JAKARTA – Recently, Andrew Bailey as the Governor of the British Central Bank, the Bank of England (BOE), regretted El Salvador's actions in adopting Bitcoin as a legal medium of exchange. Bailey made the remarks while speaking at Cambridge University last week.

“It worries me that a country will choose it as its national currency … What worries me most is whether El Salvadorans understand the nature and volatility of the currency they have,” said Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey.

For information, El Salvador officially adopted Bitcoin as a legal currency last September. Bailey revealed that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was not happy with El Salvador's decision. The IMF explicitly prohibits Bitcoin from being used as a legal medium of exchange because cryptocurrencies are highly volatile.

Accordingly, the IMF stated that adopting Bitcoin as a legal medium of exchange “contains significant risks to consumer protection, financial integrity and financial stability.” Users are also said to be able to “incur fiscal contingent liabilities,” as reported by Bitcoin.com News.

The IMF's criticism of El Salvador came after President Nayib Bukele announced plans to build the world's first “Bitcoin City” powered by a volcano and financed by bitcoin bonds. Later, El Salvador increased its Bitcoin holdings by 100 BTC when the crypto market plummeted due to the negative sentiment of the new Covid-19 variant last week.

When asked whether the Bank of England will issue its own central bank digital currency (CBDC) or not, Governor Bailey said that digital currencies must be stable if used for payments.

“There is a strong case for digital currencies, but in our opinion it should be stable, especially if it is used for payments. That's not true for crypto assets," Bailey said.

In response to the statement by the Governor of the Bank of England and the IMF's condemnation, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele quipped the Bank of England in a Twitter tweet by stating that he was more worried about the sudden printing of money by the Bank of England.

“Bank of England 'worried' about El Salvador's bitcoin adoption? Is it right? I think the Bank of England's interest in the welfare of our people is genuine. Right? I mean, they always care about our people. Always. Gotta love the Bank of England."

"I'm really worried about the Bank of England printing money all of a sudden," El Salvador President Nayib Bukele quipped.


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