El Salvador: funds disappear from Chivo wallets

In El Salvador, several users of the state-created Bitcoin wallet, Chivo, complain about a loss of funds. 

$95,000 disappeared from Chivo wallets in El Salvador.

User El Comisionado is collecting the reports on Twitter, and since he started on December 16, the total reported losses have been over $95,000. 

Hilo con algunos afectados por la Chivo Gualet.

1- $16,000 pic.twitter.com/EC3hehXKDz

— El Comisionado (@_elcomisionado_) December 18, 2021

The problem appears to be related to outbound transactions not authorized by the account owners as if someone managed to hack the account or steal its private key to authorize transactions. 

No Explanation

To date, there is still no official communication from Chivo Wallet, so much so that some users complain that there is no technical support. 

Indeed, the social profiles of the wallet have not been updated since the beginning of November. 

Even the president of El Salvador himself, Nayib Bukele, hasn’t published anything about Chivo since the beginning of November. 

Perhaps it’s conceivable that something went wrong after November 3 and that a kind of press silence was imposed on the issue that prevents the publication of official information about it. 

Note instead that Bukele’s last tweet dedicated to El Salvador’s Bitcoin-related initiative is from a few days ago. 

https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1474119003169865728

In this tweet, he hypothesized the end of fiat currencies, replaced by Bitcoin, stating that El Salvador would be the spark that is starting the revolution.

Given that he had also talked a lot about Chivo in the past, it’s rather strange that he hasn’t talked about it since November 3 and that even the official communications of the wallet’s Twitter profile stopped on November 4. 

A cyber attack? 

According to the president himself, in El Salvador, there are now more than 3 million active accounts on Chivo, about half of the country’s entire population. 

However, it should be noted that some of the protests that have taken place in El Salvador against the decision to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender have targeted Chivo ATMs.

So, it is also possible to assume a cyber attack against either the wallet or its users in the absence of further information. 

To date, there is still no effective explanation for what is happening, nor is there any known possible solution to the problem. 

Non-custodian Bitcoin wallets, on the other hand, are not affected by the problem.