com/EC3hehXKDz

— El Comisionado (@_elcomisionado_) December 18, 2021

In a public plea to President Nayib Bukele, Luis Guardado claimed, “There is a security flaw on the wallet where money and transactions disappeared. Where is my money as there is no tech support and merely useless calls?”

El Salvador president keeps hyping over Bitcoin 

In October, Bukele estimated that 3 million Salvadorans, or almost half of the country’s 6.5 million residents, were using Chivo wallets. Since the proposal of Bitcoin Law in El Salvador in June, many people in the country have been opposing it for a variety of reasons, including the volatility of digital assets and concerns that they are an untrustworthy investment for pension funds.

Before the law went into force on September 7, protesters marched through the capital city of San Salvador, with some people managing to smash up and destroy Chivo kiosks. The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has frequently expressed his thoughts on social media encouraging BTC adoption and related projects, such as mining crypto using geothermal energy from the country’s volcanoes.

He recently announced the construction plans for a Bitcoin City with a $1 billion investment in BTC bonds. He also uses Twitter to publicly announce his Bitcoin purchases. The country’s treasury currently possesses 1,391 bitcoins (BTC) worth $71 million, with the price of the cryptocurrency hovering around $50,000 for the holidays.

As TheCoinRise reported earlier today, an analyst said that El Salvador had seen an 89% decline in Bitcoin transactions since its adoption in September.