El Salvador's Bitcoin Bet: Crowd Leans 'Visionary' Despite a Very Red Ledger

Markets abhor a vacuum, and they abhor an unsettled argument even more. A new Morfi market asks whether El Salvador's decision to make bitcoin legal tender was a good idea, and the crowd has wasted no time splitting into the two camps the world has occupied since 2021: visionaries and people who have read a balance sheet.

The facts, such as they are, are on the record. According to Wikipedia's account of the episode, the Legislative Assembly voted 62 to 21 to adopt the Bitcoin Law in June 2021, and bitcoin became legal tender on 7 September 2021, a world first. President Nayib Bukele argued it would cheapen remittances, which made up 23% of GDP in 2020, and bring the underbanked into digital payments. A noble pitch, as pitches go.

The execution was less cinematic. The same source says the government spent about $85.5 million on bitcoin between September 2021 and January 2022, by which point the coin had fallen about 45% and national reserves were estimated to be $22 million lighter. The International Monetary Fund urged the country to drop the policy, warning it made a $1.3 billion loan less likely. A year in, only 14% of businesses had touched bitcoin and it covered 1.9% of remittances. Bitcoin was rescinded as legal tender in February 2025. Adoption, it turns out, is a harder metric than enthusiasm.

Now the crowd. In a straight two-way fight, "Bold and visionary" leads at 56% consensus with 34 holders, while "Reckless gamble" sits at 44% consensus with 32 holders. Note that this is conviction, not a headcount. Across 36 traders, $49,734 is already riding on the answer, and trading opened less than a day ago. Early leads in crypto have the life expectancy of a weekend rally.

My take, which you may file under opinion: the crowd is being generous. Visionary is a word reserved for ideas that eventually work, and a policy that lost money, bored most merchants and ended up reversed is a visionary one only in the sense that a rooftop pool in winter is. Bold, certainly. Good, I would need to see the receipts. The romantics will say the experiment was the point. Experiments, in my experience, are usually run with someone else's reserves.

What to watch next: whether the early lead survives contact with the facts above, and whether the reckless camp rallies once more traders read the numbers. This data comes from opinion markets on Morfi, where people back their views with real money, and the market is open. If you think a nation can be visionary and wrong at the same time, you know where to put your stake.