Amid IMF’s call to drop Bitcoin use, El Salvador changes tech provider for its ‘Chivo’ wallet

Even as the International Monetary Fund recommended that El Salvador drop the use of Bitcoin as currency, its government has gone ahead and changed the frontend and backend technology provider for its “Chivo” wallet in an apparent bid to fix a series of problems that have plagued its state-run bitcoin wallet.

The government of El Salvador earlier this week rejected a recommendation by the IMF to drop Bitcoin as legal tender in the Central American country, with its Treasury Minister Alejandro Zelaya stating “no international organization is going to make us do anything, anything at all.” Zelaya told a local television station that Bitcoin is an issue of “sovereignty” and that “Countries are sovereign nations and they take sovereign decisions about public policy.”

A statement issued by the El Salvador government stated, “The Government of President Nayib Bukele informs that the American company AlphaPoint is providing technology for Chivo Wallet, the first national digital wallet in the world. AlphaPoint, which provides financial technology to institutions globally, is adding its expertise to offer financial services and access to Bitcoin for millions of Salvadorans who are actively using the Chivo wallet.”

The statement added that the objective of President Bukele con Chivo is to provide millions of Salvadorans with the opportunity to learn about the advantages of using bitcoin, access financial services, pay for goods and services, as well as the possibility of receiving and sending remittances without charging commissions.

Crypto software firm AlphaPoint will support the frontend and backend infrastructure that powers the wallet and integrates the entire ecosystem including the mobile application, mobile point-of-sale processing, merchant website portal, call-center support software, and administrative console. Their build focuses heavily on wallet stability and uptime, scalability, and social impact, while also integrating user verification services leveraging machine-learning facial recognition and authentication tools. AlphaPoint also improved the Lightning integration for nearly instantaneous low-fee Bitcoin transactions via QR and Lightning addresses.

“El Salvador and President Bukele are truly leading globally with this first major experiment in Bitcoin adoption at a country-wide level,” Igor Telyatnikov, Co-founder and CEO of AlphaPoint said. “No one else has attempted to execute a project of this size. We at AlphaPoint are honored to be involved in the process and provide the scalable and reliable solutions needed for this massive undertaking. The Chivo application is currently supporting millions of Salvadorans, many for their first time accessing financial services.”

In September, El Salvador became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender, as the government launched the Chivo wallet to facilitate Bitcoin transactions in the country. The government deposited $30 in Bitcoin in every El Salvadorans’ Chivo wallet as ‘seed money’ to propel Bitcoin transactions. Chivo is also in the process of deploying 1,500 Bitcoin ATMs around the country to more readily serve the Salvadoran population. By the end of 2021, around 75 percent of the population had downloaded Chivo.