nayib bukele - Pwim.Net

El Salvador to Reform Laws to Favor Citizenship through Investment

Bitcoiners are looking to migrate to El Salvador for its reception to the crypto world may soon get more than just the warm reception. President Nayib Bukele is pushing for a number of policy reforms that will grant Citizenship by Investment to foreign investors.

As contained in a recent tweet shared by President Bukele, he said he would be sending as many as 52 reforms to the country’s Congress so as to “remove red tape, reduce bureaucracy, create tax incentives, citizenship in exchange for investments, new securities laws, stability contracts,” adding that the country will seek to be a haven for freedom for anyone even as the rest of the world resorts to tyranny. In his own words;

“The plan is simple: as the world falls into tyranny, we’ll create a haven for freedom.”

El Salvador is a delight of many in the digital currency ecosystem, especially in regards to the proactive and advocate nature of Nayib Bukele when it comes to Bitcoin. First, he piloted the Central American nation to become the first in the world to adopt BTC as a legal tender. Then, he unveiled plans to float a volcanic energy plant dedicated to the mining of Bitcoin, and he also has plans to construct a full-fledged Bitcoin City, with decentralized and financial freedom being amongst the defining features.

Despite the country’s positive stance toward crypto, it has had a falling out with international organizations, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), both of whom have shared concerns about the country’s BTC adoption plans.

Fitch Ratings has also downgraded El Salvador’s credit ratings recently as the financial institution said the country has struggled with repaying its short-term debts. The purported plans by Nayib Bukele to incentivize investments made into the country is arguably a seemingly smart move that can attract crypto companies as well as traditional companies to the country.

Nayib Bukele Criticises U.S. Does Not "Stand for Freedom", the Senate Comm Passes ACES Bill

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has lashed out at the United States Government after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed the Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador Act (ACES) Bill, which is now slated to head to the full house for voting.

The ACES Bill seeks to monitor how El Salvador implements its Bitcoin law which grants the digital currency a legal status alongside the United States Dollar.

The bill will grant relevant U.S. agencies the right to monitor the impact of BTC as a legal tender on the country’s macroeconomic stability and public finances. It will also assess the role of Bitcoin in the rule of law in the country and its democratic governance. While the date of voting in the bigger house has not been announced, the bill grants the agencies the right to peek into the most salient aspects of monetary governance, including whether the country is adhering to relevant anti-money laundering rules.

Lamenting on Twitter, Nayib Bukele said he never dreamt of a time when the U.S. government would be scared of the work that is being done in the Central American nation. Bukele said the U.S. government does not support freedom as is popularly being said of the North American nation.

“The U.S. Government DOES NOT stand for freedom, which is a proven fact. So we will stand for freedom. Game on!” Bukele said in a tweet.

El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as a legal tender has always met with resistance from prominent intergovernmental organizations. While the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are amongst those who have expressed pessimism concerning the country’s Bitcoin adoption move, the likely passage of the ACES Bill by the U.S. Senate has formed a more unsettling struggle for the El Salvadoran president.

Either way, things play out, Bukele is still arguably committed to Bitcoin’s financial freedom.

No Chivo Wallet Downloads in El Salvador This Year, Study Shows

El Salvador is the first country in the world to accept Bitcoin (BTC) as a legal tender back in September 2021.

While the President, Nayib Bukele gained popularity through the publishing of sterling data about the adoption of the cryptocurrency from September through the end of the Fourth Quarter, a new study shows the enthusiasm for the crypto adoption in El Salvador does not as promising as painted.

Shocking Reveals of the Study on El Salvador

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), sponsors of the research claimed there have been virtually no Chivo wallets downloads this year. The Bureau noted that the downloads of the wallet were done primarily in order to gain access to the $30 incentive offered by the government.

Per the study, access to the Chivo wallet was not widespread as only citizens with access to mobile phones and the internet, of which almost 90% of the respondents deemed to use no mobile banking. The study revealed that September accounts for exactly 40% of all downloads.

“Most downloads took place just as Chivo was launched. In fact, 40% of all downloads happened in September 2021, and virtually no downloads have taken place in 2022. The main driver of adoption is reported to be the $30 bonus offered by the government, equivalent to 0.7% of annual income per capita,” the report highlights.

At the time when the country announced Bitcoin is a legal tender, many citizens took to the streets in riots, as they criticize their president as a dictator. The protests recorded in the initial period played out over time as many refused to download the Chivo wallet at all owing to distrust for the regime and their data, the NBER study corroborates.

More Rocky Headwinds?

There are numerous Bitcoin-linked plans that have been set out by El Salvador as unveiled by President Bukele. While most of the plans, including the scheduled Bitcoin bonds that are expected to be issued as well as the planned construction of a Bitcoin City, have still not been achieved.

Despite the broad support of the crypto community, the question is whether El Salvador is on the right track with its Bitcoin as a legal tender pursuit in the first place.

El Salvador Plays Host to Developing Economies to Delve Deeper into Bitcoin Adoption

The ongoing Bitcoin conference in El Salvador could not have come at an interesting time when the leading cryptocurrency has shown its resilience amid the current LUNA crash, according to Mikkel Morch, the executive director at crypto hedge fund ARK36.

El Salvador is hosting the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) annual meeting, running from May 16 to 18, with 44 countries in attendance.

Most of the nations attending are from developing economies like Madagascar, Kenya, Egypt, Nigeria, Uganda, Paraguay, Rwanda, Jordan, Pakistan, Haiti, Honduras, Ecuador, Namibia, Palestine, Bangladesh, Ghana, and Costa Rica.

El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, had previously pointed out that the primary objectives of the conference entailed discussing the Bitcoin rollout, banking the unbanked, the digital economy, and financial inclusion.

Therefore, Morch believes the conference will play an instrumental role in expanding the knowledge base of emerging economies about the benefits of adopting a deflationary asset like Bitcoin and not algorithmic stablecoins, such as TerraUSD (UST).

He noted:

“On such a dramatic backdrop, the value proposition of Bitcoin as a truly decentralised, technologically secure, and deflationary asset has once again shined. If there is a way for the developing economies to benefit from crypto, it will not be through exotic products such as algorithmic stablecoins but through the reliable innovation that the Bitcoin network offers.”

According to Morch, despite Bitcoin’s volatility, President Bukele’s initiative illustrates that BTC adoption is moving forward on a global scale.

He added:

“The announcement of this high profile Bitcoin conference comes at a very interesting moment for Bitcoin and the whole crypto industry. The digital asset market has just absorbed – not without significant damage – a collapse of LUNA, a $40-billion decentralised finance ecosystem revolving around an algorithmic stablecoin.”

LUNA sent shockwaves to the crypto market because it collapsed to near-zero overnight despite being one of the top ten cryptocurrencies.

Therefore, the El Salvador conference might shift the narrative to cryptocurrencies that have stood the test of time, like Bitcoin.

El Salvador's Nayib Bukele buy 1 BTC daily

Both the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, and Justin Sun, the creator of Tron and the Ambassador of Grenada, are amassing one Bitcoin (BTC) daily.

According to a tweet posted by Bukele, “Starting tomorrow, we will acquire one #Bitcoin a day.” Soon enough, Sun began to accumulate things in the same way that Bukele did.

The term “dollar cost averaging” refers to purchasing bitcoin on a predetermined schedule rather than responding to fluctuations in the price (DCA). DCA removes the element of emotion from decision-making and, compared to market timing, results in lower overall expenses for long-term investments.

The decision by Bukele and Sun to adopt DCA comes at the same time as the failure of Sam Bankman Fried’s bitcoin exchange FTX. After a decline of 76% from reaching a high of $69,000 a year ago, analysts are concerned that the price of bitcoin might drop below $13,000.

In June 2017, El Salvador declared bitcoin a legitimate currency in the hopes that doing so would alleviate the country’s economic challenges. Since then, the cash-strapped nation is said to have acquired 2,381 BTC for the equivalent of $43,000.

As a form of collateral for its dollar-pegged stablecoin USDD, Sun’s Tron DAO Reserve has purchased millions of dollars worth of bitcoin (BTC), Tron’s native token (TRX), and tether (USDT). At the time of the press, there were 14,040.6 BTC, 240 million USDT, 442,323,460, and 954 million TRX-backed USD.