Category Archives: Bitcoin

385 First Avenue and Ben Shaoul (Google Maps, Getty)

Three retail condominiums at 385 First Avenue are up for sale for $29 million. Theres just one catch: only Bitcoin will be accepted.

Magnum Real Estate Group is selling the property also known as CODA in partnership with brokerage Meridian Investment Sales and Bitpay, a cryptocurrency payment service, which will process the transaction.

The condos cover 9,000 square feet and are fully leased by ProHealth, Mighty Pita and M&T Bank. Two of the three leases were executed during the pandemic.

We believe given the trends in the markets, this is a great opportunity to introduce real estate, cash flow real estate, to investors in cryptocurrencies who are looking to diversify their investments, said Ben Shaoul, managing partner of Magnum Real Estate Group.

Magnum has been bullish on cryptocurrency in recent years, including Shaouls 2019 sale of an Upper East Side retail condo for $15.3 million in Bitcoin. As early as 2022, Shaoul said, he expects between five to 10 percent of Magnums deals to be transacted using cryptocurrency.

Sales using alternative forms of payment attract new buyers into the market, Shaoul said.

Its great to see new buyers, and new investors who are interested in learning about real estate as an alternative investment, Shaoul said.

The digital assets have minted a new class of millionaires in recent years, some of which have used crypto to add luxury real estate in hot markets like Miami and New York City to their portfolios, The Real Deals Isabella Farr previously reported. Though notoriously volatile, popular cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin also hold the possibility for massive spikes in value that could spark pots of wealth too big for brokers to ignore.

Cryptocurrency is a form of the treasury going forward, Shaoul said. Its not going anywhere.

Contact Sasha Jones

Original post:
385 First Ave requiring Bitcoin for retail condo sales - The Real Deal

The below is a direct excerpt ofMarty's Bent Issue #1076: "Yet Another Reminder That Many Bitcoin Critics Are Subpar." Sign up for the newsletter here.

via NYT

The above snippet comes from the Opinions section of the New York Times, and it is a stark reminder of just how bad many Bitcoin "critics" turn out to be. In his piece that dropped today, Binyamin Appelbaum claims that the gold standard - something humanity used for THOUSANDS of years - was disastrous, called private keys passwords, claimed that the US Government can easily brute force ECDSA and confiscate anyone's bitcoin, and that individuals don't use bitcoin in a non-custodial self-sovereign fashion because it is "too hard". A pretty impressive streak of objectively wrong statements.

The frustrating part isn't that Binyamin was so terribly wrong, it is that he was so very confident while spreading his fake news in the New York Times. Confident enough to exclaim that bitcoiners are nothing more than "Libertarian cosplay" participants. I usually wouldn't waste a day's issue of this dirty rag on one particular critique from a single New York Time Opinions piece writer, but pointing out the juxtaposition of this article with the New York Times' coverage of the Met Gala was irresistible.

The New York Times likes to paint itself as a leader pushing forward social justice and progressive values while speaking truth to power during chaotic times. However, if you look closely - particularly at this bitcoin hit piece and the Met Gala coverage - you will find that it's the New York Times that is engaged in cosplay and not bitcoiners.

Since January 3rd, 2009 bitcoiners have been working diligently; writing code, building businesses, educating, and erecting physical infrastructure to provide the world with a peer-to-peer digital cash system that will serve anyone who can access the software. In the process, the network has provided billions of unbanked and those already banked with the opportunity to access a digital app where they can store their wealth. Not only that, but the Bitcoin network gives you the ability to have an extremely high degree of certainty that your share of the overall network cannot be debased. The app has only gotten easier to use over time as more and more people are drawn to the network and work to make it more efficient and user friendly. The same can not be said for the incumbent monetary system, which is only getting harder to use.

As central bankers and governments around the world continue to lose their grip on the very interconnected monetary systems of the world - causing social in-cohesion - they are getting more serious about the monitoring of who is sending money to who and how much they can spend. A result of this is increased data collection and filtering that is making it harder for individuals to interact with the economy. It's getting harder to use in this technical sense, but it's also getting harder to use in a practical sense as the amount of overall units of money increases rapidly, pushing the prices of many good up as a result. Either completely boxing individuals out from the digital monetary system all together, or decreasing their quality of life materially by making things more expensive.

Bitcoin fixes this problem by giving individuals the world over an open and sound monetary system, yet the New York Times, which is supposed to be cheerleading the advancement of human rights, chooses to bash bitcoin while running this article during the same day...

Legitimate gushing over an elite costume party where celebrities and politicians alike signal their support for social justice while dawning outfits worth tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars with a full life cycle of 12-hours. And the wardrobe wasn't the only thing the celebrities at the Met Gala were waving in the face of the poors, they were also waving their actual maskless faces right in front of them too. Apparently if you adorn an outfit worth more than your average annual salary in the United States you are naturally immune to COVID. And as long as you signal your disdain for the state of the world by including political phrases like "Tax the Rich" and "Peg the Patricarchy" on your costume, you are absolved from not actually doing anything. That is enough effort. You can go on feeling good about yourself.

The funny thing is that Bitcoin is going to win in such a fantastic way because it is rooted in proof of work. A proof of work that the LARPing elites dependent on the Cantillon Effect cannot compete with in the long run. We're going to wake up one day, Bitcoin is going to be as easy to use as the mobile phone or laptop you are reading this rag on, the incumbent monetary system is going to be more burdensome and less reliable, and those who the progressives think they are helping are going to thank Satoshi for Bitcoin for providing them with the opportunity to build themselves a better life.

See original here:
Yet Another Reminder That Many Bitcoin Critics Are Subpar - Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin price started a steady increase above the $47,000 resistance against the US Dollar. BTC even broke $48,000 and it might continue to rise in the near term.

Bitcoin price started a steady increase above the $46,000 resistance level. BTC was able to clear the $47,000 resistance zone and the 100 hourly simple moving average.

Finally, there was a clear break above the $48,000 resistance zone. The price traded as high as $48,481 and it is now consolidating gains. An immediate support on the downside is near the $48,000 level. There is also a key bullish trend line forming with support near $48,000 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair.

Bitcoin is also trading well above the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the upward wave from the $43,375 swing low to $48,481 high. An immediate resistance on the upside is near the $48,200 level.

The first major resistance is now near the $48,500 zone. To continue higher, bitcoin must clear the $48,500 resistance. If the bulls succeed, the price could easily rise towards the key $50,000 resistance in the near term. Any more gains may possibly set the pace for a move towards the $52,000 level.

If bitcoin fails to clear the $48,500 resistance zone, it could start a downside correction. An immediate support on the downside is near the $48,000 level and the trend line.

If the price breaks the trend line support, it could test the $47,400 support level. The next major support is near the $46,000 level or the 100 hourly simple moving average. It is also close to the 50% Fib retracement level of the upward wave from the $43,375 swing low to $48,481 high.

Technical indicators:

Hourly MACD The MACD is slowly gaining pace in the bearish zone.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) The RSI for BTC/USD is now well above the 50 level.

Major Support Levels $47,500, followed by $47,000.

Major Resistance Levels $48,200, $48,500 and $50,000.

The rest is here:
TA: Bitcoin Price Just Reversed and $50K Is Imminent, Here's Why - NewsBTC

Bitcoin transaction fees are usually an indication of how holders are moving their coins around. When the network gets congested due to a high number of transactions, the transaction fees go up, indicating a high volume of traffic on the network. Transaction traffic usually is high around bull markets when the price of the digital asset is up. Usually leading to a sell-off as investors try to take profits.

Related Reading |Bitcoin Suffers As Mid Caps Cryptos Establish Market Dominance With Wide Margin

One thing, this recent bull market has been anything but usual. So many things that are normal around bull markets have not happened with this bull market. An example is the declining reserves on exchanges. Bitcoin going up would often trigger an increase in the exchange reserves with the bull market, which happens because investors are trying to sell off their coins. This bull market, however, has shown the opposite. Exchange reserves have plummeted, and along with it, bitcoin transaction fees are at one-year lows, indicating that investors are carrying out fewer transactions on the blockchain.

The current climate for bitcoin transaction fees has been at levels not seen since last year. The fees which had spike following the great miner migration out of China have now dropped back to pre-2021 levels. Competition for block space due to the reduced hashrate had seen the transaction fees of bitcoin go up by about 50% in July of 2021. But as miners have come back online and the hashrate has picked up, fees on the network have dropped again.

Related Reading |MicroStrategy Deepens Its Crypto Bet With Another $240 Million Spent On Bitcoin

Current network activity shows that there is now less demand for block space on the blockchain. This is unique in the fact that during bull markets, demand for block space is usually at its highest. The last couple of bull markets have all shown similar trends. Bitcoin transaction volumes have spiked in previous bulls, leading to higher demand for block space, leading to higher transaction fees.

Presently, the average transaction fee for bitcoin transactions sits at $3. Average transaction fees have not been this low since October last year when the average fee was $3. Comparing this to April, when the bull market was in full force, the average transaction fee had been $61. Competition for block space was high as investors moved their assets around.

The price of the digital asset, like any other asset, is tied to the demand for the asset. Given the current transaction fees and transaction volumes, this shows that investors are not moving too much of their digital assets around. Hence, it points towards more hold sentiment amongst investors. This could spell the continuation of the bull market. Maybe one last bull run before the market finally gives in to the bears.

Related Reading |New To Bitcoin? Learn To Trade Crypto With The NewsBTC Trading Course

Hold sentiment has always been important when it comes to the price of the digital asset. This shows that bitcoin investors are more inclined to buy more coins instead of selling their existing stash. Thus creating scarcity in the market, which is evidenced by the decreased exchange reserves, which have also hit one-year lows. Scarcity inadvertently leads to a higher value for an asset. Playing to the basic laws of economics.

The price of bitcoin is currently above $48,000. A successful test of the $48,000 resistance point had seen the asset climb $400 above this, before losing hold and falling back below this crucial point. Indicators still show a positive upward trend in the price of the asset. Possibly a green close by the end of the midweek trading day.

More here:
Bitcoin Transaction Fees Hit One-Year Lows, How Does This Affect The Price? - NewsBTC

Bitcoin price exuded bullishness over the past week as it continued to rally without significant corrections. As a result, Ethereum, Ripple and other altcoins have followed suit. Although the entire market looks bullish at the time of writing, things could turn awry if BTC witnessed a September 7-style crash.

Bitcoin price rose 12% over the past three days and is currently trading around $48,380. The resistance levels at $48,895 and $50,000 are major hurdles in bulls path. Therefore, the bulls need enough momentum to flip these blockades into support platforms for a smooth recovery to September 6 levels.

This move will push BTC into the Fair Value Gap (FVG) and suggest that the buyers might be vying for a retest of this ranges upper limit at $56,361. If this development is complete, it will represent a 16% ascent from the current position.

BTC/USDT 1-day chart

On the other hand, if BTC fails to maintain its buying pressure, a retracement to $46,833 seems likely. However, a breakdown of $44,705 will invalidate the bullish thesis.

Ethereum price consolidated between the $3,015 to $3,338 level for almost a month before it flew away from it and tagged the $4,000 psychological barrier. While this move was impressive, it was followed by the September 7 crash, undoing all the gains. However, the congestion seen between $3,015 to $3,338 helped limit the sell-off and kept ETH afloat.

Due to the recent uptick in big cryptos price, Ethereum price seems to be heading close to the FVG, ranging from $3,716 to $4,071. Investors can assume the smart contract token will retest the $4,000 level if the current bullishness remains.

In a highly bullish case, a flip of the $4,071 supply barrier into the demand floor will hint at a move toward an all-time high at $4,372.

ETH/USDT 12-hour chart

Regardless of the bullishness Ethereum price exudes, if the big crypto takes a tumble, investors can expect ETH to follow suit promptly. While breaching below the $3,345 might trigger another consolidation, it would not invalidate the bullish thesis.

However, creating a lower low below $3,223 will put an end to the optimism around ETH.

Ripple price set up a swing high on September 6 at $1.42 but failed to sustain the level as it was followed by a market-wide crash the next day. Due to this sell-off, XRP lost 25% of its value but managed to stay above the $1.05 support floor.

After a few days of consolidation, XRP price managed to bounce off this barrier and kick-start an uptrend. A 10% upswing from its current position will push Ripple to encounter the $1.23 resistance level.

Flipping this hurdle into a support level will open the remittance tokens path to the range high at $1.42. In a highly bullish case, XRP price might extend the ascent to retest the $1.66 and $1.83 ceilings.

XRP/USDT 1-day chart

While things seem to be going well for Ripple, a breakdown of the $1.05 support floor will invalidate the bullish thesis and scare the investors. This move will set up a lower low and might induce a sell-off to the subsequent demand barrier at $0.96.

View post:
Top 3 Price Prediction Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple: BTC scales higher, taking altcoins with it - FXStreet

Fod Diop, a Bitcoin and Lightning developer from Senegal, has recently shared his thoughts on why Bitcoin is so important to billions of people worldwide that are still victims of monetary colonialism. The developer highlighted the central role that Bitcoin's open-source technology could play in providing financial sovereignty to those in the developing world.

"Today, people like myself have the means and the power to fight, and there has never been a time in the world like that until Bitcoin came in 2008," Diop told Reason. "Everything is possible actually, because money is everything."

Diop was accepted to Emporia State University in Kansas to study engineering and play basketball as a high school senior in Senegal. His father had saved just enough money for his tuition, but before enrolling, their savings were cut in half overnight due to a deal spearheaded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and France. To this day, the IMF and the French government still control the currency of 15 African countries.

"If you are in a country where your money might be devalued on the whim of other nations interfering with the local economy, storing your money in Bitcoin might be a better deal to preserve your wealth," said Diop.

Bitcoin didn't exist when the CFA franc, which had been pegged to the French franc for Diop's entire life at 1 to 50, got devalued to 1 to 100 in 1994 after France conceded to pressure from the IMF and the World Bank.

"The cruel irony was that the economic fate of millions of Senegalese was completely out of their own hands. No amount of protest could overthrow their economic masters," wrote the Human Rights Foundation's Alex Gladstein for Bitcoin Magazine in "Fighting Monetary Colonialism with Open-Source Code," an article that also recounts Diop's story.

The Senegalese Bitcoin developer echoed Gladstein's remarks to Reason, saying that "the local people felt robbed, because their purchasing power was cut in half overnight," and there was nothing they could do about it. It wasn't until Diop encountered Bitcoin that he started to glimpse how his people could fight monetary colonialism.

"When I read the [Bitcoin] white paper I said, this is a weapon for us to fight oppression. I feel like maybe governments are still threatened, but to me, open source technology is just beautiful," Diop said.

Bitcoin's open-source technology, along with the scaling and empowerment brought by Lightning, gives citizens worldwide the very weapons they need to fight the oppressor and reclaim their monetary independence.

"I believe that our work is so important that we have to do it no matter what the consequences are," said Diop. "You can leverage this open source technology to fight the oppressor, so why not use it?"

Indeed, the Senegalese developer has been doing just that. In July, Diop announced the launch of Bitcoin Developers Academy to teach students how to build Bitcoin applications from the ground up using the Rust programming language.

Empowered by open-source code and an antifragile peer-to-peer monetary network that cannot be debased or controlled by third parties, Diop, his students, and millions of others are now able to regain sovereignty over their financeswhether the IMF and the World Bank like it or not.

Read more from the original source:
Senegalese Bitcoin Developer: Bitcoin Is A Weapon To Fight Oppression - Bitcoin Magazine

Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Invest, has doubled down on her prediction that the price of Bitcoin (BTC) will grow tenfold in the next five years and said the growth of decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFT) and the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade has massively increased Arks confidence in Ethers (ETH) future.

Woods prediction has Bitcoins value to have hit almost $500,000 by 2026. She said that Ark Invests future exposure to crypto was likely to be around 60% Bitcoin and 40% Ether.

Wood made the comments Monday during a live stream at the SALT Conference in New York.

Her BTC price thesis is based on more companies adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets and institutional investors allocating around 5% of their portfolios toward Bitcoin or other cryptos.

In her view, Bitcoin still remains the default currency of the crypto space, with El Salvador deeming it legal tender and other countries ofCentral America signaling they may follow soon.

But she said Ether is becoming more and more attractive as an investment thanks to the explosion in developer activity related to NFTs and DeFi.

Im fascinated with whats going on in DeFi, which is collapsing the cost of the infrastructure for financial services in a way that I know that the traditional financial industry does not appreciate right now, she said.

Ark Invest manages several actively exchange-traded funds with a focus on disruptive innovation. It has significant investments in Coinbase and shares in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, and Wood has spoken frequently about her enthusiasm for Bitcoin.

Related: Bitcoin bull run sparks $180K BTC price prediction ahead of institutional fireworks

Wood said that from past experience, she believed no regulator, including new United States Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, would want to be blamed for preventing the next big tech breakthrough.

Wood believes the SECs threats to pursue legal action against Coinbase regarding the launch of a stablecoin yield product highlights that the crypto ecosystem is developing faster than the regulators have been able to keep up with.

In her view, Coinbase shouldnt be especially worried. Wood highlighted how in October 2019,Canada's largest Bitcoin and digital asset fund managerreceived a favorable ruling from the Ontario Securities Commissionto offer a publicly traded Bitcoin fund.

Originally posted here:
Ark Invest to split 60% Bitcoin, 40% Ether as confidence in ETH grows dramatically - Cointelegraph

For many Bitcoin investors theres nothing better than looking at a price chart and seeing the vaunted golden cross. At the same time, its dark twin, the death cross, can strike fear into the YOLO-est of hearts.

While cryptocurrency is new, studying price charts -- looking for patterns in graphs of up and down movements -- is one of the oldest (and oddest) trading strategies on Wall Street. Its also one of the most controversial, with advocates swearing price patterns contain valuable information, but many others dismissing the practice as investings equivalent to tarot cards or astrology.

Whatever they think of technical analysis, strategists say followers of Bitcoin markets cannot ignore the hype around a pattern thats forming on Bitcoin charts called the golden cross. Chatter about the indicator on specialist Web sites such as CoinDesk and Cointelegraph could catalyze more upward momentum, if only as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Cryptocurrencies trade extremely technical because what else are they going to trade on? says Mark Arbeter, who publishes a newsletter analyzing the charts of a variety of indexes and securities. You cant pick up an annual report, a quarterly report...any kind of freaking report and do a fundamental analysis of this stuff.

Ever since Charles Dow compiled the Dow Jones Transportation Average in 1884, investors have sought to decipher broader trends in financial markets by charting prices and other indicators such as trading volume and price moving averages. Based on these indicators, technical analysts draw trend lines over price charts in an attempt to identify turning points. These points are broadly categorized as "support," spots where bounces tend to happen during selloffs; "resistance," spots where rallies tend to peter out; and "breakouts" or "breakdowns," spots where momentum should accelerate in one direction or another.

The most widely tracked chart trends in cryptocurrencies are moving averages, momentum indicators, which basically measure the speed of the up-trend or the down trend, says. Arbeter. There are simple and exponential versions of moving averages, with the latter giving more weight to recent prices. But the concept is the same: Take the daily prices of a security, index, commodity, or digital currency over a chosen period, add them all up and divide by the number of trading sessions.

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The chart lines tracking moving averages that form both the bullish golden cross and the bearish death cross trace the simple 50-day and the 200-day moving averages of a stock or cryptocurrency over an extended period of time.

The death cross, recorded by Bitcoin in July, indicates that the short-term trend expressed by the 50-day moving average line had accelerated downward by crossing below the long-term trend line, the 200-day moving average. This event was supposed to herald a breakdown of the long-term upward trend that began in March 2020. (As it turned out, Bitcoin began a new rally in late July.)

The golden cross is the bullish flipside, and happens when the 50-day moving average breaks above the 200-day moving average. Bitcoin was on the cusp of recording a golden cross as recently as Sept. 6, when, according to crypto Web site CoinDesk, the 200-day moving average was around $46,100 and the 50-day was about to move above that, following a string of closes above $50,000. As it happened, Bitcoin prices retreated the second week in September. It would have been the first time the golden cross has happened on a bitcoin chart in more than a year, suggesting a break-out to a more dramatic rally, according to technical analysts.

There are so many traders and algorithms, following the 50-day and 200-day moving averages on the Standard & Poors 500 that theres almost always a market reaction -- a series of rebounds in bear markets, or a series of short-term corrections in bull markets -- when either one is tested, says Arbeter, who has followed stock charts since he started on Wall Street the week before the crash known as Black Monday, October 19, 1987.

If you go back in time 100 years and look at uptrends in major indices, youll see the 50-day worked even back thenits just something that people pay attention to, says Arbeter.

On the wild bitcoin chart, however, the indicators are less reliable, Arbeter says. The "death cross" in July marked the end of the downward trend rather than an intensification of it.

For newcomers, the golden cross could still be a reassuring momentum signal, says Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA Group, which specializes in another market where charts carry a lot of sway foreign exchange. Moya would see a move of the 50-day moving average above the 200-day as a signal that short-term upward momentum is strengthening, reducing chances of a sudden collapse in the short term.

With bitcoin, where you could see 20% plunges out of nowhere, and extreme drawdowns of over 50%...the golden cross pretty much alleviates the concerns that you're trying to catch a falling knife during one of those panic-selling frenzies, says Moya.

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What Is the 'Golden Cross,' and Why Are Bitcoin Investors Obsessed With It? - Money

To HODL bitcoin is to love bitcoin. And love, being the primary experience which we were set upon this earth for, should be spread like pollen in the wind.

If you truly love the people around you, you need to be educating them about bitcoin. Every single time a negative event occurs that is a direct result of the fiat standard that we live in, they must be reminded of this. Knowledge is power, and in a society with a crumbling monetary system, power is key to maintaining stability for your loved ones.

A major benefit of bitcoin is its ability to show its merits through reward, thus encouraging those who own bitcoin to become even more aware of these merits. Gathering knowledge through podcasts, articles and communication is central to many bitcoiners journeys in the space but this knowledge shouldnt be held to oneself.

Upon understanding bitcoin, the responsibility to share, promote and defend it must be ingrained within the Bitcoiner. Amidst the fires of confusion and chaos, we can be bastions of truth and direction. With purpose, retail investors can simply demonstrate the positive feedback loop of continued investment and growth in bitcoin. Those interested in humanitarian benefits have a vast world of information to discover. And for technology lovers, there are limitless possibilities of what could be built with bitcoin.

But in the end, it is incumbent upon those already orange-pilled to convey the message of bitcoin to others. It takes a concerted effort to reach out, educate and empower those who simply havent been reached yet. And with this effort, we can truly bring bitcoin to the masses, increasing adoption and driving the price of bitcoin higher. This in turn will bring even further interest, as the self-rewarding loop known as number go up technology continues to drive us towards hyperbitcoinization.

Retail investors have the ability to drive us to a $1 million bitcoin price all the sooner through their efforts to show bitcoin to others or bitcoin will simply show itself.

See the article here:
Retail Investors Will Drive A $1 Million Bitcoin Price - Bitcoin Magazine

For all the excitement surrounding Bitcoin in El Salvador, its first week has been plagued with app errors, vague regulations and a lack of public education on cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies.

After President Nayib Bukele announced plans to introduce Bitcoin as legal tender over a live stream at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in June, the law was approved days later. That kicked off a three-month period for businesses to make themselves compliant by the time the law took effect Sept. 7.

During that period, the government rushed to roll out the Chivo wallet app, launched it right before the Bitcoin law took effect and is still battling service issues. The president and Congress also added a new article to the Bitcoin Law that said people and businesses without access to the technologies that allow them to carry out transactions in bitcoin are excluded from the obligation to accept it but did not specify how to apply for such an exemption.

Even with all the hiccups, Nolvia Serrano, the San Salvador-based chief marketing officer at fintech startup BlockBank, says reports about widespread protests in opposition to Bitcoin adoption have been exaggerated.

Im not saying everyone wants it. Im sure, absolutely, there are a lot of people who dont want Bitcoin, she said. But [people outside El Salvador] miss that this is political. The protests have been more about the president trying to have two terms in power. So there are all of these mechanics and dynamics in the country that explain whats really happening.

Whats more, she said, is that legitimate concerns are getting drowned out by Bukeles political rivals who dont themselves have a solid grasp on how Bitcoin works.

There are so many concerns that are legitimate, in my opinion for example, the volatility of Bitcoin. But there's also other information that's been spread by the opposition that's not correct, Serrano said. I was listening to the executive director [Leonor Selva] of the Association of Private Enterprises in El Salvador, and she was comparing Bitcoin to holding a piece of paper that says this is $5 which is completely not the case.

Thats why one of her most pressing concerns about Bitcoin has been the lack of public education. Working at a fintech company means shes well-versed in cryptocurrencies and understands the inherent risks of using them. But she worries the unbanked Salvadorian population, upwards of 70%, by one estimate, hasnt been given much guidance.

The hands-on approach used by the founders of Bitcoin Beach, however admirable, has been difficult to scale.

On the Sept. 11 when there was a big celebration of the Bitcoin, they came. They were not even having parties or anything, Serrano said. They were just helping all the lines of people trying to download their wallets.

Even with help, signing up for the Chivo wallet has been a struggle.

Fernando Argumedo, a San Salvador-based attorney at Central Law, practices corporate law. He focuses mainly on intellectual property, technology and data privacy.

Hes been unable to download the app on either of his two cell phones or his tablet. Even if he could, Argumedo said one of his main complaints about Chivo has been its privacy policy. It says by using the app, users consent to share their data with other institutions or related companies, as permitted by law.

That kind of vague disclaimer has given him and others pause, mainly because there isnt legal clarity on what can be shared or with whom.

Argumedo said there was a Congress-approved data privacy bill that Bukele rejected earlier this year. But while Bukele has been the incumbent for two years, the new assembly which is now politically aligned with his party took office in March. And so far theres been no indication that the new legislators will update and resubmit the data protection law for presidential approval.

Considering this, we don't have a specific act or regulation for you to understand how your data is going to be treated, Argumedo said. So that's a specific concern for people who are more worried about their data and privacy.

There are alternatives to Chivo. Jack Mallers Strike, once thought to be the heir apparent to the government-sponsored wallet, is among them.

Strike is a viable option because it started operating in El Salvador before the Bitcoin law went into effect. For existing apps and financial institutions, the government has issued guidance on how to comply with Bitcoin regulations. For newcomers, its not clear how to enter the market.

For new companies that want to provide new services related to Bitcoin, Argumedo said, those rules are still yet to be released.

Another complaint about Chivo has been the fact that its structured like a private company, but funded with public money. There was no government contractor process that solicited bids from companies. And, so far, there appears to be no government official who will be accountable for it.

Argumedo said businesses who do want to use the app have had issues creating accounts. The app specifies that business accounts should be created by a companys legal representative. That becomes an obstacle when a companys legal team is based in another country, he said.

These are people who have a resident card, they have a passport, but they are not able to create an account because they don't have Salvadorian Unique Identification, he said, so that's another concern.

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Bitcoin's First Week in El Salvador: App Problems and Regulatory Uncertainty - The Street Crypto: Bitcoin and cryptocurrency news, advice, analysis...