Vitalik Buterin Criticizes El Salvador President’s “Mandatory” Bitcoin Adoption Policy

Although El Salvador’s president has asserted that BTC usage in the country is not mandatory, Ethereum’s Buterin still criticized the move.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin spoke out against President Nayib Bukele’s compulsory bitcoin usage for merchants and businesses, saying it was against cryptocurrency’s “ideals of freedom.”

• Buterin commented in response to a Reddit article titled “Unpopular opinion: El Salvador President Mr. Nayab (Nayib)  Bukele should not be praised by Crypto community.”
• The Ethereum co-founder did not fail to call out “Bitcoin Maximalists,” whom he believed praised the El Salvadoran President’s move without criticism.

• “Shame on everyone (ok, fine, I’ll call out the main people responsible: shame on Bitcoin maximalists) who are uncritically praising him.”

• Buterin further said Bitcoin maximalists were easy to please if a person in a position of authority did something or spoke in favor of BTC.
• President Nayib Bukele has been facing criticism from opponents and the international community ever since El Salvador’s legislators voted in favor of making the cryptocurrency a legal tender earlier this year.
• The so-called Bitcoin Law was implemented back in September, with the government also giving access to El Salvadorans to download the Chivo wallet app.
• But Buterin called the mass adoption of bitcoin “reckless,” saying:

“Additionally, this tactic of pushing BTC to millions of people in El Salvador at the same time with almost no attempt at prior education is reckless, and risks a large number of innocent people getting hacked or scammed.”

• However, President Bukele stated earlier that bitcoin adoption was optional for citizens in El Salvador.