Salvadorans claim they have lost the Bitcoin stored in Chivo, the country's official wallet
By introducing Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador, the country's official Bitcoin wallet, called Chivo, was introduced. This was a way to convince Salvadorans of the accessibility and security of Bitcoin, but there are already many possible cases of crypto theft.
Twitter user “El Comisionado” compiled a series of tweets with complaints alleging that various amounts of Bitcoin worth between $100 and $16.000 have disappeared from Salvadorans’ wallets through unauthorized transactions. About 50 tweets in total report about $96.223,83 worth of Bitcoin missing from Salvadorans’ Chivo wallets.
Chivo, El Salvador's Bitcoin wallet, has suffered several unauthorized transactions
Many of the tweets collected by the Commissioner include screenshots showing the unauthorized transactions of the affected Chivo wallets. It is also reported that the government of El Salvador does not help to investigate the missing funds in its official purse, which should be backed and with human support.
These losses only diminish confidence in both the Chivo wallet and the security of the cryptocurrencies. One of the warnings that experts gave before Bitcoin was established in El Salvador is that users have not been correctly informed of the technology or the possible security and risk problems that cryptocurrencies in general have. At first there was mistrust because the wallet is based on facial recognition software to prevent unauthorized access to funds, a technology that offers speed, but is far from infallible to use in the financial field.
It does not appear that the government of El Salvador will be able to solve and return the Bitcoin to the affected Salvadorans. It is possible that it will improve the security of Chivo's facial recognition, since many complaints about Chivo's security come from how easy it is to mock it, but biometric analysis should not be the only layer of security that an app can have in the one that accesses our finances, no matter how small they are.
Source: Tom's Hardware
