In 2022, various international media, including the New York Times, spread the idea that El Salvador would fall into a supposed “default” at the beginning of 2023 because of Bitcoin; however, and against all odds, the country settled its debt on time, paying $800 million, and its interest, and none of these media makes mention of it today.
“Bitcoin use among Salvadorans has collapsed and the country is running out of cash after Mr. Bukele failed to raise fresh funds from cryptocurrency investors,” The New York Times wrote in 2022.
Estrategia y Negocios magazine wrote: “El Salvador’s sovereign debt prices collapsed in April, sinking 15.1% to record lows. The collapse occurred in the context of the campaign of its president, Nayib Bukele, to implement an economic system based on cryptocurrency and his failure to position $1 billion worth of bitcoin bonds on the market.
“The impossibility of reaching an agreement with the IMF forced Bukele, in September 2021, to find an unorthodox solution to a fiscal crisis: to convert the Bitcoin cryptocurrency into a currency for legal use. For this, Bukele invested at least 150 million dollars taxed by the people of El Salvador in the adoption of the cryptocurrency. Since then, the country’s financial situation has worsened. By May 2022, El Salvador has become the nation with the highest risk of default in Latin America, behind Venezuela, and its international bonds have one of the worst yields in the world along with Ukraine and Belarus,” The Washington Post dedicated. to the Salvadoran economy.
Infobae magazine published two articles in relation to Bitcoin and the possible default of the country at the beginning of 2023, which have not materialized, quite the contrary.
So far, only the newspaper Semana, from Colombia, has highlighted how El Salvador has managed to pay off its debt, noting that “El Salvador has become an example in the region.”