Was the Bitcoin Rollout in El Salvador a Success? Mike Novogratz Says It’ll Be Clear By This Date

Billionaire Mike Novogratz says the technical issues that marred El Salvador’s Bitcoin rollout are mere glitches.

In a new Bloomberg TV interview, the CEO of Galaxy Digital says that it may take some time to discern whether or not the Central American nation made the right move in adopting Bitcoin as a legal currency.

[2:45] “I think what’s unique in El Salvador is… 20% of their GDP comes from remittances, and so you can see lots of those remittances (people sending Bitcoin back across oceans)… and the locals [are] either keeping Bitcoin… or converting it and spending it in the local economy. We’ll see, maybe it gets used as a transactional currency.” 

[4:48] “Whenever you’re doing a new technology roll-out, there are glitches and so I guess the real question is come back in six weeks or 12 weeks and let’s talk about how it’s working for the people of El Salvador, for the system itself.”

But the billionaire is optimistic that El Salvador adopting Bitcoin will eventually work out.

[5:05] “I remember when Obama rolled out Obamacare. It was kind of a disaster for a little while and they sorted the glitches out. Doing things at scale is not easy and so I’ve got a lot of faith that they’ll get this right.”

In May, Galaxy Digital Holdings agreed to buy California-based crypto unicorn BitGo which developed El Salvador’s official Bitcoin wallet, Chivo. El Salvador can opt to use other crypto wallets, but only those who download Chivo will get the $30 in BTC promised by the government.

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Featured Image: Shutterstock/Alexander Mozymov