SAN MIGUEL, El Salvador — Bitcoin’s proponents dream of a financial system largely free of government meddling. But the first time that cryptocurrency became a national currency, it was imposed on an unwilling population by an increasingly authoritarian ruler using a secretive state-run system.The surprising announcement last month that El Salvador had adopted bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, as legal tender caught its population by surprise, and made the poor, conservative Central American nation an unlikely bellwether of a global technological transformation.The outcome of the uncharted experiment could help determine whether cryptocurrency delivers the freedom from regulation …
