Angry Bukele: No Salaries or Pensions Will Be Paid in BTC, Critics are Lying

Source: A video screenshot / RT en vivo / YouTube

Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, has stated that companies are free to” offer services they like with Bitcoin (BTC)”, but has once again refuted the notion that the state will try to pay pensions or allow companies to pay wages in something other than fiat USD.

He took to Twitter to slam critics he claimed had “started again” with reports claiming that ” wages are paid in Bitcoin.”But, he added:

“A private company can provide the desired services. This is a free country. But wages and pensions, according to the law, must be paid in dollars.”

He claimed that his critics did not have a “stick to beat” with which to beat him”so they have to invent new [sticks] to deceive the people who still believe what they say.”

“[Critics] said that we would withdraw the dollar from circulation [.] And that we would pay public employees with Bitcoin. They said that we would pay pensions with Bitcoin, that the * [steet food vendors] * would be forced to accept Bitcoin, and that the elderly would run out of money because they could not use smartphones. What happened to all this? Nothing!”To Bukele. He concluded by stating that all his critics “have left”to do is” lie”as” they always did.”

Bukele had earlier posted a more jubilant note, claiming that a third of El Salvador’s population now used the state-issued Chivo Bitcoin wallet.

The president posted a screenshot of a Chivo Wallet interface showing that the app had more than 2.25 M users.

Bukele has previously warned his followers at home – and the members of the international crypto community who have adopted his BTC adoption plans – that “tons of FUD” would be”incoming” due to the BTC law promulgated earlier this month as legal tender on a more or less even footing with the fiat USD.

Meanwhile, journalists wrote on the pages of El Diario de Hoy, one of the most prominent critics of Bukele’s media company, how the government has already spent $ 63m worth of public funds on BTC giveaways through the Chivo app.

As previously reported, the government has created incentives for Chivo app downloads by offering citizens a gold coin worth BTC worth USD 30 when registering on the platform.

The media company noted that this figure stood in comparison to another USD 5m or so for the purchase of BTC on September 6 and 7, as well as on September 19, when Bukele announced that the state was “buying” the drop in token prices.

The newspaper also questioned Bukele’s claims about the Chivo app, stating that download numbers ” cannot yet be accurately verified.”

It added that a large number of citizens have downloaded the app” with the sole purpose of withdrawing the USD 30″, with ” some confirming that after withdrawing the money they will uninstall the app from their mobile phones.”

Of the BTC purchases, the media company accused the government of concealing or concealing data, noting that “there is no information about the intermediaries”, which were used for the BTC purchases, or “on the payment of commission fees that the exchanges would have charged”, the state in all three cases.

El Diario de Hoy late last week also published photos of long lines outside Chivo ATMs in the capital, San Salvador, where BTC holders waited “hours” to exchange their BTC funds for USD.