El Salvador has switched frontend and backend technology providers for its Chivo Bitcoin wallet, appointing AlphaPoint. The company will address issues that have arisen with the wallet of choice for 4 million Salvadorans.
El Salvador and Chivo: switching technology provider to AlphaPoint
According to reports, it will be AlphaPoint that will support the frontend and backend infrastructure of the country’s Bitcoin wallet Chivo.
In fact, crypto software company, AlphaPoint, has been propping up Chivo’s problematic front-end and back-end infrastructure for its app and payment processing capabilities since December.
But it wasn’t until last Tuesday that the agreement between AlphaPoint co-founder and CEO Igor Telyatnikov and the administration of El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele was confirmed.
In this regard, Igor Telyatnikov commented:
“El Salvador and President Bukele are truly leading globally with this first major experiment in bitcoin adoption at a country-wide level.
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”.
El Salvador and user reports about the Chivo Bitcoin wallet
Prior to AlphaPoint, providing the infrastructure to the Chivo wallet was Athena Bitcoin, the Bitcoin vending machine operator. The company left no comment regarding the contract termination.
Instead, it was the users of the Chivo Bitcoin wallet who were sure to leave comments. In fact, it seems that hundreds of Salvadorans reportedly complained that hackers had illegally activated the wallets associated with the nine-digit numbers on their ID cards, and dozens reported on social media that money had disappeared from their Chivo wallets.
Hence the need to change the technology provider. AlphaPoint is now providing the technology behind Chivo’s mobile app, mobile point-of-sale processing, merchant web portal, call-center support software and administrative console.
Nayib Bukele and the announcement of 4 million state Bitcoin wallet users.
In the middle of last month, the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, shared the current number of active users of Chivo, the government-backed Bitcoin wallet.
4 million users!
*Total population: 6.5 million (including people under 18 that are still not allowed to use the app).
We have the receipts??#BTC https://t.co/y3jvEdOtex
— Nayib Bukele ?? (@nayibbukele) January 19, 2022
“4 million users! *Total population: 6.5 million (including people under 18 that are still not allowed to use the app)”.
Basically, in El Salvador the total population is 6.5 million and of these, already 4 million are using Chivo and therefore Bitcoin (BTC).
A few days ago, Bukele also shared his prediction regarding the price of BTC expecting a gigantic increase.
Source: https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2022/02/03/el-salvador-alphapoint-wallet-bitcoin-chivo/