60 Minutes - 4/10/2022: President Zelenskyy, Bitcoin Beach

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tells Scott Pelley “human values” are on the line and the war with Russia is entering a “new wave.” Sharyn Alfonsi reports from El Salvador, where one tiny town has become a great experiment for cryptocurrency. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We met President Zelenskyy in the blacked-out hallways of his command center in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv. Mr. President, what has it been like working under these conditions? We found a way how to work. We don't have another way. You found a way how to work? We don't have another way. You found a way how to work? You don't have any other way? Weeks of war, attacks on civilians and neighborhoods have exposed a savage Russian strategy. But still, Solinsky's capital city holds. No one expected Ukraine to fight Russia to a standstill. And I wonder, how did you manage?

We united as a nation. We became a single fist. On the coast of El Salvador, about an hour from the capital, is a town called El Zonte. Black volcanic sand gives way to warm water and an exceptional point break that draws surfers from around the world. Among them is an American expat with a degree in economics who locals believe can answer one of the most challenging questions of our time. What's Bitcoin? I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper.

I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $4. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small hot coffee,

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Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. On February 24th, with the Russian invasion coming at him from three sides, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reached for his most powerful weapon, his phone. The moment Zelensky told his people he refused to flee, Ukraine refused to fall. Leaders don't become legends often, but over these nearly seven weeks, this 44-year-old former comedian inspired his country to stand up to the overwhelming force of Russia. Last Wednesday, we were admitted to Zelensky's fortified war rooms to meet the man who stands between the Russian army and the free world.

We met President Zelensky in the blacked-out hallways of his command center in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv. It is a fortress, crowded with troops, machine guns, mines, explosives, and a great deal more. Are you safe here? Yeah, I'm explosives, and a great deal more. Are you safe here? Yeah, I'm fine, he told us. I feel pretty calm about it. Our guards are worried because there could be an airstrike.

But when we get the air raid evacuation signal, we head downstairs. Mr. President, what has it been like working under these conditions? We found a way how to work. We don't have another way. You found a way how to work. You don't have any other way. Slipping back into Ukrainian, he said, it has to be dark in here. You can't switch the lights on because a bomb could just fly in during an airstrike. You have troops sleeping. The president and his staff have lived here for 46 days now.

The Russian invasion plan expected Kyiv to fall in three days, but that relied on one assumption, that Zelensky would run. When everyone is telling you, you need to go, you need to think. on one assumption, that Zelensky would run. When everyone is telling you you need to go, you need to think. Before I do something, I analyze the situation. I've always done it calmly, without any chaos. I might not be the strongest warrior, but I'm not willing to betray anyone. What did you tell your wife and children about your decision? I told them this is my choice, and I can't do it any other way. I'm the president of

my country. I'm the president of our people. And even if I wasn't president, I would have stayed here. My family understood, not only understood, but fully supported my decision. Fully. It was the decision that saved Ukraine from immediate collapse. Good evening, everyone, he said. We are all here. Our soldiers are here. The citizens of the country are here. We are all here protecting our independence, our country, and we're going to continue.

You had made a decision to give your life for your country, if it came to that. I don't want to make myself out to be a hero, he said. I love my family. I want to live many more years. But choosing between running or being with my people? Of course I'm ready to give my life for my country. For a man with 44 million lives in his hands, we found Zelensky buoyant, gracious, humble, and brutally honest. The day before our visit, an angrier Zelensky scolded the UN Security Council.

Where's the security, he asked. In speaking to NATO, you called them weak. In speaking to the UN Security Council, you said, if you can't help, you shouldn't exist. Not very diplomatic of you. I wonder why you feel the need to speak so bluntly. When you're working at diplomacy, there are no results. All of this is very bureaucratic.

That's why the way I am talking to them is absolutely justifiable. I don't have any more lives to give. I don't have any more emotions. I'm no longer interested in their diplomacy that leads to the destruction of my country. A lot of countries have changed their mind about Ukraine and about our people, but I think we've paid too high a price for that. PAUL JAY What must the world understand? We are defending the ability of a person to live in the modern world.

We are defending the right to live. I never thought this right was so costly. These are human values, so that Russia doesn't choose what we should do and how I'm exercising my rights. That right was given to me by God and my parents. God was hard to find on our visit to Kiev's northern suburbs, which Russia occupied for weeks. Much of what we found will be difficult to watch. Behind St. Andrew's Church, there is a sandy trench, not quite full, of civilian residents of the town of Bucha.

Ukraine stopped the Russians here, 45 minutes from the center of the capital city. The Russian retreat was so hasty, it seems there was no time to cover up the war crimes. President Zelensky visited Bucha two days before our interview. What did you see in Bucha? Death. Just death. Last Monday was the first time Zelensky saw with his own eyes what Russia has done in what Vladimir Putin calls the liberation of Ukraine. The day after our interview, we found civilian neighborhoods in Bucha,

blocks and blocks, shelled and blasted with no purpose but terror. Bodies and parts of bodies lay in the streets, left out like trash, Zelensky told us. No one knows how many victims are still in their homes, yet to be found. There's a photograph, Mr. President, of you in Bucha with an expression on your face that you have not allowed your people to see during this war. And I wonder what we're seeing there. Is that heartbreak? Is it anger?

It's anger. It's anger. It's anger. We know who's around us. It's anger. It's anger. It's anger. Because we don't understand the Russians. You can't really understand this world, that there are people on this planet who give these orders, and people who carry them out.

In Bucha, neighborhood relief for the hungry and the homeless looked like World War II in color. Valery Matvienko was so angry about the senseless Russian bullet wound in his leg, we can't repeat what he told us in English. Some of the Russians were normal. Some of them were totally crazy. You could walk and they would shoot sometimes up in the air, sometimes at your legs, so you'd have to jump in front of them. Cars were run over by Russian tanks.

Very brutal. Not human. We met Tatyana Dimitrovna, who compressed the occupation into a single word. Horror. Horror, she said. Gunfire was nonstop day and night. Thanks to God, it all passed and we survived. It's simply a miracle. I had two grandchildren with me in the basement.

I never thought I would live to see this horror. Mr. Zelinsky told us that he couldn't believe that human beings could do something like this. We never believed it either. We are simply in shock, all of us. What evidence is there of war crimes across Ukraine? The Ukrainian Security Service has intercepted communications, he told us. There are Russian soldiers talking with their parents about what they stole and who they abducted.

There are recordings of Russian prisoners of war who admitted to killing people. There are pilots in prison who had maps with civilian targets to bomb. There are also investigations being done based on the remains of the dead. Should Vladimir Putin be prosecuted for war crimes? Look, I think everyone who made a decision, who issued an order, who fulfilled an order, everyone who is relevant to this, I believe they are all guilty. Do you hold Putin responsible? I do believe he's one of them. That's what I believe. The slaughter of civilians could have been stopped, Zelensky told us.

He's deeply grateful for the weapons NATO and the U.S. are sending around the clock, but he's bitterly disappointed the allies refused to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine. President Biden has called that an invitation to World War III, but in Zelensky's view, it's the kind of inaction the world has suffered before. Mr. President, in a speech to NATO, you said, quote, All the people who die will die because of you, because of your weakness. Are you saying that the West bears some responsibility for these atrocities? He told us, I remember, all of us remember, books about the Second World War and about the devil in uniform, Adolf Hitler. Are those countries who did not participate in the war responsible?

The countries who let German forces march throughout Europe. Does the world carry responsibility for the genocide? Yes. Yes, it does. When you have the ability to close the sky. Yes, it's scary that a world war could start. It's scary. I understand that. And I cannot put pressure on these people because everyone is afraid of war. But whether the world is responsible for this, I believe so. Yes, I believe so. Stand in front of the mirror every day and ask yourself, were you able to do something

or were you unable to do something? You will find the answer in the mirror to this question and to another question. You will find the answer in the mirror to this question and to another question. Who are you? That's what I believe. Perhaps Zelensky reaches for World War II because of his homeland's history of catastrophe and because he's Ukraine's first Jewish president. Zelensky is 44 years old, holds a law degree. He's married with a son and a daughter. His family is safe somewhere in Ukraine. In this war, Zelensky is the leading man in a tragedy. But he's worked his entire

career to make people laugh. He was Ukraine's favorite comedian, whose sitcom was popular in Russia, too. In his show called Servant of the People, he played a high school history teacher whose anger at corruption in Ukraine explodes into a profane rant. A student posts the tirade, and the teacher is elected president. In 2019, Zelensky turned parity into power. He ran on an anti-corruption platform and won 73% of the vote. He was 41 years old. He brought longtime friend and business partner Andrei Yermak in as chief

of staff. Andrei Yermak, Chief of Staff, Zelenoski's President's Office of the Free World He is smart, he is strong, he is brave, and he is a person who is self-made. Zelenoski is not just the leader of our heroic nation. I think he is a leader of the free world. Why do you say President Zelensky is the leader of the free world now? Because Ukraine defends not just Ukraine. We defend all democracy. Zelensky has been defending Ukraine since his inauguration day. That green T-shirt, which caught the eye of the world world was no surprise to Ukrainians. He keeps fatigues in his office because he often visited the battlefront near the Russian border,

where Ukraine has been in a shooting war with Russia since 2014. That was when Putin invaded part of Ukraine called the Donbass and seized Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula. In 2014, before Zelensky was elected he's been trying to warn the world that Putin will not stop at Ukraine. Mr. President, it appears that the free world has calculated that the suffering of your people is not worth even the risk of a nuclear exchange. I think so. That's how it is. Some are using that politically as an excuse by saying, we can't defend Ukraine because there could be a nuclear war. I think that today, no one in this world can predict what Russia will do.

If they invade further into our territory, they will definitely move closer and closer to Europe. They will only become stronger and less predictable. President Biden says he is outraged by Bucha. NATO leaders say they are outraged by Bucha. So what should they do now? Weapons, number one. They need to be very serious about it.

They definitely understand what I'm talking about right now. They have to supply weapons to Ukraine as if they were defending themselves and their own people. They need to understand this. If they don't speed up, it will be very hard for us to hold on against this pressure. The second factor is sanctions, because we found some things in sanctions that are easy for financial experts to circumvent. Russia has been circumventing them, and this is absolutely true. The Western world knows it. This shouldn't be allowed. This is not a movie. This is real life. Stop fearing the Russian Federation. We've shown we are not afraid.

When we come back, in the wake of the Bucha atrocities, President Zelensky tells the United States what he must have to survive. of payment solutions. Learn more at visa.ca slash fintech. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck. Available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Friday, a Russian missile strike hit a crowd of refugees striving to escape eastern Ukraine by train. At least 50 were killed, five children. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calls it a war crime. Tonight, Zelensky is fighting a powerful Russian assault on Ukraine's east and south. Russia has not seized its strategic objectives, so instead it's shelling defiant cities to ruin. The one exception, at least now, is Kiev. In a feat of arms no one expected, Ukraine's outgunned army defeated the massive Russian force that had been ordered to take the capital city. City. Keeve survives for the moment, a capital of mummified monuments and 19th century grace. Before, it was a bumper-to-bumper city with three million residents, but now the streets are congested only by shadows. Air raids are still a danger, but after nearly seven weeks,

the siren doesn't quicken the step like it used to. Have you won the Battle of Kyiv? Kyiv. I think yes, but this isn't the final victory. I will only be able to tell after we win this war. When we liberate our country, then I'll be able to tell. Because Bucha is part of Greater Kyiv. Bucha, Erpin, Hostomel.

If the people of those towns were wiped out, then did we win this battle? I'm not sure. We've withstood, and we did not give up what is ours. But whether we won, I can't say. No one expected Ukraine to fight Russia to a standstill. And I wonder, how did you manage? No one expected Ukraine to fight Russia to a standstill. And I wonder, how did you manage? We united as a nation.

Even though our people understood that they would be outnumbered tenfold and there would be no way out, just no way out, we fought for our existence and for survival. That's the combined heroism of everyone, of the people, of the authorities, of the armed forces. We became a single fist. We saw the Ukrainian punch in the town of Bucha, where the remains of a Russian armored column rusted dead in the street. Neighbors holed up for weeks, emerged to remember what victory looks like. No one seemed in a hurry to deal with the bits of Russian soldiers in the wreckage.

The full story of how the outmanned Ukrainian army stopped the invasion of Kyiv will fill history books, but we already know part of it. Because the Russians believed that Kyiv would fall in a matter of days, they literally did not bring enough food or fuel for their armored columns. On the other side, the Ukrainians have been trained for years by the California National Guard and other U.S. units. When the invasion happened, the United States, Britain, and other countries flooded Ukraine with lightweight, shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles. How much difference have American arms made in this war? They're helping. Frankly speaking, I would have wanted more. I don't know if I have the right to

say that, but the fact that the United States has helped a lot is true. Zelensky's man, in charge of arming Ukraine, is Chief of Staff Andrei Yermak. When we met, he just finished a two-hour call with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley. Yermak asked for heavier weapons faster. First, there was artillery. The second, we need the tanks, we need the military jets, and we need everything which gives to us opportunity to close our sky. When you ask the Biden administration for artillery, tanks, jet airplanes,

the administration says what? We have very deep and very detailed conversation. This is American president who is done for Ukraine more than all other presidents. But then you have the war, and we are openly said, we need more. It's not enough. We need it as soon as possible.

If we receive this support in time, we will win. A White House official tells us Yermak got a yes to his requests, but filling orders takes time. The Ukrainians need Russian-made weapons that they already know how to use. The U.S. is cajoling allies to ship their Russian gear now on the promise that the U.S. will replace it later. America has thrown in nearly $2 billion in military aid. From the Ukrainian point of view, of course, nothing is fast enough. Russian bombardment is escalating in the east and south. Cities are being shelled to ruin, including Mariupol, with 450,000 residents. What are you expecting now in the east and in the south?

We think this will be a new wave of this war. We don't know how much Russian weaponry there will be, but we understand there'll be many times more than there is now. All depends on how fast we will be helped by the United States. To be honest, whether we will be able to survive depends on this. I have 100% confidence in our people and in our armed forces, but unfortunately, I don't have the confidence that we will be receiving everything we need. And so what are you asking of President Biden? To tell you the truth, long ago I asked President Biden for very specific items. He has the list. President Biden can enter history as the person who stood shoulder to shoulder with the Ukrainian people who won and chose the right to have their own country.

This also depends on him. You are frustrated with President Biden? No, I'm not disappointed. I don't know how another president in his place would help us. I don't know. It's difficult. We have a good relationship. I think so, at least. Ukraine depends on the support of the United States, and I, as the leader of a country at war, I can only be grateful.

As for the other president at war, we asked Zelenskyy if he would meet now face-to-face with Vladimir Putin. He told us it was worth the chance. They wouldn't resolve everything, Zelenskyy said, but they might stop the killing. Are you willing to give up any part of Ukraine for peace? Overall, we're not ready to give away our country. I think we've already given up a lot of lives.

So we need to stand firm for as long as we can. But this is life. Different things happen. It's negotiable? Well, this issue would definitely be raised in the course of negotiations. We understand the Russian side. We understand one of their provisions that is always talked about is to recognize Crimea as Russian territory. I will definitely not recognize that. And they would really like to take the southern parts of our country. I clearly understand that questions like this will be raised in negotiations, if there ever are any.

But we were not ready to give up our territory from the beginning. Had we been willing to give up our territory, there would have been no war. Mr. President, in almost every speech to your country, you say that Ukraine is going to win. What does winning look like to you? Victory. First of all, our people would definitely feel victory. They will come back. The return of refugees is blood for the body of Ukraine. Without them, there's nothing. The bombardments would end. We would recover our territory. There would be no Russian soldiers in our country. Yes, I understand they will not withdraw from Crimea and will be arguing and negotiating for one territory or another in the south of our country, the Donbas.

I know exactly what has to happen, after which we can say this is victory. But if you don't mind, I'm not going to talk about it just yet. Mr. President, we wish you all the luck in the world. I need half of it. I think even half will be enough. Volodymyr Zelensky has borrowed more luck than anyone expected. With the reprieve of Kyiv, Ukraine has turned mere admiration into credibility. Its people are suffering grievous loss every hour, but they have proven there was a moment in Kyiv

when they silenced the guns of Russia. If you feel like you've been hearing a lot about Bitcoin lately, those aren't voices in your head. Last month, in an attempt to skirt harsh financial sanctions, a top Russian lawmaker said Russia may start accepting Bitcoin for oil and gas. If you watched the Super Bowl this year, you probably saw the ads for crypto companies. And now, President Biden has turned his attention to digital assets, signing an executive order to examine the risks and benefits of cryptocurrencies. So we thought it was time to try and get our heads around the complicated world of cryptocurrencies, specifically the largest one, Bitcoin. To do that, we went to one of the simplest places in the world, a remote town known as Bitcoin Beach.

On the coast of El Salvador, about an hour from the capital, is a town called El Zante. Black volcanic sand gives way to warm water and an exceptional point break that draws surfers from around the world. But wander down El Zante's winding dirt roads and it's easy to spot a different kind of tourist. Do you surf? I don't yet, but I might take it up here.

We met Andreas Kohl, visiting from Lichtenstein. He came to El Zante because it's one of the first places in the world you can use Bitcoin to pay for just about anything. Tamales, hotels, or souvenirs. Bitcoin cities happen here, and it might be the next Singapore I want to see it happen. Singapore? It's hard to imagine. The only traffic jams in El Zante are caused by loose livestock. To understand how this remote town of 3,000 became part of a grand Bitcoin experiment and how it all works,

we were told to head to this break and look for a middle-aged blonde guy locals call The Man. That's him, Mike Peterson, an expat from San Diego with a degree in economics and a nose for decent waves. I wound up here on a surf trip, I think like 18 years ago. Fell in love with the warm water, the nice waves, but most especially the people here. Peterson, who once worked as a financial planner, moved to El Zante a few years later and started helping those people. In 2015, he started Mission Sake, a charity that supports missionaries and funded scholarships and created local jobs. At that time, most young people here left town or the country to find work. That's kind of the cycle that we've seen of destruction, of people having to leave because there's not enough opportunity. Then their kids are growing up without their parents here, so they're very vulnerable

to the gangs. They join the gangs, the gangs grow, and you have this kind of destructive cycle. This is how we grew up here. The opportunities were almost nothing. You had to leave if you wanted to do something. That was like the paradigm. Roman Martinez grew up in El Zante and started working with Peterson's charity

to help kids like Ismael Galdamez. He quit school at 13. All I wanted to do is to work hard and to live. That's it. Not about my future. It was just surviving the day, getting through the day. Exactly as my parents did. It's sad, but it's the reality. But then, in 2019, Elzonte got an unexpected break.

Peterson says he was introduced to someone representing an anonymous donor with a fortune in Bitcoin who wanted to see it put to good use with one stipulation. The stipulation was you can't just convert it into dollars because they believe that the actual usage of Bitcoin would be what would benefit the people. And so for me it was like, wow, this is somebody that wants to actually see a circular economy generated using Bitcoin and they're willing to actually put the funds behind it. Peterson and a team of community leaders got to work, creating the Bitcoin Beach Initiative. They used the anonymous donation to create dozens of much-needed jobs in El Zante, but

they'd have to pay everyone in Bitcoin. Be honest, what did they say when you brought up, let's use Bitcoin? First, they just kind of looked at you with this blank stare like, well, show me these Bitcoins and how you hold them and what do they look like? All fair questions without an easy answer. But Mike Peterson offered his neighbors and us his best explanation to what might be the most challenging question of all. What's Bitcoin? So Bitcoin is the world's first decentralized money that's not controlled by any government. There's no gatekeepers in it. It obviously lives on the internet. It can be transferred in electronic form. It actually lets people own it themselves, truly own it.

In other words, it's peer-to-peer digital money. There isn't a bank or third party in the middle. Banks have never really been part of the equation for most Salvadorans. About 70% of the country is unbanked. That means they have limited access to loans, mortgages or credit cards. Cash has always been king, which made convincing people in El Zante to work for Bitcoin, a currency they couldn't hold or see, especially difficult. So Mike Peterson and his partners turned their attention to a group much more comfortable with all things digital, teenagers. Ismael Galdamez was one of the first hires.

So we were hiring them to do things in the community, pick up trash out of the river, and then we'd pay them in Bitcoin. And so they got into this rhythm of going out and working and earning Bitcoin. And so you're giving them the Bitcoin, but do they have anywhere to spend the Bitcoin? That's always the challenge when you're trying to bring a new system into place, you know, the chicken and the egg problem. Enter Mama Rosa. Under a tin roof and over an open flame, she runs a popular pupusa spot in town. Her son Jorge works with Mike Peterson and convinced Mama to be the first in El Zante

to accept Bitcoin. Did she say where is the money? Yeah, she said, like, okay, if you pay me, but how can I see when I touch the money? And she just had to trust you? Yeah. So she say, if you can come and teach me. Here's how it works. Customers scan her QR code. Then, using a popular phone app called Bitcoin Beach, instantly transfer Bitcoin from their wallets to hers, which she keeps in her apron.

Mama Rosa used her Bitcoin savings to buy a truck and two cows. The grandmother of 18 is now bullish on Bitcoin. How do you feel about being a pioneer of technology? You like it? Hola! But not everyone in town has bought in. Accept us Bitcoin? No.

No. Can I ask you, do you accept Bitcoin? No. Because Bitcoin is complicated. It's not backed by a government authority. There's also concern about the computer power or energy needed to support Bitcoin's underlying network. Most people don't buy a whole Bitcoin, but a fraction of one. It's largely unregulated and extremely volatile.

There's only a limited supply, so its value swells and dips based on demand. Bitcoin was introduced in 2009. A year later, a single Bitcoin was valued at pennies. Its value inched up and down, peaking last November at almost $70,000 a Bitcoin, only to lose around 30% of its value in the last few months. What happens when it drops 20%? And that's a big deal to a person or a shop owner here. Are they knocking on your door?

Not knocking on the door, but, you know, they'll call Jorge and like, hey, what's going on? And so then we'll kind of connect them with people who have been in this from the beginning. They've seen like, yes, there's ups and downs, volatilities along the way. But over the long term perspective, it's going up in value against the dollar. But you're not doubling down on this because you personally can get rich. I will benefit if the price of Bitcoin goes up, but I can't impact that. I can't influence that. That's not the driving reason behind this.

The reason is we want to see El Zante transformed. This is all you? Yeah. About 45 businesses are now riding the Bitcoin wave in El Zante. You can pay your dentist, the electric bill, or for a cup of coffee with Bitcoin. So I put in two dollars and send? Yes. Mike Peterson and his partners use Bitcoin to help pay for this continuing education center. There are computer and English classes. I call back later. I call back later. Teachers are paid in Bitcoin. All of it's attracted good press, Bitcoin tourists, and a few hoodie-wearing tech entrepreneurs. Yeah, so we had gone to El Salvador just to prove that our product worked

and prove that we could be better at Western Union than Western Union. Jack Mallers is a 28-year-old CEO from Chicago who developed an app called Strike designed to disrupt one of the biggest businesses in El Salvador remittances money sent from overseas. Last year Salvadorans received more than seven billion dollars through services like Western Union which can charge upwards of 10 percent for a transfer that can take days. Using Bitcoin's digital infrastructure, known as Rails, the Strike app allows users to send U.S. dollars across borders instantly for pennies. We launch it. It gets one download a day.

Then it gets 100 downloads a day. Then it gets 1,000 downloads a day. Then it gets 20,000 downloads a day. Then Mallers got an unexpected message on his phone. You get a direct message on Twitter from who? The brother of the president. And he wants to meet with you? He wants to meet with me, and he gave me 24 hours.

El Salvador's populist president, Nayib Bukele, once referred to himself as the world's coolest dictator. He's been accused of illegally grabbing power and ordering soldiers to occupy the nation's legislative assembly to push through his agenda. It was scary. It was really scary. I thought there were likely two outcomes, is that they were not happy with me interfering with the financial system in El Salvador, or they were tremendously happy and

bought into the vision that this was representative of a better world for not only El Salvador, but the planet. His utopian blueprint for Bitcoin led to months of conversations with the government that led to this. Last summer, at a Bitcoin conference in Miami, Bukele announced in a video message that El Salvador would become the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as an official currency, alongside the U.S. dollar. It wasn't discussed among lawmakers or... Never.

No debate? We never heard anything before that day. Luis Membrenio is an economist based in San Salvador and an outspoken critic of President Bukele's policies. The government wants people to think that this can be a currency. But this is just an asset, and a speculative asset with a huge volatility. Imagine the U.S. dollar having a volatility of 20 percent in one day. It would be crazy. El Salvador is billions of dollars in debt and has long relied on loans from the International Monetary Fund to prop up its economy.

In January, the IMF expressed concern about the risk of Bitcoin's volatility and has delayed further relief to El Salvador. But Bukele is doubling down. He spent an estimated $400 million of taxpayer money to push Bitcoin into circulation. Protests followed. He's calling himself the CEO of El Salvador. What kind of CEO do you think he is? An irresponsible one, an immature one. But isn't Bukhali kind of a genius in a way? Because he's changed the narrative. You know, we're not talking about the gang problem.

We're talking about, look what they've done with Bitcoin. Yeah, definitely. And he's so good at it. The problem is there's going to be a day in which people will find out that the government is indebted, that they will increase taxes to everybody, and the party's over. In El Zante, 19-year-old Ismael Galdamez doesn't worry about a wipeout. He's teaching surf lessons and back in school. And when he learned the shaved ice fenders in El Zante were going 30 minutes out of town to buy ice, he decided to become the ice supplier in town and used his Bitcoin profits to buy this freezer.

It was $200. And you cut those guys out of the ice cube. Exactly. You're a shark. A Bitcoin shark in braces. Ismail's planning to move his parents and siblings into this new house in Azante later this month. He plans to pay the mortgage in Bitcoin. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.