How El Salvador’s Bitcoin Experiment Got Rocky Start: QuickTake

Ever since Bitcoin was launched as the world’s first cryptocurrency, its proponents have made big claims about its power to upend financial systems and change the very nature of money. But a simpler question has remained maddeningly unresolved -- can it work in the real world, for the mundane matters of buying and selling things and transferring money? El Salvador’s decision to make Bitcoin legal tender, a process that got off to a rocky start, may give an answer.

1. What did El Salvador do?

El Salvador’s 40-year-old president Nayib Bukele got congress to green light his plan ...