Glitches, protests as Bitcoin becomes legal tender in El Salvador

Bitcoin is now officially legal tender in El Salvador, but the country’s landmark adoption of the world’s largest cryptocurrency got off to a less than auspicious start on Tuesday with protests and technical problems.

San Salvador, El Salvador – Bitcoin is now officially legal tender in El Salvador, but the country’s landmark adoption of the world’s largest cryptocurrency got off to a less than auspicious start on Tuesday. Before the law officially took effect at 3pm local time (21:00 GMT), the country’s new digital wallet – called Chivo – suffered glitches, forcing the government to take it offline while it boosted server capacity. “We have disconnected it while increasing capacity of the image capture servers,” tweeted President Nayib Bukele. “The installation problems that some people had were for that reason.”