The morning has gold in its mouth, they say. 

Today is an important day. We will meet our new car. The one who will drive us through the dusty streets of El Salvador and who knows, we haven’t decided yet, maybe even across state lines. 

It is a Nissan Lambo, we called it that way because we rented it in Bitcoin, of course. Nothing luxurious about it. But too many comforts make us feel uncomfortable (pardon the pun). Cozy and no frills. It will be an outstanding ride. We can’t wait to show her around.

These days we have been very impressed with the amount of messages of support and encouragement we have received. We are an incredible community. We have had bitcoiners write to us from all over the world and so many from El Salvador. It’s a sign that, beyond the lukewarm data we collected on adoption, something is definitely moving.

After our initial reports from the country, however, many also wrote us very disappointed messages. Phrases such as “then the experiment has failed,” or “Bitcoin is failing to establish itself as a real currency” appeared just about everywhere, among the comments on our social media pages or on our YouTube channel.

This somewhat defeatist tendency, this urge to come to hasty conclusions strikes us very much. You should not forget that what we are narrating to you firsthand these days is something historic, which has no precedent or terms of comparison. A crazy experiment that escapes all logic. What should our time horizon be? Hasn’t Bitcoin itself taught us to look far ahead in time?

Although we, too, were impressed to see adoption in recession, we remain firmly convinced that Bitcoin is inevitable, not only in El Salvador. And if any of us had hoped for a resounding, immediate success, perhaps we were believing in fairy tales. Our revolution will take decades, everywhere in the world. A law is not enough. It doesn’t need a government. Bitcoin must respond to real needs, to people’s needs. Only then can it establish itself. Certainly not by decree. 

And let’s think about it: can we really not understand Salvadorans’ skepticism about this technology? Perhaps we should remind ourselves of the fact that this is a dollarized nation. It is not Venezuela or Nigeria. They do not have a super-inflated national currency that halves its purchasing power every handful of days. They have the U.S. dollar. The currency most desired by every developing country. Second- and third-world citizens are willing to buy dollars on the black market paying even twice their real value. Bitcoin as a currency of exchange in the real world better meets the needs of those living in those kinds of economies than those living in El Salvador.

It is quite evident, then, how President Bukele’s bet is mainly aimed at accumulating BTC in the nation’s treasury, counting on the probable capital gains in the coming years, aimed at attracting tourism and investment, especially from the technology sector, rather than replacing the dollar in the local markets or among workers and peasants. It will happen, let us be clear, as we have said it is inevitable. But certainly not within a year or so.

So sit back everybody nice and comfy, fasten your seat belts tightly and enjoy this beautiful long journey to the fullest.

Hey, I almost forgot. Have you seen our first vlog from El Salvador yet???