In late August, protests erupted in the capital of El Salvador, San Salvador, inasmuch as hundreds of disgruntled citizens went out to the streets to challenge the recognition of bitcoin as the national currency. Latin Americans have taken up arms against the government of El Salvador due to fear that the introduction of cryptocurrency will contribute to corruption.

“We know that this “coin” fluctuates a lot. Its rate changes every second, and we cannot control it,” said a protesting representative of the trade union of workers of the Supreme Court. According to local media reports, the opposition to Bitcoin coincided with a broader mobilization of retirees requiring an increase in payments. Now this category of citizens is afraid that they will have to receive a pension in the “unstable” cryptocurrency.

Experts suggest that the protest mood in El Salvador is also caused by fear of the unknown. As shown by a survey of the scientific publication Disruptiva, 30 percent of the country’s population have no idea what bitcoin is, and more than half of the respondents called the government’s decision “completely wrong.”