The price of bitcoin Tuesday saw a drop of about 17% since El Salvador on Monday became the first country to adopt the crypto platform as legal tender.

As of 5:35 p.m. ET, bitcoin was trading at $46,533.11, down 11.1%.

El Salvador, one of the most impoverished countries in the Americas, had previously bought 200 bitcoins and purchased another 200 late on Monday prior to the formal adoption, and another 150 on Tuesday, bringing the country to a total of 550 bitcoins.

It will also give citizens $30 worth of bitcoin if they download the state-run Chivo wallet app. President Nayib Bukele plans to spend more than $225 million on the bitcoin rollout.

About 336,000 investors reportedly liquidated their accounts over the past 24 hours. Traders believe the poor seasonality is cause for concern. In the past decade, September is the only month where bitcoin failed to deliver positive returns.

“Mystery sell-offs, or sell-offs where a legitimate reason is only found a significant while later are much more common in crypto than in other asset classes,” Stephane Ouellette, chief executive and co-founder of FRNT Financial, told Bloomberg. “The market remains far more opaque and global than most if not all other notable asset classes.”

Bitcoin on Monday traded at nearly $53,000 on the Salvadorian activity.

Crypto-related stocks saw sharp declines Tuesday, while crypto exchanges experienced delays.

El Salvador temporarily disabled Chivo to increase the capacity of its servers, which were preventing users from installing it.

“Any data they try to enter at this time will give them an error. This is a relatively straightforward problem, but it cannot be fixed with the system connected,” said Bukele.

Leah Wald, CEO of Valkyrie Investments, told CNBC that the impact was smaller than originally anticipated due to El Salvador’s small population, the lack of details, and hesitance about how it would be implemented.

“What is most worth looking out for is whether or not neighboring countries in Latin America, or those elsewhere around the world, begin to adopt bitcoin as their national currency as well,” Wald said.

“Should this occur, that is when we could see a parabolic move higher, as the momentum gained from many millions more people having instant access to crypto should result in more adoption ... and higher prices."

RELATED STORIES
Bitcoin