The other thing that I want to mention is I have my doubts that this is really a stress test for Bitcoin and Lightning, because the way the application is working, it looks like more is a centralized system and only when you interact with external wallets it actually connects to the main chain or with the lightning network. So it’s hard to evaluate how good has been this deployment and the scale up of it. If we don’t have like true real data about the users, about transactions and about everything. And I think that um the main problem is that, for me, whatever the government release is not truly Bitcoin. It looks like a centralized banking system, and that will explain the a lot of issues that people reported when trying to use the application.
And, yeah, I mean it’s not a bad idea by itself, but –
[00:31:27] Aaron: Mario, let’s be clear about what you mean. What you mean is that the Chivo app is custodial and transactions from Chivo to Chivo are basically just ledger entries, right?
[00:31:39] Mario: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:31:41] Aaron: Yes, exactly. Yeah.
[00:31:42] Mario: So the whole area was to give like this government owner banking system to the population. I mean, it’s fine. It’s not a really bad idea. But I think that what we always point about this is the way that it was forced all these obligations that the business or where owners needs to comply. We even have one politicians tweeting about that they were asking a business owner to install Chivo application. And I think that if you think a little bit about this, these coins against all the things that bitcoiners tries to do and the Bitcoin philosophy. So I think that that’s the main problem.
And if you look at the experience of several users, is the users that didn’t use the government applications, the ones that have less issues and even these big stores, they decided to not use the Chivo Wallet. And they have less issues than the rest of the people. We’re still having issues regarding to, let’s say, the compatibility with other applications and these kind of things that I think is not acceptable from the perspective of the citizens. I mean, we are paying for this. We are paying a lot of money to make this work. Oo one was asked to approve this. I think that if this law – I mean, if Bitcoin was implemented but in an optional manner, I think it was not going to be a problem. But I think that they promised it too much and delivered just too little. And we are paying for this. And they need to uh take a position about this.
I mean, the government needs to explain what happens with the money of the people, because at the end of the day, many business owners trust the government to implement this solution. And to this day, they’re still losing money for this. So I think that someone needs to be made responsible about what has happened. That’s my take on this. Thanks.
[00:33:44] Aaron: So let me see if I understand you correctly. It sounds like you have two concerns. One is a lack of transparency from the government on how taxpayer funds essentially are being spent on the creation of this wallet. And the other one, but I’m not sure about this, is, well, it’s obvious that the wallet isn’t very smooth or there are a lot of kinks to work out. Are you also of the opinion that it shouldn’t be custodial in the first place? Or do you think that’s an acceptable tradeoff?
[00:34:14] Mario: I think that for the second point. I mean, it’s an acceptable tradeoff if it’s transparent enough so we know how all the funds are being used. But what we know about this Chivo application and the development team is that it’s a private business. We don’t even know if there was a tender or something like that to decide who was the development host that was going to develop the application. So I think it lacks a lot of transparency. And I don’t think that the –
[00:34:50] Aaron: Hang on. Do you do you mean transparency about how the funds are being used itself? Do you also mean transparency on how the wallets actually works and how the custody works and where the funds are and that kind of stuff?
[00:35:02] Mario: Everything. Because, I mean, everything is speculating here. I think even you guys do not have any details about the technical side neither of the way or taxpayer money is being spent on these applications. So I think all this lack of transparency is giving really a bad image not only to Bitcoin, but it removes any reason for us to trust on these government wallets. So why I’m going to trust on this application if they are not giving us any details about how it works? How the money is spent? So I think that that’s not susceptible as a citizen.
[00:35:39] Aaron: Yeah, it’s not exactly in line with the open source philosophy. That’s for sure. We don’t know how the world works. Or we also don’t know how, or where, or who is storing the funds since it’s custodial.
[00:35:51] Mario: Yeah. Yeah. We don’t even know who is the custodial of all these 550 Bitcoins. If you know, please tell us, because apparently no one in government wants to tell these kinds of things.
[00:36:03] CK: I just want to jump in and say that the majority of international Bitcoiners that are very interested in El Salvador, I don’t think many of them are necessarily rooting on the Chivo Wallet or anything like that. Obviously, the government effort is going to be a very strong effort and a big effort especially early on and we want that to be successful for the best of Bitcoin. But a government is going to be a government, and I don’t think any of us have any false expectations on what the government rollout is. But ultimately, I feel like the majority of us are excited about what Bitcoin offers and excited about the idea of a lot of people being introduced to the benefits of Bitcoin in whatever way. And hopefully they do it the right way, the open source way. And as you said, they’ve already had a better experience if they use Bitcoin straight up versus the government version. So I do kind of want to like just point that out just so we don’t – We’re not rooting necessarily for you know everyone to get on the Chivo Wallet and for that to be the dominant thing. We just want Bitcoin to help really, I think.
[00:37:06] Mike: If I could fill in just a little color from some things that I’ve seen on my end. One as far as who got the government contract, and there’s this perception that there’s companies out there making a bunch of money off of this. I think it’s actually the opposite. I know some companies that were approached, and basically the deal that was being tendered to different people would involve them having to make a substantial investment that they would probably never recoup. And the benefit for the company was to be the company kind of related to this project. So that going forward when they possibly could have more profitable deals with countries that could pay them kind of more market rates. And so I definitely understand the desire for transparency, but I don’t think that this is a case of there’s some company making a bunch of money off this. I think whoever’s behind this, they’re definitely losing money on it, and at least that for several years they will be. And I think that’s one thing.
I think the other thing is and what we’ve seen is the vast majority of companies do not want to use the Chivo Wallet, and I think that’s great for the project. And I would hope that the government would actually be happy about that, because that puts less stress and risk and demand on them. And my hope is that from the government side that the wallet that they offered was just so that people had some option that they could say that the government was standing behind ,but that ultimately the government doesn’t want to be in the wallet business. And I really think they don’t. I don’t think that that’s their desire. I think they feel that this will be better handled by private enterprise. And I think in their rush to roll it out and the timeline they did, they may have cut some corners, and there’s some stuff that I know all of us are uncomfortable with. But I don’t think that there was some perverse trying to steal money from this type thing behind it. There’s much easier ways to do that in government and with a lot less publicity.
[00:38:57] Mario: Well, I would think that the thing here is that the lack of transparency is something that is going against all local laws. And I think that – I mean, it’s the law. It’s the obligation of the government to explain what is the process that I use to hire all these companies independently if they’re making money or not of the implementations. And I think that it is the less that we can ask to these companies. Because if the government is not clear, is not transparent about what they use that they’re making to our money, at least we will think that these companies needs to say, “Okay, I’m working with them. We are providing this kind of technologies.” Because, again, what I say is that the law says that they need to be transparent about this kind of implementations, and they are not doing this. And I don’t think that this is going to end well if they keep hiding things from the people, if they keep hiding up all these technical details.
I mean, again, and I want to explain that we were never against the technology. I mean, I am a technologist myself. I consider all technologies just a tool is the way that is implemented. And I think that we cannot expect to do something good if we just leave them to act in complete darkness about what they are doing. And again, I think that the point here is that there is a legal framework that the government needs to respect, and you can have a lot of good intentions. But you know, good intention is what pays the way to hell. And I think that this is the bulk of the message that I want to leave you guys. And yeah, the problem is that normally, in this kind of spaces, and on Twitter you know that these are a lot of discussions, and it gets one-sided, and there is little space for rational discussion about what is happening. Again, if it was open, if it was transparent, if it was open source, if it was optional, I think that I even will like to support this kind of initiatives, even including other kind of crypto assets and technologies. But what we have here is completely different what you would expect to deploy this kind of technologies.
[00:41:12] Edgardo: So to do a compliment of what Mr. MXGX is saying. I mean, the main point of the Bitcoin community, I’m guessing, and I don’t know if everybody’s going to be right with me, is El Salvador is the first country that make this kind of legal. What that means is like Bitcoin Beach, you are saying, I mean not everybody using Chivo, and everybody using different wallets. I mean, that is great. I mean, we’d have been following Bitcoin for a while, and we’re happy to see that this is the first country – What the three percent. I mean, and that’s what his speech is about. I mean, his speech about the transparency and all that. It’s like the three percenters that do all the time.
I mean, the point is here, El Salvador is the first country that legalized Bitcoin. I mean, it’s not like mandatory that, yeah, you’re going to Chivo Wallet. I, mean you can use now every single wallet that you can. And more investment is going to come, for example, Stike, Coinbase. I mean, it’s not going to be like just [inaudible 00:42:14], and that’s what [inaudible 00:42:18]. I mean the private investment is the one that’s going to be the key here, because now that – I mean, for how many years we’ve been waiting so we can cash out Bitcoins. I mean, Bitcoins have been around back and forth, back and forth, but there was not a place, I mean a legal place where you can go ahead and see that money in cash, in paper. I mean, what most of the people don’t see here is that, “Come on, we’re the first country to legalize Bitcoin. They don’t see the investment that they’re bringing to our country.” And when he’s saying transparency, Chivo app, I mean, yeah, it is a government app. It is a private app. That’s what they’re saying. But I mean, look at the point of view there. He’s saying how much money that they’re making underwater and so and so on so. That’s a three percentage picture. Come on, man. Look at the future though. I mean, we’re happy here that we legalize Bitcoin though. I mean we’re the first country that is legal. Most countries [inaudible 00:43:18].
[00:43:17] Aaron: Bitcoin is legal in most countries. The difference is that it’s legal tender, which is a legal definition of a currency that you can [inaudible 00:43:27] comes into play.
[00:43:28] Mike: As these things take time to roll out, and quite honestly I think a lot of the deals were done with the companies just acting in good faith.
[00:43:36] Edgardo: Yeah. Yeah. But, again, we have a legal framework. I mean if this happened in one of your countries, guys, I think that you will not accept this kind of actions by your government or the companies that participated in this. And I think this doesn’t help Bitcoin. That’s the point.
[00:43:56] Speaker: Hey, I just want to add something from what Mario says, because I only have little much time to be on this space. I’m Salvadorian too. I live here in Salvador. And what Mario is trying to say is that we are not against Bitcoin. We are not against what Bitcoin can bring to the country. But how it’s implementing here in El Salvador, it’s really shady. It’s wrong. It’s without transparency. And what he was talking about, that private enterprise that he’s talking about, it’s actually a private enterprise that is funded with government money. So and it’s run by people that works in the government. The people that it’s – Well, the names on the enterprise, on the register, on the national register of El Salvador, there are people that work in the government. And we don’t know where the funds are going.
And, well, the 550 Bitcoin that El Salvador possesses, it was bought with taxpayer’s money, because the government doesn’t have no money. They have our money. So that’s why we need transparency. That’s why we need that they give us account, they hold accountable of what they’re doing with our money. That’s the difference. That’s what we’re protesting against, it’s the lack of transparency and the way they do things. That’s the main issue.
[00:45:05] Aaron: Mario, I want to ask you something else. You were in the news last week. Is that something you want to discuss on this call or not?
[00:45:11] Mario: Well, the problem is that I don’t even know why they did this to me. But once I get more information, I will share it with all of you guys.
[00:45:21] Aaron: All right. Yeah, you were briefly arrested, right?
[00:45:24] Mario: Yep, yep. But up to this day, we don’t know the real reasons for that.
[00:45:29] Aaron: All right. Got it. We have Nature of Type One on the stage. What’s up?
[00:45:34] CK: Nature, welcome.
[00:45:35] Nature: Hey, what’s up. Yeah, I guess following up on the transparency conversation. I mean, the biggest concern I have is just the survivability of Bitcoin in El Salvador over the long term. And that comes with a knowledgeable user base. So I was just wondering with the people who are in El Salvador right now, I’m not sure if there’s any initiatives, but is there like any ongoing education programs provided on the national government level like that will be after this initial onboarding period? Or is that like assumed to be left to the private sector, and which you guys would think will be best for that?
[00:46:16] Aaron: Mike, do you want to answer this?
[00:46:17] Mike: Sure. I think there’re both right now. The government has actually put more of an effort than i was expecting specifically around the launch of the Chivo app and helping people onboard, but just some general education also. But I think that that’s really going to have to fall on the private sector. And I think that’s what’s great about Bitcoin. It’s decentralized. We have projects that we’re working on in our little area, but there’s dozens of other people that are doing kind of similar things. And we coordinate when we can, but it’s great that all these things are kind of happening independent of each other. And it’s going to take time. I mean, anybody who’s coming to the Bitcoin space, it takes really years for them to really understand. And we kind of go through the stages. And I think that’s going to be the same that’s going to happen here.
[00:47:05] Aaron: Yeah. Anyone else on topic, education topic? Any other comments here? Mario or –
[00:47:11] Mario: Yeah. I mean, we have been trying to educate people mostly on the use of other wallets if they are really interested in using Bitcoin to get payments or to transfer it to cash. But yeah, the problem also is they try to keep all the details of the application until the last moment. I mean, that generated a lot of confusion. The system was not ready. I’m really worried because some people lose actual money, right? So they are still waiting to transfer their funds out of the application. Yeah, I mean, it’s a lot of lack of education on the government side. And I think that the good – I mean, the correct way of doing it was to explain about the technology and explain the alternatives. I think that a more organic way of implementing make a lot of more sense that way they have done currently with the Chivo app.
[00:48:07] Edgardo: I have question to Bitcoin Beach. I know you guys had the project since the beginning. What app were you guys using? I mean, I got very concerned about that. I mean, because you were the pioneers using the Bitcoin here in El Salvador, but which app do you guys use? Which one in other words?
[00:48:24] Aaron: Bitcoin Beach has the Bitcoin Beach Wallet, which is basically a wallet designed by the Bitcoin Beach Project. I noticed that the Bitcoin Beach Wallet was actually the second most downloaded app in El Salvador last week. So people definitely also trying out other wallets. And it seems that one in particular.
[00:48:44] CK: I have a quick question about the Chivo Wallet. Are they utilizing the wallet to do any sort of education? Or is it just like here’s an interface and that’s it? Any sort of onboarding or anything like that within that wallet? Is that something that they’ve like leveraged?
[00:48:58] Aaron: I don’t think so. I’ve browsed through the wallet a little bit. It’s Spanish, so it’s clear to me what everything does exactly. Or it’s clear enough, because I know how Bitcoin works. So it’s sort of I can fill in the gaps. And I don’t think I saw any sort of educational course. The Bitcoin Beach Wallet actually does have that. The Bitcoin Beach Wallet has an education page and you get to learn and answer questions, just very basic Bitcoin questions. So you get to learn what Bitcoin is in the app itself. I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen that in the Chivo app now.
[00:49:30] Edgardo: The, Chivo app has no education whatsoever within the app. They were doing a lot of ads on the news about how to use it. But I mean, the app itself, I mean, it’s just straightforward. Here’s the application. And you deal with it. So [inaudible 00:49:44].
[00:49:47] CK: Maybe Mike can answer some questions about the Bitcoin Beach Wallet first.
[00:49:51] Mike: I mean, specifically on Bitcoin Beach, the majority of people are using the Bitcoin Beach Wallet just because it has the integrated map function. They can find all the stores, where people are using it. It’s a very user friendly wallet. It has the username function, and also just because we’ve been going out and doing education and trying to onboard people. But we believe it’s probably one of the best user experience wallets out there. But we want to promote multiple wallets and have people using whatever wallet they feel most comfortable with. The Bitcoin Beach Wallet is a shared custodial wallet, which has its downsides. And so people who are willing to go the non-custodial route, we definitely want to push them in that direction and we hope to eventually move our wallet in that direction. But yeah, I think just for usability in our area, the majority of people are using the Bitcoin Beach Wallet.
[00:50:41] CK: Mario, I actually have a quick question for you. And I would just like start the question with a statement. But I don’t think a lot of Bitcoiners per se expect a lot out of governments. If you say like, “Hey, governments are misusing taxpayer money and not being transparent and doing things that we don’t like.” I would say, “Yes, that’s probably to be expected, and that’s happening everywhere in the world especially because of COVID restrictions.” So I don’t know what your opinion is about all that stuff. But I don’t really expect too much from government. So a lot of your criticisms kind of have to do with like the governments doing this. The government app is like that. And I get it. And they’re implementing something you don’t maybe do or do not like. But for us, it’s really, it’s like is Bitcoin entering into El Salvador, and is that a good thing? And I think a lot of people here think that it is a good thing. What’s kind of your fear here beyond like the government itself acting in malicious ways? Or are you just really concerned only strictly about the government and Bitcoin is just kind of a sad issue. Do you think Bitcoin in El Salvador in general is a good thing? Or is it just neutral and the government’s just being that? I’m just kind of curious to set the conversation a little more straight.
[00:51:50] Mario: Okay. I have actually two fears. Fear is related to the use as Bitcoin as money, because I pretty understand that everyone use this as an investment tool, and that’s fine for me. I mean, I don’t have any issues. But the problem is with the small Americans in the streets, people that live life to life, they cannot cope with all these volatility of Bitcoin. So this gives people a lot of problem troubles.
And the other thing that we are starting to observe is that people is trying to increase a little bit the prices. I mean, we kind of expected this, because the way that the American protects itself against volatility is to increase a little bit the price. So if they are going to bet on accepting Bitcoin, they have a little bit of margin in case the price reduces by the next day or things like that.
So apart from the government, the way that they are implementing these, I think that there is a lot of things that we don’t really know how they are going to work in the actual economy with the actual Americans in the markets. And I really believe that if the people that promotes Bitcoin – I mean, I’m not a promoter of Bitcoin by myself. But I think that some kind of pilot-wise needed to implement this kind of things, to see the effects, to see if really it’s worth it. And I’m sorry for the Bitcoin Beach guys. But I think that their context is completely different to the context of the rest of the country, because I mean they are a touristic place. They receive a lot of foreigners. They have like a small community where everyone knows each other. So they can have this like this closed economy that – I mean, it’s not a bad idea about itself, but it doesn’t represent a full market like the big market of San Salvador that is completely different to rest of the country.
So I think that there are so many questions. And I think that it’s not fair to run this experiment with all the population. It’s what we call – I mean, I’m a developer. So this looks like we are developing on production. And you know that this kind of thing do not end good.
[00:54:10] Edgardo: I got a question for you really quick. Before you got arrested, there was a Chivo Wallet. Approximately what? Six hours before you got arrested it disappeared before the original launch. You got anything to say about that?
[00:54:26] Mario: Well, we warned people that there was a lot of scams. And we were talking about this for weeks before. I think that a couple of people expert in security warned about this this wallet, because people were trying to scam people out. And I think that even the government guys warned about this. And if you look at my older tweets, I pointed that it was needed to the government to educate people, because without education anyone can fall in this kind of scams. And the problem is that they wait to the last moment to give information about this wallet, and they didn’t even gave any warnings about the scams. And that’s the thing that bothers me really, because we actually we’re trying to do the education that was not being done by the government at that time.
[00:55:24] Edgardo: Yeah. The reason I asked you is because even though the newspaper El Salvador Punto Con tweeted it and also put it on Facebook Chivo Wallet, I mean [inaudible 00:55:35]. And everybody went to the play store. And I even went myself and I looked at it. I mean, I was not as calm and tried to roll out it and I saw it. There were like two days before the original launch of the Chivo app. That happened that even though the newspapers El Savador Punto Con went and posted the actual app itself [inaudible 00:55:56]. I was like, “What the heck? I mean, didn’t they say they were going to launch it in the 7th ?” But two days before, it was already on the play store. I mean, it was kind of crazy.
And they were tying you down with that. I mean, that’s what I asked you straight, because they were saying, I mean, that is all over in the news, I mean, the Salvador Punto Con [inaudible 00:56:14]. They were saying that you were the one behind that Chivo app and that there was a lunch on the play store. And that’s why, I mean, to clarify to the Bitcoin community, I mean that was not you. I know it was not you, but I mean it’s great to clear that out, because a couple hours before they arrest you with no charges, the Chivo app went away from the play store.
[00:56:37] Mario: Well, you say it. I mean, I don’t know the reason why they arrested me. And I mean, they didn’t filed any charges or anything. And for me, it’s really suspicious that we have all these information. We were trying to educate all the people to tell them, “Please, don’t fall into scams.” We even asked the government to give an official information regarding their app, because there was a lot of lack of information. And you know, if people doesn’t have the information, if they don’t have education, if they don’t have the tools to really identify what’s real and what’s a scam, what you can have is people trying to put money on this kind of scam. So I don’t know what’s behind all of this, but I will not trust any government sources recording this. Because, again, I don’t know what’s behind or what’s the idea of these people behind all of these scams. Obviously, they want to trick people. They want to make people think that they are the official ones. But again, what we are trying to do is to educate people. And you can see all my posts. And you can see that even if I criticize the implementation of Bitcoin, my work all this time has been on educating people and warning about all the risks that they are exposed.
[00:57:56] Serge: Mario, did you spend Bitcoin anywhere this week?
[00:57:58] Mario: Not this week. I mean, I only have a small bunch of Bitcoin to test the technology. But I don’t use it to spend it or to invest anywhere. A mean, I’m here for the technology and not because I think this is a good money replacement or investment tool.
[00:58:18] CK: Mario, if you don’t think it’s a good investment, you haven’t spent enough time researching the technology.
[00:58:24] Mario: Yeah, I mean this is my opinion, because I don’t really like to give any money value to anything that is virtual. But that’s a long discussion. I mean, we can spend hours talking about that.
[00:58:39] CK: Fair enough. That would be an interesting conversation.
[00:58:42] Mario: Yeah, of course.
[BREAK]
[00:58:50] Pete: Bitcoiners, I am so excited to tell you about the Bitcoin 2022 Conference. You guys, Bitcoin 2021 was absolutely a smash hit success. It was over 13,000 bitcoiners coming together, breaking the barriers on who can come together and celebrate freedom, celebrate Bitcoin in the energy was absolutely electric. Unfortunately, it was just oversubscribed. There’re just people flowing out everywhere. And this year, we are learning. We are making the conference bigger and better. We are moving over to the Miami Beach Convention Center. And we are going to be throwing a massive four-day festival for Bitcoin, celebrating Bitcoin, bringing together the greatest minds in Bitcoin, and the greatest businesses in Bitcoin, and lastly, the culture of Bitcoin altogether.
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[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[01:02:44] Aaron: Let’s say, CK, last round of questions before we wrap this up?
[01:02:48] CK: Sure, yeah. That sounds good to me. I’m no longer a co-host. So up to y’all to bring people up.
[01:02:54] Aaron: All right. I brought Oscar up, I think, if it works.
[01:02:58] Oscar: Hey, Aaron. Well, thank you for letting me speak. First of all, I want to tell you that I am Salvadorian. I am part of the diaspora that lives in the United States, in several states for the last 15 years, sending remittances to my family to support my family. And I am also a Bitcoiner. I was one of the first guys that went to the first ATM in the financial district in New York City to use the Bitcoin ATM. And also I had the luck of going to one of the first coffee shops in Long Island in the area of Brooklyn where I was able to buy a coffee with Bitcoin. And I’m a coder. I’m a developer too. So I have the technical view of these kind of things.
I came to El Salvador, I’m actually in San Salvador. I came on the um first. I came to use the app and everything and spend money and try it out. I was here before like some months ago and I went to the Athena ATM in El Zonte. And I was able to use Muun to exchange $20 bill in exchange for Bitcoin with my Muun Wallet in El Zonte a few months ago. And this week I was able to go to Starbucks and buy a 550 pumpkin spice latte using my Muun Wallet. And I’ve been trying to use it in the country as much as I can. I went to a supermarket, but the Chivo app was down and they didn’t accepted my Bitcoin. And I went to Pollo Campero and I tried to buy also a combo meal that was like five bucks or something, and it was down. Unfortunately I couldn’t try it.
But I have a question. After sharing my experience so far, I have a question about remittances, because eventually I’ll go back to the states and I would like to know with the remittances, if let’s say that I use the Chivo Wallet – This morning, my US dollars are going to be purchased probably in Coinbase where I’m going to pay a fee. And then I’m going to transfer some of that money into the Chivo Wallet, I guess. Or maybe I’m going to link my checking account with my routing number and my account number to the Chivo app to replenish the balance and send some money to my family.
You guys have the certainty that this is going to work well in the sense that the Bitcoin is like converted into a Stablecoin and then it comes to El Salvador, and then it goes to the Chivo Wallet and gets converted into either US dollars or BTC. Do you have any like any say, like any words about this? Do you trust the Stablecoins? Because in New York some months ago, there was like a scandal between Bitfenix and Tether Inc. where um the New York AG fined them with 18 million dollars because they were saying that only part of the one dollar to one dollar relationship between the Stablecoins, and the dollar was true, that it had like three percent in cash and 74% in some other economic documents.
[01:06:00] Aaron: Why are you talking about Stablecoins exactly? We could just add the cash out of the ATM if you want dollar.
[01:06:06] Oscar: Yeah, because when I – No. Because when I put my money from the states into, let’s say, Strike or Chivo and I’m going to send it to El Salvador, it doesn’t go through Bitcoin. It goes through as a Stablecoin and then it gets converted. That’s what I understand from the Strike application. I don’t know how Chivo works, because I haven’t been able to use it yet in that scenario. But apparently what Strike does is that. So I just wanted to know your opinion, because I am a Bitcoiner. I do have an investment in Bitcoin. And I am a little bit worried that some of the value of Bitcoin may be inflated with the Stablecoins that don’t have any backing. And if that fails, we’re going to lose a lot of money. If Tether Inc., for example, goes down, we may lose some BTC value.
[01:06:53] Aaron: I think you might be conflating a couple of things now. So one of the theories is that Stablecoins are pumping the value of Bitcoin, which I think is – Well, I don’t subscribe to that theory. Let’s just put it that way. But I would recommend against holding Stablecoins, and there’s no reason to hold Stablecoins if you don’t want to. You can just cash out whatever you have in your wallet in an ATM here. I’ve done it. And then you have the actual cash in your hand. So if you don’t trust the USD balance in your Chivo wallets, then just cash it out and you’re done, or keep it in Bitcoin and spend the Bitcoin, in which case you’re obviously dealing with the volatility of Bitcoin. But there’s no real reason to keep the UDSD as digital USD in your Chivo Wallet, I think. You can just go for one of the other options.
[01:07:41] Oscar: The thing is that – Yeah, I understand that, and I will never keep it. I don’t have any Stablecoin. I don’t have USD or whatever. But what happens in the in the way there, because the government is going to have this in their custody. What happens if at some point they decide that they’re going to use like an intermediary like Stablecoin. Would you guys still trust that? Because that may be subject to inflation if the government comes up with like a Stablecoin and then it’s not one-to-one with the dollar. I don’t know. It’s one of one worries that I have basically.
[01:08:15] Aaron: I mean, I guess if you’re using it to transmit funds, you’re only trusting it to call it that for like five minutes or however long it takes you to get to an ATM over here. Or you can just send it in Bitcoin. That’s definitely possible. I’ve done it. So you don’t if you don’t trust the digital dollar in the Chivo Wallet, you don’t have to use it at all.
[01:08:33] CK: Oscar, I’d like to add some context. I think that there are fears that this is going to be leveraged into some unbacked fiat coin that is going to be imposed on the people. Who knows if that’s going to be the case? We recommend you know just sticking with Bitcoin. And we’re excited about Bitcoin in El Salvador. But you know we can’t vouch for what governments are going to do with CBDCs and this technology into the future. Every central bank pretty much is stating that they’re exploring this technology. And if you really go back to it, all fiat is pretty much air. So that’s why we’re trying to move to Bitcoin in the first place, because it’s kind of a solution to this problem that you know every government can print some dollar thing in their inner bank ledger or on their app or whatever. That’s kind of the key problem.
[01:09:19] Oscar: Yeah. And the final the final thoughts that I want to give my connections, my fellow Salvadorians here, is that they should learn how to use a self-custodial wallet just like Muun or any other wallet that they trust. And they should keep their BTC on that self-custodial wallet, because we don’t know what’s going to happen you know with the government economy. And we don’t have any transparency tools. For example, all of the transactions with the Chivo, they happen online, and we cannot go to a BTC explorer and explore that, right?
So I would say try to use a self-custodial wallet and get educated. And, yeah I hope everything works out. No Salvadorian, even if it’s a critic of the government wants the El Salvador economy to crash, right? So we want it to go up. So that would be my two cents. Thank you.
[01:10:10] Aaron: All right. Thank you. Let’s go for the last question. We have Ms. Rodelman. Am I saying that right? Yes, Ms. Rodelman on stage. How are you?
[01:10:18] Maria: Yes. Hi, guys. You can call me Maria. This is not a question. It is actually just something that I would like to say what you have been talking about. One of the things why people here are not happy about this Chivo app is because if you see the numbers, only 23% of the population here in El Salvador have a bank account. Of all that people, some of them have access to the online banking of those banks. And some of them don’t, because they don’t know how to use it.
In El Salvador, we have a lot of trouble with Internet connection, because not all the population have Internet. We even have trouble with education because there are kids that cannot go to classes right now because we have online classes and they don’t have Internet. So this is just something like the background of all this. I think that we have been very clear saying that we’re not against Bitcoin, at least people that understand how it works. We are against how the government has been implementing this new Chivo Wallet. So um that was just something that I would like to tell you just for you to have an idea why all this is a problem besides that they’re buying this with taxes money and everything, right? So this is just something that I just wanted to mention.
Besides, Mario has been doing the work that the government had to do months ago when they decided to buy this, because they had to educate the people. They don’t even know how to use an online banking app. So how would are they going to know how Bitcoin works when they probably didn’t even hear about Bitcoin before they actually talk about it? So there are a lot of things here that the government has been doing very wrong.
[01:12:07] Aaron: So let me zoom in on one of these points. So let me zoom in on one of these points, because we’ve discussed a number of them on this stream already. But you mentioned that a lot of people don’t have banking. Isn’t Bitcoin a solution then?
[01:12:18] Maria: It is not because we do not solve all these problems that they don’t have access to internet. They don’t have access to a proper education. And that’s something that Mario has been talking about too, that we cannot –
[01:12:30] Aaron: But that’s a different issue, right? So that they don’t have a bank account it’s not a problem. That they don’t have Internet, that’s the problem then.
[01:12:38] Maria: Exactly, the Internet. There are a lot of old people that don’t even have to use a cellphone, etc. So there are a lot of issues that will not be solved with Bitcoin.
[01:12:48] Aaron: Sure. It is true that Chivo app – I think as long as there is an Internet connection, then you can use the Chivo app, right? So you don’t actually need to have Internet credits. As long as it’s getting free Internet basically if you have that for the specific app.
[01:13:06] Maria: Yeah. But what happen if you don’t have money to pay for your Internet? How do you think that they’re going to have money to buy some Bitcoin through the app or something like that?
[01:13:16] Aaron: Sure. But it’s an extra option that people can use if they want to. And not everyone will want to or be able to, I would say.
[01:13:22] Maria: Exactly. But the problem is that they want to make it mandatory.
[01:13:27] Mario: I think that I kind of understand the whole – The whole point is that using Bitcoin requires an integral education where you need to know about the technology, you need to know about how to prevent being a scam or trick it into using anything else. So I think that has been lacking from the government implementation. And I think it’s a critical issue, because many people doesn’t have the access to the tools that will allow them to solve or to use any technology. Let’s talk about any technology, not only Bitcoin, in an appropriate matter.
So I think that, again, I kind of understand the reasons why you think that Bitcoin is going to help the people. There is a lot of things that needs to be solved before the implementation. And most of them are related to education to make people understand how to use their own finances, because, again, there is people that let’s say they improve their economic situation, they have access to a banking account, but they never receive financial education. So they have a lot of depths and this kind of thing. So I think that if we are thinking on banking, the population that doesn’t have access to it, we need to tackle this problem in a more integral way so people can have all the tools not just the technology.
[01:14:51 01:14:51] Aaron: Yeah. I was going to say, one of the arguments is that Bitcoin actually helps leapfrog these kinds of problems exactly because people can’t get a digital bank account. Now with Bitcoin, they sort of leapfrog that and they can – There’s still a lot of education to be done. And of course not everyone has the tools or the skills for it yet, but you got to start somewhere, right?
[01:15:10] Mario: Yeah, but at least in the case of El Salvador, we also have this law regarding simplified bank accounts that doesn’t have all the requirements that traditional bank accounts have. I mean, it’s the technology, it’s this law that allow the use of the Stablemoney solution and also allow the banks to provide these simplified bank accounts that are electronic accounts that work only within the application. So if we already have like these experiments using electronic money, electronic solutions that doesn’t have these entry barriers because, I mean, it asks you for the same kind of information that the Chivo app asks you just your identification number and nothing else. So the question is why these solutions, these technical solutions didn’t work?
I think that the appropriate way to understand this is to explore this. And I mean, Chivo has like a million users. So if you want to compare the rollout of Chivo Wallet, I think that you need to compare with an existing solution. I know it’s not the same. It’s not the same technology, but it has – I mean, it lacks the barriers that the traditional bank system has. So it could be a good start to understand the implications, the kind of problems that the people face, and obviously understanding all of these and learning from the previous experience will allow us to think what’s the best way to implement Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency or related technology.
[01:16:47] Aaron: Yeah. Well, actually, so I think that the big reason to do this has a lot to do with the dollarization of the country. And I think the government recognizes that this is a problem. And I would agree that it is a problem. You’re using – You’re very dependent on another country. You’re very dependent on the United States and their monetary policy. But I think this point has somehow not been brought up a lot and that might have something to do with it being more controversial. It’s very uncontroversial to say we’re going to help people use you know mobile app, and they’ll get electronic payments for the first time, and it’s cool. It’s much more controversial to say we’re going to move away from the dollar. It’s my suspicion, but I’d be curious to hear your thoughts about it. It’s my suspicion that they’re sort of intentionally not mentioning that very much even though that might be an underlying motivation to do this.
[01:17:36] Edgardo: Well what the problem that Mario was saying, and that’s why you’re totally right, is like the fight is like they’re saying they’re going to move away from the US dollar, because Mario talked about Tigo money itself. Tigo money has been around for what? Like five, seven years. What Tigo money does is you can utilize your actual cash money, go to a Tigo agent, put money into your electronic wallet and you can pay whatever – I mean, whoever will accept Tigo money.
I mean here, for example, if you go to your marketplace and you try to order something, either you go ahead and pay in person or you can go ahead and do a Tigo money transfer. But nobody says anything about it. I mean a lot of people, what it does from Cantonese, that’s what we call them here, canto, I personally have a Tigo money [inaudible 01:18:28] in my house. And there are people that are saying, “Old people don’t know how to use it.” They’re very smart. They learn how to use it. Why? Because Tigo money don’t allow remesas from Western Union and Moneygram. And they come to the house and says, “Oh, I got a remesa.” And you download it to your phone. And if you want it, you can cash it out or you can use it as electronic money to pay your water bill [inaudible 01:26:03]. I mean but they’re not saying anything as you mentioned. They’re kind of afraid that they want to move away from the dollar because people are used to use electrode money, I mean, since the last five, six years since Tigo money was implemented. So I don’t know why is that Maria is saying, “Oh, there is a lot of old people that don’t know how to use it.” Well, believe me, I mean 70% of the customers that I got on my house that come and get remesas are people that are like 65 years and older. And we teach them how to do it. And they do now the remesa and we give them the cash money there. So it’s not like about, “Oh, the old people don’t know how to use it.” They have learned how to use it. We teach them how to use it.
I mean it is the same thing with Bitcoin. I mean, nobody knows about it. I mean, but if they take the time to teach you how to use the Bitcoin, everybody will learn. And why is everybody afraid of? Because what the el president said was you can download the Chivo app on the states. You can send money with no fees. What was the headline of the newspaper? Western Union would lose $400 million of remesas this year if they use Chivo app. That’s what everybody’s afraid of, the big guys, the big sharks that, I mean, with the Chivo app, we know that it’s not working probably 100% right now. But say it is between the 40% and 50%.
But I mean, I talk to a lot of people, they’re on Texas, Los Angeles, they’re saying once the Chivo app gets all set up, what they’re going to do is they’re going to load the money to the Chivo app. They’re going to recargar, what they call it here. They’re going to send remesas. There is one problem here that the limit that you can withdraw here right now is one thousand dollars. I mean, when you go to Western Union or Moneygram, how much do they charge you to send one thousand dollars? They charge you around like $10 to $12 per each transaction. And with the Chivo app, it supposedly is going to be free. I mean, if you send it to me, for example, the United States, and I decided that I don’t want to receive it on BTC because the Chivo app has the option when it says if you want to receive the transaction, they send it to you. You have the option either to receive it via BTC or via USD.
I mean, if they send is whatever way they send over there, my Chivo app is set up to receive remesas only USD. So I just go ahead and cash it out.
So when they’re saying all people don’t know how to use it, that’s such a lie though, because 60% of the customers that I have with Tigo money that they go ahead and download remesas from Western and Moneygram in my house. They’re older people that comes and requests. They don’t allow to be made. So it’s not an excuse. And what they’re saying, “Oh, they need an Internet pakete. No because what we’re saying is if whatever area you have there is an actual Internet signal, even though you don’t have a pakete, you can go ahead and use the Chivo app. So there is not a thing of you have to buy a pakete of Internet or you don’t have to. I’d say you don’t need to buy a pakete of Internet so you can use the Chivo app.
I mean, at the end, once the application it is all set up, basically we will see exactly how it’s going to work. But I mean, there is a lot of backing forward. And I think what they’re afraid of is that I mean the El Salvador is trying to move away from the dollar. Remember what the speech of the el president said is, “Yes, we want us for you to help us out, but we don’t want to depend from you guys.” I don’t know if you remember that speech that he did. And that’s why everybody’s worried about. So it is a lot of political back and forward thing.
I mean, hoping once the Chivo app is all set up, I mean, everything runs and move for the Bitcoin community, that’s what all I have to say about. Thank you.
[01:22:51] Mario: Yeah. I just want to add a couple of things. First, I think that, well, nothing is free. And yeah, maybe Chivo is offering users no charges to whatever they send independently of the amount they send. But we are actually paying all these commissions with taxpayer money. And one user is telling me that people sending remittances can use bank to bank transference and they only pay $8 up to quantities from 1k. So people leaving Western Union and Moneygram to order cheaper options that doesn’t necessarily use Bitcoin or other technologies.
Again, I think that the problem here is that if you look at – I mean, if the government is paying for or all these small transactions, because at the end of the day, the guy that buys the Bitcoin at the US and pays for it, they are going to be charged by the operator of the credit card – The card operator. And there is a lot of small costs that the government is paying. That means that every citizen, salary is paying for this. And what this means is that this affects the adoption or other alternative options, because people think that it’s free even if it’s not true.
So this difficult the adoption of other solutions that maybe are working with Bitcoin or not that ideally they must compete in an open market. So people decide what kind of application they want to use if they want to use another different type of application that charges less or more. So this is not happening. I think that, again, I cannot be against a technology by itself, but I can oppose the way that is implemented because I think it affects the market. It affects the way that other participants can really offer the solutions. I mean, you say that there is a lot of investors that might want to participate on this on El Salvador economy offering their solutions. But if they are going to compete with a government wallet that offers a set of fee, you will not have any opportunities to participate on this market. And I think that’s harmful to the whole ecosystem and it’s against what you are trying to do guys with Bitcoin.
[01:25:18] CK: Thank you very much, Mario. I think we lost Aaron P. I think it’s getting uh close to time to wrap this one up. I appreciate everyone joining. And I thought that this was really helpful conversation. This conversation was recorded and will be available on Bitcoin Spaces in your podcast player or on the Bitcoin Magazine YouTube page in about two days. So check in on Thursday. We’ll be tweeting about it as well.
But again, a lot of good takes here. There’re a lot of issues with this implementation. It’s not perfect. I think you all the El Salvadorians have made it clear. Obviously, bitcoiners think that Bitcoin is a Trojan horse for freedom and financial literacy. So this is going to be the test. Does Bitcoin have the financial kind of robustness and purity as an asset to do what we think it will do for El Salvador despite pretty much every mistake potentially from the government according to many of the people here? And hopefully the values of open source continue to perpetuate.
I guess just one last word is check out Bitcoin 2022. Would love to you know continue to host these conversations and see what happens to Bitcoin across the globe and have that be the pinnacle again like with El Salvador for announcements and big moments in Bitcoin history to happen. So I think that’s going to be an incredible event, April 6th through the 9th in Miami, Florida. So b.tc/conference, check it out. A lot of great amazing things will be happening there.
But thank you to everyone who joined. Thank you to Aaron for hosting. Thank you to Bitcoin Beach. And, yeah, thank you again for just Bitcoin in the world and just seeing how all of this kind of shakes out. I do think that we’re living through history. But with that, let’s wrap this one up. And P feel free to close it out.
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