El Salvador’s President Bukele is playing down the extremely bearish sentiment for bitcoin and is telling his people to be patient, saying that they should stop worrying and enjoy life. He says that the value of the country’s investment will grow immensely after the bear market.
President Nayib Bukele appears quite chilled on the subject of his country’s adoption of bitcoin, and the fact that his administration’s average purchase of bitcoins is currently 57% down, which equates to a loss of about $61 million.
Both Bukele and his finance minister, Alejandro Zelaya, have sought to play down the loss of value that the country’s bitcoin purchases have had on the treasury balance sheet.
According to an Associated Press article published on Sunday, Zelaya said in a recent interview that El Salvador hadn’t sold any of its bitcoins, so therefore no loss had actually been incurred.
“When they tell me that El Salvador’s budgetary risk has increased because of the supposed loss, that loss doesn’t exist. That must be made clear, because we have not sold.”
The finance minister also said that the percentage amount of bitcoin for the whole of the El Salvadoran budget only amounted to less than 0.5%.
This probably won’t cut much ice with the International Monetary Fund, which has tried to get El Salvador to annul its bitcoin trust fund, and to repeal the law that made bitcoin legal tender alongside the dollar.
The IMF has also said that bitcoin’s volatility would present huge problems to the El Salvadoran economy, and that it was worried about criminals taking advantage of the situation.
However, given the inherent transparency that exists with the bitcoin blockchain, most government agencies with the resources available to them, such as in the U.S., would have little problem tracing any criminal activity – the same could certainly not be said if the criminal activity involved use of fiat currencies.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice
