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The Argentine government is obliged by the IMF to force crypto out of the reach of its citizens, while Bolivia takes the decision to sell half its gold reserves for US dollars.
Argentina restricts crypto
The banking industry and its world financial agencies such as the IMF are using their power and hold over desperate nations to impel them to force their citizens away from Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
The Central Bank of the Argentine Republic (BCRA) issued a statement recently that prohibits any crypto app from issuing payments in crypto, or carrying out operations that have anything to do with crypto transactions.
It does say however that this does not apply to a crypto app that is regulated and that is also authorised by the central bank, but there are no details on how easy or difficult that process would be.
The reason for this move is the loan condition that was imposed on Argentina by the International Monetary Fund, which stipulated that the Argentine government must do more to restrict its citizens from engaging with cryptocurrencies.
With an inflation rate of more than 100% the financial environment for citizens in Argentina is awful. For them to be told that they cannot make or accept payments in crypto through apps is a way of keeping them corralled inside a broken fiat banking system.
It can only be imagined how things might improve for the average citizen if they were to put a percentage of their wealth into Bitcoin. Their purchasing power with fiat currency can only go down, whereas Bitcoin is arguably about to start its bull run in earnest over the next few months.
Bolivia sells its gold
Bolivia is another very poor country in Latin America that is struggling to avoid a full economic crisis. According to Reuters, the country recently passed a law that enabled it to monetise its gold reserves.
The Bolivian government plans to buy mined gold from mining cooperatives in the country, and use this to trade on the international market. However, this will likely end up reducing the country’s gold reserves and just result in Bolivia postponing the eventual crisis.
El Salvador on the up
Meanwhile, there is one success story in Latin America, namely El Salvador. Fitch credit rating agency upgraded the small country’s credit rating from CC, to CCC+, given that it had paid off its global bond write-downs and the danger of default appeared to have receded.
It seems that a country that has adopted Bitcoin as legal tender is doing very well on it.
President Bukele tweeted that his country’s expected budget surplus for 2024 could lead to yet another ratings upgrade. All this in spite of the IMF threatening the country over future loans and predicting that the country would fall into financial instability over its Bitcoin adoption.
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