Bryan Hernandez, President and Co-Founder of Structure, joins Cheddar News to discuss how El Salvador's plan to use Bitcoin as a national currency is playing out exactly one year later, and whether or not other countries may follow in these footsteps.

Opening Bell

Where El Salvador Stands One Year After Betting on Bitcoin

joining me now is brian Hernandez president and co founder of structure brian, we are again, one year into this, what have been the results of this kind of Bitcoin test in el Salvador. That's a good great question. I, you know, I am extremely optimistic about the Bitcoin experiment that El Salvador is running right now. Um I don't understand the criticisms that I've heard circulating through the media. People are, are quick to point out that not a ton of people are using Bitcoin as money. Um and the country is sitting on some, some unrealized losses of about 60 million, but this completely misses the story. I think the, this story, it's about reasserting economic sovereignty for el Salvador so long as the country is dollarized, it will always lack a little bit of a few options in terms of controlling the business cycle, um printing money and and trying to reduce the, the effect of recessions. So from my perspective it is on track for for doing that. You know, just the first quarter of this year brought in 360 million or so, just in tourism alone, a lot of this surely was spurred from the adoption of Bitcoin. We are, we're seeing many, many businesses open up shop in El Salvador, which is wasn't likely to happen if they hadn't adopted these policies. Uh my company for instance, we practically could not service the el salvadoran market for probably a few more years if we we didn't think that because there are so many citizens with access to crypto now that they all know how Bitcoin works. Um this is a very credible market for us to go into and actually very meaningful one because the country has not, has not been the first to receive new financial services from around the world. Uh this Bitcoin law opens up opportunities for the everyday person so that they can access things that historically has been difficult for them. So, so what kind of measures of success are there when when looking at this? I think you're describing kind of tangential measures of success that we're seeing right now. Are there more direct ones that that that are expected and maybe signs are pointing to that? Well I think it depends on how you define success, but so long as everyday people are having more financial opportunities, I would consider it a success. And we we are seeing that for instance some of the data that we've been seeing on on my platform is people were given $30 a Bitcoin at the, at the beginning of this law and a lot of people didn't do anything with it. Um maybe that's because they're not so interested in Bitcoin as an investment vehicle. But as soon as businesses like mine come to the country we open up a huge set of investment opportunities that they can invest through Bitcoin and we're seeing just that the very first transaction people make with their the deposit that they received from the chief of wallet, they're sending it to structure and they're investing in the stock market. This is I think this is revolutionary. Um So so you can look at trade, uh you can look at uh uh tourism and these other peripheral measures of success and I think uh I think it's very clear what's happening really quickly here. I am curious do you think other countries are gonna follow suit and El Salvador's footsteps and try albeit it's only been about a year. Yeah, eventually I think there's a lot of upside for for the smaller economies to to give this, give this experiment to go. Um You know, it may take some time probably in the next bull market will start to see some others uh come along and and give it a try I think um you know, I think it's largely a function of monetary sovereignty. How much control does the government have to to curb business cycles and to stimulate growth besides enacting fiscal policy? And so once el Salvador is like a very clear uh leader in this, which which they've already begun. I think more economies are going to follow suit brian really appreciate your time and your insight brian Hernandez president and co founder of structure