The President of El Salvador is putting in place to solve the problems of launching the bitcoin portfolio

SAN SALVADOR, Sept. 8 (Reuters) – El Salvador President Nayib Bukele spoke on Wednesday to closely monitor the launch of a payment application that underpins the adoption of bitcoins in the nation as a currency. legal and asked users to report any problems to their Twitter channel.

Adopting a language similar to IT departments in offices around the world, Bukele asked users to close and restart the application if an “currently under maintenance” error screen appeared.

The historic adoption of bitcoin as a legal tender by the Central American country has been plagued by dental problems that have contributed to a deviation in the value of the digital currency worldwide.

Bitcoin continued to lose ground on Wednesday and traded lower by more than 1.7%, to $ 46,000 at 1,600 GMT.

That hasn’t stopped some upward predictions about its future, with a new cryptocurrency research team at Standard Chartered predicting that Bitcoin will reach $ 100,000 early next year and could be worth up to $ 175,000 in the long run .

Bukele has sent a series of Twitter messages over the past 36 hours instructing users on how to download the government-backed Chivo app, which promises transaction-free transactions and which its administration expects non-banks to adopt.

Overnight, the president said the app, a digital wallet, was disconnected a second time to “improve the user experience and the problems it had during the day.”

“Hopefully tomorrow will be much better,” he wrote in a tweet.

Several users responded to their comments section to report ongoing installation issues.

Despite the technical issues, the launch of the app seems to have created a buzz in El Salvador, in part due to a government delivery of $ 30 in bitcoins to all local users who signed up, and despite the surveys showing that many people are wary of volatility.

In the El Salvador edition of Apple’s App Store (AAPL.O), Chivo was the No. 1 financial app downloaded Wednesday.

Bukele said earlier that only a few phone models would initially have access to Alphabet’s Google Pay app (GOOGL.O) to prevent a rush that could collapse the system.

Reuters was unable to immediately determine how many times the app had been downloaded.

Global retailers operating in El Salvador accepted bitcoins in some stores, including McDonald’s Corp (MCD.N) and Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O), along with several local outlets.

Bukele, 40, who is doing well in opinion polls but has been accused of eroding democracy, is a big user of social media to govern and relate to the population.

Nelson Renteria Reports in San Salvador; Written by Frank Jack Daniel; Edited by Rosalba O’Brien

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