While the world finance is being disrupted on an increasingly large scale, some government officials still hope that the weight of their positions could transfer to their words.
The Head of Central Bank of Argentina is certainly among them, declaring on Tuesday that crypto “is not a financial asset” and that interaction of Bitcoin with the exchange market “could be detrimental”. The Central Bank is thus determined to “prevent low-sophistication investors” from operating with cryptocurrencies.
Argentina’s annual inflation rate tops 50% now, and it stubbornly limits the amount of peso that people can convert into foreign currency such as dollar ($200/month). This easily explains why regular people – those that condescending CB Head calls “low-sophistication” – use Bitcoin to keep their savings. And the crypto tide is becoming so strong that more and more politicians now actually start considering it.
Last month a deputy proposed a law allowing to pay employees in crypto, and yesterday the country’s President Alberto Fernandez showed his openness to explore crypto, acknowledging its importance of hedging against inflation.
Deputies and Presidents are chosen by people, so at some point they have to consider their voice. Central Bankers, on the other hand, are appointed, so their main interest is to keep their “business” afloat, even if it means poverty and impediment to economic growth (the only result the Argentine CB currency control policy has yielded so far). We do hope that people win.