9 June 2021: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender
In early June 2021 El Salvador's legislature approved President Nayib Bukele's proposal to make Bitcoin legal tender, the first country to do so. Businesses were required to accept it and the government bought Bitcoin with public money. Ordinary Salvadorans largely ignored it, and the IMF objected. In 2025, as part of an IMF loan deal, the country made accepting Bitcoin voluntary.
The lesson: A government can declare an asset money, but it cannot force people to want to use it.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Bitcoin at the start of 2020 → $13,889 today, vs $2,092 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2020, the latest year on the wheel. That is 13.9 times the money, and $11,797 more than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Bitcoin teaches: Extraordinary returns came bundled with repeated drawdowns of 75 percent or more; the gains went mostly to holders who could survive each collapse without selling.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $315 | $317,460 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $14,000 | $7,143 | $2,519 |
| 2020 | $7,200 | $13,889 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Bitcoin? Every starting year and the full story →
More Bitcoin history
- 3 January 2009: Bitcoin's genesis block is mined
- 7 February 2014: Mt. Gox halts bitcoin withdrawals
- 12 May 2021: Musk stops accepting Bitcoin for Teslas
- 19 May 2021: Bitcoin's May crash
- 22 May 2010: Two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin
- 31 October 2008: Satoshi publishes the Bitcoin white paper
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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