Can you truly live the Bitcoin Standard in El Salvador?

The Reality of the Bitcoin Standard in El Salvador

Oh the Bitcoin Country, the place where you can pay with Bitcoin wherever you go and you can truly live the Bitcoin Standard where you are free from banks and bureaucracy, where with a simple lightning transaction you can pay and get paid. Beautiful isn’t it? Well, that is not El Salvador, to some extent.

Let me explain this before you stop reading. I don’t want to, nor mean to say that in El Salvador you cannot use Bitcoin, because you can actually pay for many things with it. However, not all places will accept bitcoin and if you ask someone on the street if they use Bitcoin, they probably may say that either don’t use it, that they have used it or that they will never use it.

In 2021 when president Bukele announced Bitcoin as Legal Tender, many people were skeptical and still skeptical until this day.

It is true that businesses had to implement a new payment system to adapt to the new Law but it was a total chaos because the training that was given to the employees was non efficient to non-existent and some of them were still confused about the lightning network and the main net.

My Experience Paying with Bitcoin at Walmart

Let me tell you a story that happened to me in 2024. I went to Walmart to do my shopping. I got everything I needed and was ready to pay, as Bitcoin was established as a legal tender, I was in my right to pay with it and supermarkets here had one specific counter if you are going to pay with bitcoin. 

So, I asked where that was and headed to it. I was on the line and none of the people were paying with Bitcoin, everyone was paying in Cash and with Cards and there was no sign that it was the specific counter to pay with Bitcoin, of course I had a card with me in case that didn’t work, but I still wanted to pay with BTC. 

Anyways, after my products were scanned, the big moment arrived, $50 (around that) so I said: “I am going to pay with Bitcoin”, the lady gave a look like: “Ohh!! For real? You’re going to make me struggle now?”, of course she didn’t say it, but I could notice it. 

She asked me to wait because she didn’t even have the bitcoin POS, she went to get it and there was me, making other people on the line wait, but I didn’t give a damn, because I was in my right to pay with Bitcoin and the fact that the employee didn’t have the POS ready, was not my fault. 

Once she came, she was struggling with it and I noticed it was one of Athena Pay POS, so I asked her if she needed help, she didn’t reply to me, instead she called for her supervisor, which is totally fine because that’s her procedure (maybe) and none of them knew what to do. 

By this time I already had like 10 minutes there, so what they decided to do was to send the customers on the line to another counter and close the one I was in while they figure out how to use the POS. I remained patient knowing that of course, it may take some time because it is not something they are used to do. 

20 minutes went by, she finally showed me the QR code to pay, but hey! It was the ON-CHAIN QR code. I advised her that it was not the correct QR code, she said it was, her supervisor said it was. I showed her that it was going to allow me to transfer the bitcoin but it was going to charge me a fee (during that time it was like $15USD fee) and was not going to pay that, I advised them that there is another form of payment which is faster and less expensive, the lightning network and I showed them that if they chose “lightning” it was going to be the same. 

They insisted that they were correct, in the end I was not going to make a huge drama out of it, so I followed their instructions. Guess what? They didn’t want me to go before they could see that the transaction was successful and well, you know, on-chain transactions take some time. At the end, they consulted with someone else and they asked for my phone number, my email, my DUI and said that if the transaction was not successful they were going to contact me.

That experience was horrible, the worst one I have experienced when paying with Bitcoin. Couple of weeks later I went back to the same location and was happy to see that now, they had everything ready to accept bitcoin and that time my payment was faster and better through the lightning network, the supervisor saw me and apologized for the previous experience and thanked me for showing them that indeed they had to use the lightning network.

Adoption and Use of Bitcoin in El Salvador

Now, that does not mean that everywhere is like that because if you go to fancier places like in la Zona Rosa or even the Zonte Beach or El Tunco, places there are used to receive payments in Bitcoin (not all the stores though).

With this, what I would like to let you know is that even though Bitcoin was legal tender (after early 2025, BTC stopped being legal tender but is still used) businesses were not accepting it completely because what they used to do was receive BTC and immediately convert it to USD, which they were in their right to do so.

Nowadays, there is a wallet called Blink that allows you to see which places accept bitcoin as payment method. This wallet is really easy to use and is one of the most used Hot Wallets in El Salvador. Some people use bitcoin just to do trading and some others HODL it.

If you notice, basically the majority of foreigners that come to El Salvador, they go to the fancier areas of San Salvador or to the beach where is easier to pay with Bitcoin, but that doesn’t help bitcoin adoption, that only makes that the people get to see bitcoin as something exclusive that only rich people can access.

I’d like to clarify that I call fancier areas to places like Escalón, Zona Rosa and San Benito, because you can see one of the best sides of the country and where most wealthy people hang out, live and work. That means that the restaurants and other businesses that operate in those areas are more likely to accept bitcoin than businesses outside those areas.

Education and Bitcoin Communities in El Salvador

There is an NGO called Mi Primer Bitcoin that provides free education for locals about Bitcoin and helps the bitcoin adoption in El Salvador. Every last Thursday of each month they make a Bitcoin Meetup at a restaurant or venue that accepts bitcoin to incentivize people spending their sats in that place. At the same time they create a community of both locals and foreigners together to talk about Bitcoin.

There is also another group called Bitcoin Beach which focuses on Bitcoin Education. Just like Mi Primer Bitcoin, they do several Bitcoin Meet ups at places that accept bitcoin.

In Berlin, Usulutan there is a group of foreigners and locals that incentivized the Bitcoin adoption and they have a Bitcoin Centre called “Bitcoin Berlin” where they explain everything about Bitcoin and allow people to get to know more about it.

Can You Truly Live the Bitcoin Standard in El Salvador?

Now, can you truly live the Bitcoin Standard in El Salvador? The simple answer is No. Because even though you can technically pay for everything in bitcoin, you may still be forced most of the time to have a card with USD to pay because not all businesses accept Bitcoin, sometimes it may be better if you use some cash.

So, is it something bad? No, not at all because you can see how more and more people are getting into bitcoin and who knows, maybe you will get some locals into bitcoin as well, just make sure not to only stay in the “fancier” areas of the country if you truly want to experience El Salvador at its best because for sure I can tell you that you will not be disappointed and you will love it that you may even want to come live here!