Bitcoin is now legal currency in El Salvador — but its rollout hits major snags

El Salvador officially adopted bitcoin as a legal currency on Tuesday, becoming the first country to do so. However, several hours into the first day, the launch of Chivo, the government's digital wallet app that allows Salvadoran citizens to transact in the volatile cryptocurrency, suffered snags and the price of bitcoin fell as much as 10% as of early Tuesday afternoon.

Bitcoin can now be used as a legal tender for any business that can support and process transactions with it, months after the Latin American country's congress approved the move. While the financial world awaits how El Salvador executes the rollout, the country's president, Nayib Bukele, suggested on Monday that there would be a "learning curve." "Every road to the future is like this and not everything will be achieved in a day, or in a month. But we must break the paradigms of the past, " he tweeted in Spanish. "El Salvador has the right to advance towards the first world."