Over a year after BTC was adopted as legal tender, 76% of those polled said they had not used Bitcoin to make purchases or payments so far this year.
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For over a year, El Salvador's president has been regularly using taxpayers' money to buy Bitcoin — an investment that is currently tens of millions of dollars in the red.
And according to an extensive new poll, 77% of the population want Nayib Bukele to stop.
José Simeón Cañas Central American University performed an extensive poll gauging the mood of El Salvador on a number of issues — not just Bitcoin.
But over a year after BTC was adopted as legal tender, 76% of those polled said they had not used Bitcoin to make purchases or payments so far this year.
When asked whether they thought the controversial Bitcoin Law had been a success, 66% said it had been a failure.
Interestingly, attitudes towards Bukele's big bet vary depending on age, gender and education.
Those who gave this policy the lowest ratings tended to be women, people over 56, and people without a formal education. The report warned:
"Empirical evidence shows that the implementation of Bitcoin is the least popular public policy of this government, despite the silence of the authorities on this issue."
This radical policy has coincided with rising inflation around the world, and a dramatic fall in the value of BTC. CoinMarketCap data shows it's fallen by 72% since hitting all-time highs of $68,700 last November.
Despite all of this, 77.2% of those polled said their family's economic situation has remained the same, with 17.8% confirming it has worsened. Just 3% said things had improved.
Nayib Bukele has continued to strike a defiant tone on his decision to embrace Bitcoin — and in an article last month, described it as "the only obvious move."
The president rejected suggestions that El Salvador has lost $50 million because of its exposure to Bitcoin because the country has no intention of selling.
Bukele went on to attack mainstream media outlets for publishing "nonsense" about his policies ― and addressing critics directly, he said:
"My message to you is this: stop drinking the elites' Kool-Aid and take a look at the facts… see how one of the poorest nations in the continent and the previous murder capital of the world is changing to rapidly become the best place it can be."
Bukele says he won't allow the Bitcoin Law to fail because this means that other countries won't follow in his footsteps.
But many Bitcoiners do admit that it was wrong to implement this policy so hastily, and consumers needed greater education on how cryptocurrencies work — especially surrounding the benefits it can have with remittances.
As the long crypto winter continues, it's perhaps unsurprising that sentiment among Salvadoran consumers is pretty low right now. But it'll be interesting to see whether the mood shifts should BTC embark on another bull run in the years to come.
