IESET.
Policies·sv_chivo_wallet_2021

Chivo wallet launch with $30 per-adult Bitcoin buy-in (Sep 2021)

SLV·2021 present·enacted 2021-09-07·Nuevas Ideascandidate
movesfinancial deregulationtransfer expansion

What the policy did

Chivo is the state-sponsored custodial wallet launched 7 Sep 2021 concurrent with Bitcoin Law entry into force. The Chivo incentive programme credited each adult Salvadoran who registered with a national ID $30 in BTC equivalent, funded from the $150m BANDESAL trust. Chivo also enabled zero-fee remittance channel from US senders via partner corridors. By end-2021 approximately 4 million Salvadorans had downloaded Chivo (population ~6.3m) but active-use rates declined sharply in 2022-2023 per BID Working Paper 1381 (Alvarez, Argente, Van Patten 2022) and NBER 30901: 20% used Chivo after the initial $30 spend, and only ~2% of remittances flowed through BTC rails. Chivo Point ATMs were rolled out nationally. Operational issues (identity-theft fraud, customer-service failures, repeated KYC rebuilds) drew sustained press and auditor criticism.

Policy-content fingerprint — what this policy moved, on which axes

Per invariant 3, reforms are scored by what they did on each channel-separated axis, not by the party that enacted them. This fingerprint is how the policy-match engine finds historical analogues.

intended
financial deregulation
regulatory.financial_deregulation
Financial-sector regulation — banking separation, capital requirements, cross-border activity rules, derivatives oversight.
increased · moderate
tighter financial regulation
State-issued custodial crypto wallet with subsidised onboarding.
transfer expansion
fiscal.transfer_expansion
Size of cash and near-cash transfer programmes (unemployment benefits, means-tested assistance, universal child benefits). Architecturally distinct from forced-saving schemes — see condition welfare_architecture.
increased · weak
larger transfer footprint
$30 per-adult BTC buy-in is a one-off near-cash transfer totaling ~$120m.

Enacted by

Empirical evidence — linked hypotheses

Explicit links are curated by the author. Inferred links are hypotheses in the library that test the same axes this policy moved — the framework's answer to "what does the data say about a policy like this?".

The Sep 2021 introduction of Bitcoin as legal tender plus the Chivo state-wallet launch and $30 per-adult BTC buy-in failed to produce a statistically significant change in El Salvador's total remittance volume or in the aggregate price of remittance services (World Bank remittance-cost series) relative to Central American and Caribbean peer countries.
bitcoin_legal_tender_remittance_adoption_2021_2024
PARTIAL — mean_gap=+2.85e+09, |gap|/pre_sd=3.4, p_perm=1; claim direction ambiguous
partial
Large-scale universal or near-universal transfer programmes produce a three-order causal chain.
universal_transfer_programmes_labour_force_participation_declineinferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansion
partial — Prime-age LFP fell by ≥1.0pp in 2/5 cases (threshold for SUPPORTED: ≥3). First-order improved in 3/4 cases. Mixed: consistent with the spec's design-d…
partial
Universal single-payer healthcare systems (NHS, Canadian Medicare) produce lower per-capita healthcare expenditure with equal or better life-expectancy outcomes than the US multi-payer system.
single_payer_cost_outcome_comparisoninferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansion
supported_subset — cost test PASSES (USA per-capita PPP $10957 vs GBR/CAN mean $5663, ratio 1.93x > 1.5); single-payer matched-or-beat USA on 4/5 tested outcome…
supported
UK post-1945 Attlee reforms (NHS, nationalisation of coal/rail/steel, expanded public housing) delivered measurable improvements in life expectancy and child mortality without undermining subsequent 1950s-1960s growth.
uk_attlee_reforms_output_health_outcomesinferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansionregulatory.financial_deregulation
refuted — Only 0 of 3 primaries hold. Failed: life-expectancy, infant-mortality, 1950s growth. UK 1950s growth +1.69%/yr; LE gain +3.29y (peer-mean +4.45y); IMR…
refuted
Major episodes of financial deregulation — the 1999 US Gramm-Leach- Bliley repeal of Glass-Steagall, the 1986 UK Financial Services Act ("Big Bang"), Chile's 1974-1981 banking liberalisation, Sweden's late-1980s credit-market liberalisation, and Japan's 1996-2001 Big Bang — are followed within 10 years by higher-than-baseline incidence of banking crises, measured by the Laeven-Valencia Systemic Banking Crisis Database, and by elevated credit-to-GDP gaps per BIS.
financial_deregulation_crisis_vulnerabilityinferred
viaregulatory.financial_deregulation
SUPPORTED — sign matches claim +, ATT=+0.04145, p=3.34e-07, N=302, treated_countries=8
supported
Universal child-benefit / expanded child tax credit expansions (US ARP 2021, UK pre-2013 child benefit) reduced child poverty rates by measurable magnitudes in real time.
child_benefit_expansion_child_poverty_effectinferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansionregulatory.financial_deregulation
SUPPORTED - US SPM child poverty fell 4.5pp and rebounded 7.2pp; UK child poverty rose 2.1pp after the 2013 tightening
supported
Countries in the top quartile of Heritage financial freedom in 2024 have lower latest-available under-5 mortality than bottom-quartile countries, consistent with free-market country policy regimes outperforming less market-oriented regimes on this outcome.
heritage_financial_freedom_under5_mortality_current_gapinferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansionregulatory.financial_deregulation
SUPPORTED — top-vs-bottom gap has expected sign - and Welch p=4.687e-08
supported
Conditional on latest real GDP per capita and broad Heritage region, countries with higher Heritage financial freedom in 2024 have lower latest-available under-5 mortality.
heritage_financial_freedom_under5_mortality_income_region_robustnessinferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansionregulatory.financial_deregulation
PARTIAL — controlled coefficient not decisive (coef=-2.129, p=0.1158)
partial
The 2007-2009 global financial crisis originated in household-debt-financed consumption sustaining aggregate demand despite stagnant real wages, a Minsky-plus-Marx pattern.
gfc_household_debt_wage_stagnation_linkinferred
viaregulatory.financial_deregulationfiscal.transfer_expansion
PARTIAL — coef=-0.01111, p=0; claim direction not auto-inferred
partial

Similar historical policies

Ranked by axis-fingerprint overlap with this policy. Direction match bolded — those are the closest historical analogues. Shape of the match is what drives policy-outcome comparison, not the country or party label.

References