Hundreds Of El Salvador Citizens Report Their Bitcoins Are disappearing From State Owned Chivo Wallet

Hundreds of El Salvador citizens inexplicably lose bitcoins in the state-owned crypto wallet Chivo.

After El Salvador’s adoption of bitcoin as legal tender, hundreds of Salvadorans claim that their BTC are missing from their digital wallets.

Twitter user ‘El Comisionado’, documented 50 such cases, totaling over $96,220 saying:

“The government does not admit mistakes and is silent. But this is one of the things that people demand an answer to. Some have been waiting for months to get their money back.”

Después de documentar 50 casos de estafa de la @chivowallet el monto es de $96,223.83

Solamente en estos casos. https://t.co/sVfFwrNGyR

— El Comisionado (@_elcomisionado_) December 20, 2021

The problem was confirmed by the El Salvador police. El Salvador citizen and bitcoin enthusiast Rogzy said:

“I don’t think Chivo is safe and no one can verify it because the application code is not open source.” Few people use the wallet, he said, because most “don’t know how it works.”

President Nayib Bukele previously stated that Chivo has reached 2.1 million users, while the country’s total population is about 6.5 million. He also acknowledged the technical issues with the Chivo wallet but still, his administration is unable to tackle and solve the unpleasant situation for their citizens.

The concern first time arose in October when El Salvadorians complained that scammers are using their personal data to install the Chivo wallet in order to get a $30 bonus in bitcoins from the state.

Many people complained that their identity documents have been used to install the Chivo wallet without their knowledge. Scammers tried to get $30 in BTC, which the El Salvadorian authorities distributed to all citizens who registered the wallet for the first time. Users fear that if hackers manage to steal their personal data, they will be able to use their private information to commit crimes and money laundering.

Here a point must be noted that it’s not the State-Owned Chivo Wallet that is scamming people. The point is that scammers are scamming people and that the wallet has poor KYC so there are people impersonating other people to get their free coins. But it’s never the case that the STATE is making a rug pull.

Recently El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele announced plans to build a ‘Bitcoin City’ at the base of the Conchagua volcano on the country’s eastern coast.