Six months in, El Salvador’s bitcoin gamble is crumbling

El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele is going all in on bitcoin, but his country is not. Much of the population lacks bank accounts and internet connections, according to investigative journalists Anna-Cat Brigida and Leo Schwartz in this revealing report, and high volatility, error-plagued technology and an infrastructure ill-suited to such a venture have only confounded the nation’s push to make bitcoin an official currency. This real-world experiment in sovereign cryptocurrency may have gained the president global renown, but Brigida and Schwartz note that his country’s growing debt crisis may help explain his crypto fervor.