Bitcoin Core Dev Jon Atack Says El Zonte Restaurant Took Just 1 Bitcoin (BTC) Payment in August

1 BTC Payment in a Month at Bitcoin Beach

Bitcoin's most famous grassroots payments experiment is cooling at the ground level. Bitcoin Core developer Jon Atack, who has lived in El Salvador since 2022, documented in a post on X that a restaurant in El Zonte — the coastal village that branded itself Bitcoin Beach and helped inspire the country's 2021 legal-tender law — received exactly one bitcoin payment during the entire month of August, and it was his. When he asked staff what customers were using instead, they said nearly everyone in the beach zone now settles bills by credit card. Atack then offered a tip in satoshis, bitcoin's smallest unit, but the server declined, saying she had forgotten how to operate the wallet application.

documented in a post on Xhttps://x.com/jonatack/status/2091731203514581105

The observation covers a single merchant and cannot by itself describe all of El Zonte: other visitors report still spending BTC there, and some shops continue to post bitcoin-accepted signage. National polling, however, tracks the same slide. The public opinion institute of Central American University (UCA) found that only 8.1% of Salvadorans used bitcoin to buy goods or services in 2024 — the lowest reading since the asset became legal tender in September 2021. Usage has declined every year of the experiment, from 25.7% in 2021 to 21% in 2022, 12% in 2023 and 8.1% in 2024. That poll surveyed 1,266 people at 95% confidence with a roughly 2.75-point margin of error. A separate study by Francisco Gavidia University points the same way: about 92% of its respondents reported no bitcoin transactions in 2024, implying usage near 7.5%. Policy shifted as well. To secure a $1.4 billion, 40-month IMF financing program, El Salvador amended its Bitcoin Law in 2025, making merchant acceptance voluntary and requiring tax payments in dollars. Meanwhile the state's roughly 7,756 BTC — worth about $615 million as of Aug. 25 and structured in effect as a strategic bitcoin reserve — has grown by some 240 coins this year, though IMF documents indicate much of that increase reflects transfers between government-controlled addresses rather than the accumulation one would expect from a sovereign crypto whale.

Korean Retail Turns Cautious After $80K Reclaim

A parallel hesitancy is visible in South Korean sentiment. Bitcoin market coverage this week shows BTC briefly reclaiming the $80,000 level, yet a survey of 2,000 domestic investors conducted Aug. 25–28, according to Coinreaders, with polling run through Paros Labs, shows bullish expectations slipping. Some 36.3% of respondents expect Bitcoin (BTC) to rise or surge over the coming week of Aug. 31–Sep. 4, down from 45.9% a week earlier. Calls for sideways trading edged up to 28.6% from 26.5%, while bearish answers climbed to 35.1% from 27.6%. The poll carries a ±3.0% margin of error at 95% confidence. Buying intentions at current prices reinforce the caution. The largest group, 41.3%, expects a correction after the rally and would rather accumulate on a dip. Only 24.6% declared the bottom is in and plan to chase the market now, while 20.4% view prices as already too expensive and will sit out even at the cost of missed upside. A further 13.7% said the downtrend is not over and they will not buy until a fresh low prints. Put together, roughly three in four surveyed investors are not chasing the $80,000 reclaim — a striking split between price momentum and conviction. The macro backdrop is not helping: Bank of Korea policymaker Shin Hyun-song has argued the won is ‘immune’ near 1,372.5 against the dollar as markets await the Fed, and BTC's own stall near $78K ahead of Jackson Hole kept leverage in check through late August. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Gate.

Adoption Reality Check Beyond the Price Recovery

Our reading: the two data points describe one market. Price has recovered, but the base of the demand curve has not — Salvadorans are transacting less on the ground, and Korean retail is explicitly waiting for a dip rather than chasing. The most load-bearing record here remains Atack's own post: a dated, first-hand transaction receipt from the very community the payments narrative was built on, which is harder to dismiss than any aggregate statistic. Until payment utility and retail conviction catch up, the recovery leans on the HODL behavior of existing holders and, as Cryptoquant chief Ki Young Ju argues, on global institutional funds driving this cycle's peak — a framework for judging where BTC sits in the cycle that our Bitcoin Rainbow Chart guide breaks down step by step.