TD₿: Stop Drinking the Elite's Kool-Aid by Nayib Bukele
TL;DR If El Salvador succeeds with Bitcoin, many countries will follow, which is why institutions are fighting them so hard.
Hey Bitcoiners,
El Salvador making Bitcoin legal tender in September 2021 was without a doubt one of the biggest stories in Bitcoin over the last 5 years. It solidified a place in history for this small Latin American country as the first sovereign nation to officially adopt Bitcoin as money.
Since then, it has been extraordinary to watch the pushback El Salvador has received from mainstream media, international financial institutions, international governing bodies, and G7 governments around their Bitcoin policy.
The IMF called on El Salvador to stop using Bitcoin and to "narrow the scope of the Bitcoin law by removing Bitcoin's legal tender status.”
U.S. Senators Jim Risch, Bill Cassidy, and Bob Mendez introduced the Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador (ACES) Act that would require a state department assessment of El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender to “mitigate potential risks to the US financial system.”
Mainstream media and international governing bodies have criticized El Salvador’s Bitcoin adoption as a “failed experiment” during this recent price drawdown. They argue that this embracement of Bitcoin will lead to financial instability and bankrupt the country and strongly advise that they reverse course.
Yet, the facts on the ground tell a different story. In 2021, El Salvador was one of the strongest growing economies in Latin America, and its violent crime rate had been reduced by 95%. You won’t hear about these data points in the mainstream news though.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele goes further and says that the criticisms far overexaggerate the risk that Bitcoin poses to El Salvador’s finances, “Yes, El Salvador is a relatively poor country, but in 2021 alone, we produced $28 billion in products and services. Pushing the idea that a $50 million loss — less than 0.2% of our GDP — would destroy or even put our country’s economy in trouble is far more than stupid; it is revealing.”
So why all the hate towards El Salvador for adopting Bitcoin if they are not seeing an economic collapse? It’s because El Salvador is blazing a new path for itself and adopting a money that is outside these organizations’ power and control. This has caused institutions and governments to lash out and attempt to paint El Salvador as an irresponsible actor on the world stage.
President Bukele recently gave this speech at the UN, where he chastised the UN for not adhering to its own founding principles. 👇
In the speech, he reminds the UN that it has no business telling sovereign nations what they should and shouldn’t be doing at the policy level, “Perhaps it will at least allow this representative, from the smallest of the American continent, to humbly remind that these United Nations were not created to divide, to destroy, or to submit, but rather to engage and work together, to build a community of countries, and to find solutions to global problems. But with absolute respect for the sovereignty and self-determination of each country as enshrined in the very United Nations charter as the first principle of this organization: This organization is based on the principle of “sovereign equality for all its members.”
Furthermore, in a new article titled “Stop Drinking the Elite’s Kool-Aid,” written by President Nayib Bukele, he goes into further detail about why he thinks institutions are fighting El Salvador so hard on its adoption of Bitcoin. (09/30/2022)
It is always difficult to be the first of anything, and El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin is proving no different. They will continue to be under the spotlight of the international community as the poster child of what happens when a sovereign nation adopts digital sound money.
Like all first-movers, there will be growing pains and obstacles that need to be overcome, but I would say that overall, El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin has been a great success for a country that, before Bitcoin, was only known for its gang violence and poverty levels.
Tick tock next block,
Cory Klippsten
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