The government of El Salvador for a long time now has let down its citizens allowing poverty to become widespread and crime to be a huge issue that the people have had to come to grips with living with. While many people might champion the recent actions by El Salvador's President the logic and idea he used to promote it show how out of touch he is with real life. Don't get me wrong I am all for adaptation however the promises he is making he cannot live up to and he is setting the stage for Bitcoin to be a victim of a stupid leader.
When it was initially announced many championed it and at first, I myself thought it was a pretty good idea. As I learned more and peeled back more and more layers though I realized how it was not as cut and dry as it was set up to be. The current president of El Salvador.... well he is not the person he makes himself out to be. Quite frankly he is not the democratically elected person he has made it out to be. He has become more and more authoritarian as time has gone on and it is pretty disturbing to see. He ignores and flaunts the law and fires or forces out all of those who oppose him.
One of his biggest claims was that he was going to power the bitcoin miners with thermal energy which sounds great since it is a renewable asset. That is not the case at all though. Why is that? Well, El Salvador does not even produce enough power for its own country. It is so bad it falls 20% short of its electrical needs and imports 1,449.7 GWh of power to power its own country. Bitcoin is an extremely energy-intensive thing and if you are already having to import 20% of your power setting up something that sucks up power like no tomorrow is not a great idea.
Yes the method El Salvador wants to use is renewable and that is the rage right now but for a country that is suffering the money is better spent building its own power plants and infrastructure for its citizens. The one saving grace could be if they do some sort of public/private agreements to build these geothermal plants to not only power the machines but also the communities surrounding them.
This possible setup could/would make a mockery of Bitcoin if it completely falls apart. Even worse if El Salvador has a new set of individuals become extremely wealthy at the expense of the poor. This is the exact thing that crypto wishes to fix and bring power back to the people it is not in the best interest of blockchain and cryptocurrency if someone makes a huge mockery of the whole idea and exploits the poor for the rich. I certainly hope that this is not the case and am hopeful that still, the situation can work itself out to benefit the whole population.
