El Salvador’s experience will help the world understand risks of bitcoin, expert says
MOSCOW, September 7. /TASS/. The experience of El Salvador will help the global community understand the risks of adopting bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as legal tenders, Viktor Dostov, Chairman of the Board, Russian Electronic Money and Remittance Association, told TASS.
He added that the decision of El Salvador would not have any direct consequences for Russia.
On Tuesday, El Salvador became the first country in the world that adopted bitcoin as legal tender along with the US dollar. In Russia, the official currency is the ruble, the introduction and emission of other money is not allowed.
“Most likely, there will be no direct consequences for Russia, but all regulators will look closely at this and, most likely, they will take into account the experience of El Salvador in their further steps. As a result, the states, depending on the Salvadoran experience, can either liberalize cryptocurrencies or tighten regulation of cryptocurrencies,” Dostov said.
According to him, El Salvador “does not go for it by choice.”
“They have a big problem with the national currency, or rather, its absence – the national currency in El Salvador is the US dollar,” the expert recalled.
Therefore, according to the head of the association, El Salvador is in such a situation that the loss of currency sovereignty is not catastrophic, and the situation is so bad that any measure that may work will benefit the country.
“Nevertheless, it is very interesting that this happened, because we will have a wonderful country experiment. As a result, after some time we will understand the risks of such a story, the risks of official recognition of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, in particular, how they influence the state monetary policy,” Dostov added.
Digital currencies
In Russia, the Central Bank plans to complete the development of a prototype platform for the digital ruble in December and start testing it in January 2022. The concept of the digital ruble was presented by the regulator in October 2020. It will be in the form of a unique digital code and will be stored in a special electronic wallet. The transfer of the digital ruble from one user to another will take place in the form of moving the digital code from one electronic wallet to another.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency invented in 2008 by an unknown person or group of people using the name Satoshi Nakamoto. It is a decentralized digital currency without a central bank or single administrator that can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network without intermediaries.
Text source: MCC.EXCHANGE
