El Salvador’s President Calls US Senators ‘Boomers’ Over Bitcoin Bill
President Nayib Bukele regularly takes to Twitter to voice his opinions on bitcoin as well as political issues with the US
President Nayib Bukele | Source: Carlos Moronta/Presidencia República Dominicana (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
key takeaways
- President Nayib Bukele has called three US senators “boomers” over legislation they introduced to assess the impacts of El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law
- Bukele, whose country has around 1,801 bitcoin in possession, told the senators they had zero jurisdiction over an independent nation
El Salvador’s president told US senators on Wednesday to stay out of his country’s “internal affairs” after they introduced draft legislation seeking to assess economic harm caused by the nation’s adoption of bitcoin.
Senators Jim Risch, Bill Cassidy and Bob Mendez introduced the Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador (ACES) Act on Wednesday. If passed, the act would require a state department assessment on El Salvador’s adoption of bitcoin as legal tender.
Specifically, the bill seeks to determine the economic repercussions for El Salvador and the US, how El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law came to pass, and the potential for crypto to circumvent US sanctions, among other requests.
The bill also seeks a plan to “mitigate potential risks to the US financial system.”
“El Salvador recognizing Bitcoin as official currency opens the door for money laundering cartels and undermines US interests,” said Cassidy, R-La., in a statement on Wednesday. “If the United States wishes to combat money laundering and preserve the role of the dollar as a reserve currency of the world, we must tackle this issue head-on.”
In response, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele labeled the senators “boomers” and said they had zero jurisdiction over a “sovereign and independent nation.”
“We are not your colony, your back yard or your front yard. Stay out of our internal affairs. Don’t try to control something you can’t control,” Bukele tweeted.
“Boomers” is a slang term typically used by teenagers and young adults to mock attitudes associated with the baby boomer generation — people born in the two decades following World War II.
Last year, El Salvador became the first country in the world to formally adopt bitcoin as legal tender alongside its national currency and the US dollar. The International Monetary Fund last month urged El Salvador to remove bitcoin’s status as legal tender, citing risks to global financial stability and consumer protections.
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