Mexico has no plans to be the next Latin American country on the Bitcoin course. The Mexican government clearly rejected a crypto advance by the CEO of Banco Azteca.
The Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas had indicated by tweet that his private bank was planning a Bitcoin service. Mexico’s finance minister obviously took this as an opportunity to publicize the crypto-hostile stance of his government again.
Accordingly, Arturo Herrera Gutierrez announced on June 28 on Twitter common statement his ministry, the Mexican central bank and the stock exchange regulator CNBV. The government of Mexico is therefore sticking to the fact that Bitcoin and Co. are not to be regarded as legitimate means of payment. One regards cryptocurrencies much more than pure speculative objects. The banks in the country are therefore prohibited from dealing with them:
Financial institutions in the country are not authorized to conduct operations with virtual assets such as Bitcoin, Ether, XRP and others or to offer them to the public in order to maintain a healthy distance between them and the financial system.
The statement also reminds that Mexico’s banks face penalties if they contravene their government’s orders. Regardless of their low volatility, stablecoins are not exempt from the ban. The authors of the statement emphasize that their strict measures are to protect the Mexican national currency.
Salinas won’t give up?
Ricardo Salinas has long been known as a Bitcoin enthusiast. After a private BTC investment, the third richest Mexican now also wanted to get his bank on the crypto course. By doing Tweet dated June 27, which can be seen as the trigger for Gutierrez’s intervention, he wrote:
Bitcoin is a great way to diversify your investment portfolio and I think every investor should start learning about cryptocurrencies and their future.
At BancoAzteca we are working on it [Kryptowährungen] to our customers and to further promote freedom.
It remains to be seen whether Salinas will give up. After the news portal BTC Times reported on Twitter about the negative reaction of the Mexican government, the rich Bitcoin fan gave an ambiguous answer. He wrote: “We will see.”
El Salvador on the Bitcoin course
In addition to the advance by Salinas, it may also have been the events in El Salvador that caused Mexico’s rulers to reiterate their stance on cryptocurrencies. Because the local government under President Nayib Bukele named Bitcoin the official means of payment on June 9th.
The Central American state would like to make itself more independent of the US dollar, which until now de facto formed El Salvador’s national currency. The move is also fueling the integration of many citizens into the financial system, around 70 percent of whom do not have their own bank account.
Unlike Mexico, Paraguay would like to follow El Salvador’s Bitcoin efforts a bit. The MP Carlos Antonio Rejala Helman had posted a mysterious tweet about this. It is now known that Helman wants to lure mining farms and other crypto companies into the country.