[el-salvador]

One of the reasons Bitcoin didn't become as popular in El Salvador as a banking alternative, as it did in Venezuela or Argentina is that our financial system has been historically stable for generations.

The Salvadoran regulators have kept banks on check, and the last bank failure was a small bank in 1998. We didn't lose any banks in the 2008 or 2023 banking crisis. No recent memories of widespread failures like Iceland or Cyprus. We've never had limits on withdrawals like the ones they had on Greece or Argentina. I remember there were some bank failures in the 1980s when the social democratic party failed attempt to nationalize some banks, but if I recall correctly no savings were lost.

Almost every citizen 18 and older can get a simplified USD bank account, with international debit card by taking a selfie and picture of both sides of your ID (you get the first one free when you turn 18) on major banking apps. Remittances can be received automatically to bank accounts or by typing an MTCN in the banks app. In contrast some Latin American countries keep USD accounts out of reach to lower income consumers, and remittances incur in unfavorable currency conversion fees. Businesses are not affected by "forced" unfavorable currency conversions either or high taxes for payments in foreign currencies.

And we have a nice credit union system, which is a big alternative to "corporate-multinational-banks TM".

One of the things we don't have is many public companies listed on the local stock market, which makes people invest mostly in real estate asset class, increasing the value of properties faster than inflation.