El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele took to Twitter to proclaim the Bitcoin protocol as the alternative of FTX and likened FTX to a Ponzi scheme within the wake of the trade’s collapse on Nov. 14.
Bukele, a staunch promoter and believer of Bitcoin, mentioned the flagship crypto was designed to stop Ponzi schemes, financial institution runs, and fraud dedicated by establishments within the monetary system.
Examples cited by the President embrace Enron’s abuse of accounting practices to inflate the corporate’s revenues and conceal debt in its subsidiaries in 2021, American fraudster Bernie Madoff’s $64.8 billion Ponzi scheme in 2019, and most lately, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) secretly transferring prospects’ funds to Alameda Analysis.
The Bitcoin blockchain is an open-source protocol, upon which any transaction might be verified by the general public, versus a Ponzi scheme, the place funding funds are shrouded in secrecy.
Bitcoin and Bukele
Faux information claiming Bukele saved the nation’s crypto holdings on collapsed FTX ran rampant final week however have been shortly dismissed by Binance CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao by way of a tweet on Nov. 11.
Nevertheless, the quantity Bukele and his authorities spent on Bitcoin shopping for sprees utilizing public cash since he made the forex authorized tender within the nation was by no means disclosed.
On Oct. 31, 2022, The Growth financial institution of El Salvador, BANDESAL, refused the nation’s Anti-Corruption Authorized Advisory Middle’s (ALAC) request to reveal the federal government’s Bitcoin buy and sale data for the second time.
The nation at present holds 2,381 Bitcoin, roughly $39.8 million on the time of writing, in accordance to information from Bloomberg Economics.
In the meantime, the federal government can also be ranked by Bloomberg Economics as one of many high rising market nations which might be susceptible to a debt default.
The adoption of Bitcoin within the nation has been sluggish up to now.
In accordance to a March 2022 survey by the Chamber of Commerce and Business of El Salvador, 86% of companies by no means made a sale with Bitcoin, whereas solely 20% of companies settle for Bitcoin whereas solely 14% of respondents have used Bitcoin transactions because it grew to become authorized tender in El Salvador.
