No more than two weeks have passed since the official recognition of Bitcoin as a means of payment in El Salvador, but a major scandal related to this event is already brewing in the country.
The Accounts Chamber of El Salvador will investigate a complaint filed by the public organization Cristosal about the government procurement of bitcoins and the installation of cryptomats in the country. Accordingly, progress within the state does not please everyone.
As a reminder, Bitcoin became an official means of payment in the country on September 7, 2021. Thanks to this, it is now possible to pay with cryptocurrency in the most popular establishments in the country like McDonald’s or Starbucks.
The payment procedure is simple: the cashier shows a QR code, which is essentially an invoice in the Lightning Network. After scanning it, the buyer immediately receives the required amount in BTC and the address. Accordingly, he only needs to conduct a transaction and send the asset to the account.
All this looks good in practice, but not all locals are happy with this innovation. Nevertheless, due to the early efforts of bankers and officials, the cryptocurrency still has a bad reputation, and everyone has heard a lot about the volatility of digital coin rates. Therefore, in response to the decisions of the authorities, some people decided to fight what was happening. Especially considering that the president of the country spoke about the country’s purchase of 550 BTC.
What is Bitcoin criticized for?
Members of the organization made a request to conduct a full audit of the official purchase of cryptocurrency, as well as the process of installing cryptomats. The Court of Auditors of El Salvador agreed to consider the case, as noted in the following quote by Decrypt .
Having accepted the complaint, we will proceed with the preparation of a report on the legal analysis and the timely submission of such a report to the General Audit Coordination Department.
Accordingly, the representatives of the body do not see any reasons not to carry out the check. This means that in the future it is worth waiting for the results of the audit and the corresponding conclusions.
Recall that the decision of the government of El Salvador to accept Bitcoin was met with a wave of criticism from both international organizations and the local population . And although now BTC has already become an alternative means of payment for business in the country, many still disagree with this.
President Nayib Bukele’s tweet about buying bitcoins
The main arguments against cryptocurrency are its instability and the inability of El Salvador to comply with international requirements in such conditions. Many financial experts have repeatedly noted that the use of Bitcoin will only lead to negative consequences for the economy of El Salvador in the long term.
At the very least, problems may arise due to retaliatory sanctions from international organizations, which are not satisfied with such an attitude towards the dollar within the country. Yet now BTC works in El Salvador on a par with the dollar, and this, in fact, creates a competitor for the main reserve currency of the world.
Such an attitude and example to other countries guarantee risks for the dollar, which bankers and other representatives of the classical financial system do not want to put up with.
President of Salvador Nayib Bukele
We believe that the strategy of the country’s government still has advantages: the adoption of Bitcoin opens the way for El Salvador to integrate innovations in the field of finance. Moreover, if the economy of the state experiences a rise from Bitcoin in the future, this factor may cause the adoption of the crypt in other regions of the world. In this way, a domino effect can be observed, in which the earlier participants in the industry will receive much more benefit. And El Salvador has already become the first here.
