Bipartisan Senate Proposal Raises Alarm Over El Salvador's Bitcoin Adoption

2 years ago

Senators Jim Risch, Bob Menendez and Bill Cassidy's Accountability for Cryptocurrency successful El Salvador (ACES) Act would necessitate a State Department study connected mitigating risks to the U.S. fiscal strategy from El Salvador's adoption of bitcoin arsenic ineligible tender.

  • "El Salvador recognizing bitcoin (BTC) arsenic authoritative currency opens the doorway for wealth laundering cartels and undermines U.S. interests," said Bill Cassidy (R-La.). "If the United States wishes to combat wealth laundering and sphere the relation of the dollar arsenic a reserve currency of the world, we indispensable tackle this contented caput on."

  • If passed, the bill would necessitate the State Department to study connected a laundry database of subjects with respect to El Salvador and bitcoin, including the travel of remittances from the U.S. to El Salvador, bilateral and planetary efforts to combat transnational illicit activities, and the imaginable for reduced usage by El Salvador of the greenback.

  • Menendez (D-N.J.) is president of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Risch (R-Idaho) is the ranking member. (Cassidy is not connected the committee.)

  • The determination rapidly drew a partially comic, partially aggravated response from El Salvador President Nayib Bukele: "OK boomers ... You person zero jurisdiction connected a sovereign and autarkic nation. We are not your colony, your backmost gait oregon your beforehand yard. Stay retired of our interior affairs. Don't effort to power thing you can't control."

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Stephen Alpher is CoinDesk's co-regional quality chief, Americas. He holds BTC and ETH supra CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.


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