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Explainer: What's going on with El Salvador's Bitcoin experiment? With Ramiro Blazquez (BancTrust)
Why you should watch: On June 9 last year, President Nayib Bukele announced that Bitcoin will be legal tender in El Salvador - a country which had abandoned its own currency a few years before, in favour of the US dollar. El Salvador is not exactly an economic powerhouse - nor is it a model of fiscal probity. Indeed, with a debt ratio of around 90%, its finances were already under stress. So, what has happened - and what chance does Bukele have of raising the billion dollar BTC bond that a little-known consultancy, Blockstream, is promoting on his behalf? And how do the IMF and the Biden Administration view developments in a country that, after all, is the source of a significant proportion of the Central American migrants who have become such a potent political issue in the US?
Ramiro Blazquez is head of research and strategy at BancTrust & Co in Buenos Aires. He previously worked with the IMF in Argentina, and was a Chevening Scholar in the UK before spending ten years with HSBC as an Andean economist and as a Senior Economist on Latin America. He is associated with Canning House in London and with Torcuato Di Tella University in BA.
