Just a week after Bitcoin became legal tender in El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele admitted that the Bitcoin wallet called Chivo is not yet a huge success.
The problems with the Chivo wallet will be solved soon
Chivo, El Salvador’s official Bitcoin wallet, has temporarily disabled new registrations and halted app downloads for new smartphones due to ongoing problems with the app, Bukele said on Twitter late Monday.
Registrations and app downloads will not be re-enabled until the app no longer contains errors, the president said. He also said that he expects the errors in the Chivo wallet to be resolved within a few days.
“The technical errors of the Chivo wallet have been solved for 95%. Soon it will work at 100%’, wrote Bukele. He noted that El Salvador’s 200 Bitcoin ATMs are currently “working perfectly”, as well as 50 Chivo-supported ATMs in the United States.
Bukele further said that the problems of the Chivo wallet are due to the lightning-fast rollout:
“Launching everything in three months was too much of a challenge and we made mistakes, but we are already correcting them and hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans can already use Chivo without any problems.”
According to the president, the Chivo wallet has accumulated a total of half a million users since the app’s launch last Tuesday.
Problems with transactions
As previously reported, El Salvador launched the official Bitcoin wallet in partnership with Mexican crypto exchange Bitso. The wallet experienced major issues on launch day and went offline for maintenance due to capacity errors. Despite Chivo’s huge efforts to resolve the issues, many users continue to experience problems with transactions.