Document details

New money. Bitcoin and cryptoassets in Central America: The case of El Salvador

Potsdam: Friedrich Naumann Stiftung (2022), 16 pp.
"El Salvador’s experiment, though mired with fiscal and political issues from before, has shown that the adoption of public blockchain assets like Bitcoin are not taken in good regard by legacy financial multilateral institutions and are seen with great skepticism and concern. Although the adoption of Chivo has been impressive as a platform, bitcoin payments even for remittances are still not the majority. The separation of state and money, if it happens, will be an uphill and contradictory battle, especially if El Salvador’s government fails to properly manage the experiment. Central America is interestingly home to a wide array of financial systems as of the writing of this paper. Four of its countries have their own currency and Central Banks: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras. El Salvador has a Central Bank of Reserve which does not issue money but does manage the country’s reserves, serves as lender of last resort, and now has anointed Bitcoin as legal tender alongside the dollar. Panama does not have a central bank at all, uses the USD as subsidiary legal tender with substantial monetary freedom and is considering cryptoassets in general as means of payment and not legal tender. El Salvador’s results in the next 5-10 years and possible steps by other countries in the region will determine whether non-state-issued crypto assets could viably become functional legal tender in countries and whether relatively poor and small countries can lead the way in financial and regulatory innovation or if they will have to remain followers of the rest of the developed world." (Conclusion)
1 Introduction, 5
2 Information encryption and information censorship resistance on the internet, 5
3 From censorship resistance information to censorship resistance cash, 6
4 Visions for future mass adoption of cryptoassets, 9
5 El Salvador's adoption of bitcoin as legal tender, 10
6 An analysis of possible implications of El Salvador's adoption of bitcoin, 13
7 Central America's regional status on bitcoin and other cryptoasset adoption, 15
8 Conclusion, 16