[jcranmer]

The wrong (but popular) answer is to say that this is a move to break El Salvador's reliance on the USD--the USD still remains legal tender in El Salvador, and from what I can tell, there is absolutely no movement whatsoever towards things like pricing in Bitcoin in lieu of USD or other steps that would insulate El Salvador from US monetary policy.

The charitable answer I would give is that Bukele hoped to attract cryptocurrency investors with the move, perhaps to supplement existing institutional investors who haven't been happy with some of Bukele's policies.

The uncharitable answer I would give is that Bukele is trying to innovate and translate core cryptocurrency strategies of extracting money from people's pockets into extracting money from El Salvador's citizens' pockets.