Dubai Telegraph - How a taxi driver in El Salvador got rich with Bitcoin

EUR -
AED 3.877098
AFN 71.573486
ALL 98.246401
AMD 412.114673
ANG 1.896844
AOA 961.611157
ARS 1064.031197
AUD 1.625214
AWG 1.900038
AZN 1.800511
BAM 1.955386
BBD 2.12509
BDT 125.773363
BGN 1.955302
BHD 0.397914
BIF 3109.382573
BMD 1.055576
BND 1.41346
BOB 7.273494
BRL 6.267382
BSD 1.052547
BTN 88.8696
BWP 14.378682
BYN 3.444373
BYR 20689.298363
BZD 2.12149
CAD 1.479697
CDF 3029.504186
CHF 0.932364
CLF 0.037389
CLP 1031.667842
CNY 7.647232
CNH 7.653436
COP 4628.174932
CRC 537.575965
CUC 1.055576
CUP 27.972776
CVE 110.242175
CZK 25.27525
DJF 187.42498
DKK 7.459305
DOP 63.445361
DZD 140.967985
EGP 52.426579
ERN 15.833647
ETB 133.035805
FJD 2.395315
FKP 0.833184
GBP 0.833334
GEL 2.887008
GGP 0.833184
GHS 16.366611
GIP 0.833184
GMD 74.946279
GNF 9069.907302
GTQ 8.120319
GYD 220.204408
HKD 8.214359
HNL 26.619858
HRK 7.5297
HTG 138.036843
HUF 412.86774
IDR 16716.741962
ILS 3.864107
IMP 0.833184
INR 89.138472
IQD 1378.768815
IRR 44413.379246
ISK 144.713623
JEP 0.833184
JMD 166.251641
JOD 0.748719
JPY 159.933584
KES 136.295702
KGS 91.621763
KHR 4234.982743
KMF 492.431571
KPW 950.018402
KRW 1473.062241
KWD 0.324506
KYD 0.877089
KZT 528.972939
LAK 23110.448795
LBP 94251.560468
LKR 306.269335
LRD 188.396531
LSL 19.095713
LTL 3.116843
LVL 0.638508
LYD 5.149763
MAD 10.545917
MDL 19.27637
MGA 4924.817043
MKD 61.521679
MMK 3428.471125
MNT 3586.848711
MOP 8.434474
MRU 41.841346
MUR 49.316016
MVR 16.308951
MWK 1825.061614
MXN 21.562367
MYR 4.689395
MZN 67.47157
NAD 19.095894
NGN 1780.915679
NIO 38.731064
NOK 11.696658
NPR 142.18954
NZD 1.791816
OMR 0.406392
PAB 1.052577
PEN 3.961461
PGK 4.244021
PHP 61.940156
PKR 292.457021
PLN 4.305874
PYG 8227.023842
QAR 3.836306
RON 4.976512
RSD 117.014851
RUB 119.43797
RWF 1450.265381
SAR 3.965248
SBD 8.85691
SCR 14.067699
SDG 634.925727
SEK 11.530193
SGD 1.416948
SHP 0.833184
SLE 23.963956
SLL 22134.915307
SOS 601.561202
SRD 37.35738
STD 21848.301255
SVC 9.209788
SYP 2652.167341
SZL 19.092595
THB 36.373582
TJS 11.288089
TMT 3.705073
TND 3.319413
TOP 2.472262
TRY 36.575814
TTD 7.144352
TWD 34.350042
TZS 2793.289614
UAH 43.821874
UGX 3884.195793
USD 1.055576
UYU 45.11066
UZS 13523.00795
VES 49.397352
VND 26743.029287
VUV 125.320157
WST 2.946738
XAF 655.805686
XAG 0.035448
XAU 0.000402
XCD 2.852748
XDR 0.805107
XOF 655.799475
XPF 119.331742
YER 263.814905
ZAR 19.228307
ZMK 9501.449665
ZMW 28.707104
ZWL 339.895185
  • SCS

    -0.0700

    13.47

    -0.52%

  • RYCEF

    0.1100

    6.91

    +1.59%

  • RIO

    0.2900

    62.32

    +0.47%

  • RBGPF

    1.0000

    62

    +1.61%

  • NGG

    0.5000

    63.33

    +0.79%

  • GSK

    0.3100

    34.33

    +0.9%

  • CMSC

    -0.0500

    24.52

    -0.2%

  • RELX

    0.2400

    47.05

    +0.51%

  • BTI

    0.2300

    37.94

    +0.61%

  • AZN

    0.8400

    67.2

    +1.25%

  • BCE

    0.3900

    27.02

    +1.44%

  • BCC

    -2.0100

    146.4

    -1.37%

  • VOD

    0.1100

    8.97

    +1.23%

  • CMSD

    -0.0700

    24.36

    -0.29%

  • BP

    0.1700

    29.13

    +0.58%

  • JRI

    0.1700

    13.41

    +1.27%

How a taxi driver in El Salvador got rich with Bitcoin
How a taxi driver in El Salvador got rich with Bitcoin / Photo: Marvin RECINOS - AFP

How a taxi driver in El Salvador got rich with Bitcoin

Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador.

Text size:

He credits President Nayib Bukele's decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life.

"Before I was unemployed... and now I have my own business," said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company.

Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin into legal circulation in a bid to revitalize El Salvador's dollarized, remittance-reliant economy.

He invested hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money in the cryptocurrency, despite warnings about volatility risks from global institutions.

Osorio credited the US founder of the NGO My First Bitcoin, John Dennehy, with encouraging him to accept payment in the cryptocurrency.

He now has 21 drivers working for his Bit-Driver brand and has made enough profit from the currency's rise to be able to buy four rental vehicles.

A divorced father of two teenagers, he also no longer struggles to pay for their education.

Launching bitcoin as legal tender on September 7, 2021, Bukele said he wanted to bring the 70 percent of Salvadorans who do not use banks into the financial system and promptly began plowing public money in cryptocurrencies.

To spur Salvadorans to use bitcoin he created the Chivo Wallet app for sending and receiving bitcoin free of charge and gave $30 to each new user.

His grand ambitions for bitcoin fell foul of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which hesitated to grant El Salvador a $1.3 billion loan because of its official use of the cryptocurrency.

In August, however, the IMF announced a preliminary loan agreement with El Salvador, while saying it needed to mitigate "potential risks."

- Offered as 'option' -

While Osorio has grown relatively wealthy with bitcoin, a study by the University Institute for Public Opinion showed that 88 percent of Salvadorans had yet to use it.

"From the beginning... it was clear that it was clearly an ill-advised measure that the population rejected," the director of the institute, Laura Andrade, told AFP.

One-quarter of Salvadoran GDP comes from remittances sent home by family members, mostly from the United States.

But in 2023 only one percent of the transfers were made in cryptocurrencies.

In an interview with Time magazine in August, Bukele acknowledged that while "you can go to a McDonald's, a supermarket, or a hotel and pay with Bitcoin" it had "not had the widespread adoption we hoped for."

He added that "the positive aspect is that it is voluntary; we have never forced anyone to adopt it. We offered it as an option, and those who chose to use it have benefited from the rise in Bitcoin."

He also confirmed that he had around $400 million in bitcoin that is kept in a public "cold storage wallet" -- a way of storing bitcoin offline.

Bitcoin's fortunes have been mixed.

This week it was trading at around $52,000, down from a peak of $73,616 on March 13. In November 2022 it fell as low as $16,189.

Independent economist Cesar Villalona told AFP that Bukele himself had hobbled bitcoin's take-up by stripping it of the usual functions of a currency.

"Bukele... said: there will be no salary in bitcoin, there will be no pensions in bitcoin, there will be no savings in bitcoin and there will be no price in bitcoin, and in so doing took away the three functions of money," Villalona said.

Luis Contreras, an instructor at My First Bitcoin, told AFP many Salvadorans were simply afraid of making the switch.

The organization has taken cryptocurrencies into public schools, teaching around 35,000 students to use bitcoin so far.

Contreras says the hardest thing about training people on bitcoin "is their fear of new things, which creates a fear of technology" as well as "the fear of moving from a classic currency in the current economy to one that is totally digital and decentralized."

K.Javed--DT