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A contributor to Bitcoin Core living in El Salvador says a restaurant in the surf town of El Zonte, known as “Bitcoin Beach,” told him his lunch was the only bitcoin payment it had taken all month.
Everyday crypto spending in the community that launched El Salvador’s experiment has fallen off.
What Jon Atack heard at the counter
Jon Atack has been working on Bitcoin Core since 2019 and moved to El Salvador in 2022. He wrote about the exchange in a post on social media on August 24.
He paid his bill in bitcoin and was told by staff that it was the first such payment in a month, with transactions in BTC going from common to “practically non existent,” he said.
Atack said he was told that now, almost everyone pays with a card. When he offered a tip in sats, the smallest unit of bitcoin, the worker said she had forgotten how to use her bitcoin app.
She had little interest in reviving it, calling the local payment scene “dead.” According to Atack, the woman who had been there for three years had seen the habit form and then fall apart.
One traveler said she’d just paid in bitcoin in the same area without issue, and that signs of acceptance were still dotted around town.
Bitcoin holders in El Salvador and elsewhere are increasingly treating the asset as savings more than cash. This “HODL” mentality reduces the number of coins that are actively changing hands.
Few want to face such a problem, bitcoin reporter Juan Galt said. When everyone is betting that the price will go up, spending is “counter-economic,” he said. And a circular economy needs people willing to spend coins they expect to go up in value.
I was in El Salvador (El Zonte) in January for the whole month.
Bitcoin acceptance and familiarity among merchants/staff was ubiquitous. https://t.co/2GjZSAsIzF
— Bitcoin Archive (@BitcoinArchive) August 24, 2026
Why the register lags the reserve
BTC volatility exposes merchants to payments that can lose value before they are converted to dollars.
Cards are still winning small, routine purchases, as they are faster and more familiar than paying for a coffee in BTC at the register.
El Zonte is worth more here than its size. In 2019, an anonymous donor began seeding the town with bitcoin.
The grassroots effort became the origin story for a national policy after El Salvador made bitcoin legal tender in September 2021.
El Salvador says it is still adding BTC to its reserves almost daily. The IMF’s review found that the public sector’s bitcoin stock had remained unchanged since the loan program was approved.
The apparent growth is due to moving coins between government-controlled wallets rather than buying new coins.
The country’s own central bank president and finance minister signed the letter containing that finding. Purchases had stopped in February 2025.
“Proof of work > proof of whining,” President Nayib Bukele wrote, saying the buying would not stop, per Cryptopolitan.
The country amended its Bitcoin Law to make merchant acceptance optional while keeping legal tender status.
No shop is bound to accept a coin that its customers prefer to keep, and the state that told them to may not be buying it either.
Atack ended on a more optimistic note, writing that the country is still “a pioneering frontier” ahead of most others in adoption and legislation.
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