Argentine regulation establishes that there is a limit on the purchase of foreign currency. Pesce expressed that the matter caused concern to the BCRA and said it is necessary to educate the population.
Miguel Pesce, the president of the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic, recently spoke about using cryptocurrencies. He said they allow citizens to pay for services but not to evade exchange laws. Besides, he stated that their volatility is adverse, so people cannot use them as valuable assets.
Before the Argentine Chamber of FinTech, Pesce asserted that the BCRA would not allow using cryptocurrencies to evade exchange laws. The inhabitants of Argentina can only buy USD 200 per month or its equivalent in any other foreign currency. They can only conduct those exchange operations in entities authorized through the Single Free Exchange Market. However, there is a proliferation of unauthorized trading of the so-called blue dollar.
The Population Should Receive Education to Understand Cryptocurrencies
Pesce told Ignacio Plaza, president of the Argentine Chamber of FinTech, that this issue worries the mother bank of the country. For that reason, he believes it necessary to educate people to prevent falling for scams and losing money due to misinformation.
The official criticized the volatility of cryptocurrencies due to their scarcity, which he does not consider desirable in any currency. He questioned their adoption as a means of payment and stated that they are not assets to safeguard value.
The president of the BCRA even rejected the term cryptocurrency as it refers to what is hidden or opaque. Since that is contrary to what a currency should be, he thinks it is not a good name. However, he acknowledged that those assets favor access to the capital market.
Concerning central bank digital currencies (CBDC), Pesce denied that Argentina would work on them. He stated that the country already has the infrastructure but needs to invest in other sectors. However, he mentioned the discussion about that issue by the G20 and various tests in other European countries.
Finally, Pesce expressed his concern about the demand for electricity consumption of cryptocurrencies. He stated that it is necessary to solve that problem to allow those assets to continue to develop. However, recent reports indicate that Bitcoin (BTC) mining consumes less than 0.1% of the world’s energy.
Plaza Considers that Cryptocurrencies are a Superior Technology
Unlike Miguel Pesce, Ignacio Plaza said that he considers cryptocurrencies to represent a superior technology. He acknowledged that they still raise doubts like the Internet did in the 1990s but stated that they are still in an early stage. He believes that crypto assets are the future and will transform the world.
The president of the Argentine Chamber of FinTech expressed that the country must build on this new technological and financial model. He argued that, otherwise, Argentina would be a customer of other countries that do.
Plaza referred to the relevance of FinTech companies in the financial scheme and the interoperability between banks and digital payment platforms. Finally, he said that people are experiencing a transition between cash and virtual money.
By Alexander Salazar
