In the United States, cryptocurrency is seen as a speculative asset class — a bet against monetary irresponsibility and central banking; and a bet for personal autonomy and liberty. If you ask a crypto investor why they invested in crypto, they’ll probably speak plainly: to get rich.
However, for the rest of the world, cryptocurrency (and digital assets at large) have garnered a different reputation — they are increasingly seen as a safe haven asset. In countries destabilized by poor monetary policy, or ones challenged by geopolitical conditions, cryptocurrencies have offered both elites and working class people a way out.
Two countries have already dove head-first into their embrace of crypto: the Central African Republic recognized Bitcoin as a form of legal tender on Apr. 22, 2022. However, long before that, the South American country of El Salvador was the first country to recognize the world’s largest crypto as a form of legal tender.
Now, El Salvador’s controversial leader, President Nayib Bukele, is trying to export Bitcoin-ization policy to other countries. This week, he rolled out the carpet for more than 44 countries to attend a conference in his country. Among them were “32 central banks and 12 financial authorities.”
The finer details of the conference are unknown, but Bukele wrote that the conference will pertain to “financial inclusion, digital economy, banking the unbanked, [and] the #Bitcoin rollout and its benefits in our country [El Salvador].” Bukele also shared a shortlist of the countries and agencies attending the conference, which is almost exclusively emerging markets such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, Paraguay, Angola, Jordan, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and others.
None of these countries can hold a candle to the strength of even the weakest EU and U.S. states… yet. Many of them are burgeoning population centers — and more people (population growth) usually translates to more money. Take the country of Pakistan for example: the country is expected to become the third-largest country by the middle of the century, with over 380 million residents. Angola is another excellent example: it is expected to see its population double the mid-century.
Many of these countries are possibly looking at El Salvador’s Bitcoin adoption and eying its potential for their own economies. At the least, they might be mulling its use-cases as a dollar replacement. However, Nayib Bukele hasn’t been very lucky since YOLOing a portion of the country’s reserves into the cryptocurrency… and a debt default is not an outlandish possibility.
That sets tenuous grounds for other countries to look positively at Bitcoin and El Salvador’s adoption of it.
And if you zoom out even further, the world’s largest cryptocurrency isn’t garnering a very good reputation as a “free monetary system” next to the controversial Bukele, who has been the object of protests in the country since reportedly replacing judges in order to secure a future election. In fact, it might be doing quite the opposite… but we’ll have to wait and see if there are any conclusions after the conference.