After a report that claimed the Bukele family was secretly planning to release a stablecoin or a crypto wallet, a Salvadorian economist hit out at President Nayib Bukele.
According to El Diario de Hoy’s website ElSalvador.com economist Tatiana Marroquin was a vocal critic of Bukele as well as the so-called Bitcoin Law – the act which will make Bitcoin (BTC) legal in September – and claimed that ‘the Bitcoin Law’ would only be an ornament if a government-run token came to fruition.
El Faro, a newspaper at odds with Bukule’s regime, claimed that it had seen video of Yusef and Ibrajim speaking to potential investors. The conference was about a collon dollar token and a state-run wallet app. Two men claimed that they were representing their brother during the talks. The newspaper also said it had seen documents supporting the claims made in the videos.
El Faro’s digital editor Daniel Lizarraga was expelled earlier this month from El Salvador as part of an dispute that was growing between the newspaper, the Bukele regime and the newspaper.
El Faro reported that a spokesperson for the government stated that the stablecoin plan was ‘discarded’, but that the newspaper also quoted unnamed sources as saying that the move was still being implemented.
Marroquin, a critic of all things BTC Law-related, said that there could be significant disruption if Bukele’s alleged stablecoin plans came to fruition. She stated:
“We would face all the economic consequences of a new currency and de-dollarization. However, they wouldn’t be as aggressive. This would eventually lead to the creation of a new monetary policy instrument. It would have an impact on all economic factors that support dollarization.
Marroquin commented on Twitter that there was a clear conflict of interest in this matter. He claimed that it was obvious that ‘half the Bukele family manages public money.
In June, she contacted a Mexican bitcoiner, who told her to study’ the token, ‘because you don’t understand bitcoin.’
“You should […] stop suggesting that I study the economics of my country. The only thing you likely understand is the term “bitcoin”.
El Diario de Hoy also quoted Wilson Sandoval (the Coordinator for the Legal and Anti-Corruption Advisory Center) as saying that the alleged stablecoin scheme would be a ‘non-democratic decision’ and that it was based on ‘zero technical experience and economic ignorance’.
Sandoval was added:
“Salvadorians did not vote for Bukele’s brothers to carry out public policies.”
He also stated that a government-run stablecoin could be ‘deadly in economic terms’, as the decisions involved merely serve personal and business interests and are not intended to improve the economic situation for Salvadorian households.
Other media outlets, which have historically been hostile to Bukele as well as the Bitcoin Law, continue to publish comments from critics.
Ruben Zamora was the Salvadorian ambassador to the United States and United Nations. He wrote in a column, his disgust at a government advertisement campaign extolling BTC’s virtues.
Zamora stated that the campaign had tried to denigrate banks despite its efforts to convince them that bitcoin was their salvation.
He said that BTC’s ‘libertarian” credentials as a money instrument were ‘illusory’ since governments had already ‘begun’ to regulate it.