President Nayib Bukele speaks during the inauguration of the ISA World Surfing Games 2021 on May 29, 2021 in La Libertad, El Salvador. (Photo by Rolan Barrientos/APHOTOGRAFIA/Getty Images)
Jack Mallers, founder of Zap, listens during the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images.)
“Once we had a couple of hundred people in the community that were earning their salaries in bitcoin and wanting to spend in bitcoin, the stores started coming to us.”
Bitcoin Beach member Roman Martínez (right) speaks with members of El Salvador's bitcoin-funded national surf team. (Photo by Keegan Hamilton/VICE News)
Dominga Peña sells snow cones in El Zonte and accepts payments in bitcoin, but her Strike app wasn't working. (Photo by Keegan Hamilton/VICE News)
Workers line up to get paid in bitcoin at El Zonte's "Hope House," the headquarters of the Bitcoin Beach project. (Photo by Keegan Hamilton/VICE News)
Mallers, who was reportedly introduced to bitcoin in 2013 by his father, a wealthy Chicago futures broker, denied being the donor. Peterson backed him up, saying Mallers’ involvement came well after Bitcoin Beach was established. Another suspect is Twitter and Square Inc. founder Jack Dorsey, who donated bitcoins to fund El Salvador’s national surf team. (A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment.)It’s possible that whoever is behind Bitcoin Beach genuinely has the best interests of the community at heart, but the fear is that the project and, more broadly, Bukele’s adoption of bitcoin as legal tender, are ultimately designed to help the rich get richer while average Salvadorans remain mired in poverty.“We’ve proven that bitcoin really is the money of the poor, of the people on the lowest level of the economic ladder can really transform their lives.”
Stickers at Bitcoin Beach headquarters advertising the Strike app as a way to send free remittances. (Photo by Keegan Hamilton/VICE News)