44 countries attending monetary conference in El Salvador

Today El Salvador is hosting a very interesting assembly.
Central Banks’ and financial authorities’ representatives from 44 countries will gather to discuss financial inclusion and digital economy.
Presided by El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, one of the important topics in this discussion will be Bitcoin rollout in El Salvador and its benefits for the country.

The invitation list is excellent: from Paraguay to Haiti, from Gambia to Palestine, from Mongolia to Bangladesh, the 44 invited countries share (more or less) the same set of monetary problems. High inflation, high percentage of unbanked people, troubles operating on the worldwide financial and capital markets, and the resulting poverty. When taken alone, these countries’ financial and political influence is rather small. Together, though, they represent over 1.2 billion people living in Latin America, Africa and Asia – and that’s a lot of people.

Sitting down together and discussing their common problems is an excellent idea, and it might well be that the countries’ representatives will find much more understanding from each other than from the Washington D.C-based IMF or the World Bank. It may also be that these countries’ dialogue could start a new chapter of financial cooperation… and what a better tool to ensure fast, cheap and borderless transactions than Bitcoin ?

As to banking the unbanked, President Bukele will be able to share his own country’s experience with Chivo wallet, which helped include more people into the national and international financial systems in the first 2 months of its release than any Salvadoran bank could in a decade.

Some of the invited countries are rather crypto-hostile, and Morocco, Egypt, Bangladesh and Nepal even have a formal crypto ban in place.

Will President Bukele be able to change their mind, even a little bit? This is yet to be seen, but we believe that sitting down and speaking among equals is always a good idea.