After criticizing El Salvador for adopting BTC as a legal tender, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is discouraging the use of cryptocurrencies in Argentina in an agreement signed with the country.
Last week, the Chamber of Deputies gave half a sanction to the agreement with the IMF. After that, the NGO BTC Argentina asked for access to information to know exactly how the legislation addresses crypto assets.
Both the Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies and the Technical Memorandum of Understanding agreed with the IMF establish that the national government “will discourage the use of cryptocurrencies in the prevention of money laundering”.
Discouraging activity is not the way
For the NGO, discouraging the activity “is not the way forward”. After all, the use of cryptocurrencies in illicit activities is considerably low:
“In 2021, only 0.15% of transactions that were carried out with cryptocurrencies were associated with some illicit activity, such as fraud or money laundering. These percentages are much lower than those shown in transactions made with fiat money,” said Javier Madariaga, executive director of the NGO.
The NGO added that the best course of action is not to discourage or ban the use of digital currencies. Instead, there must be coordinated action across sectors to harness the potential of decentralized finance. Thus, more and more people will be able to transact cryptocurrency safely.
“We are concerned that the authorities are agreeing to discourage technology that has already been massively adopted by the population itself, rather than unlocking its potential to solve historic problems,” he added.
Cryptocurrencies in Argentina
In Argentina, there is currently no legislation regulating the use of cryptocurrencies. However, there are some bills in progress and some rules that govern, mainly, the fiscal aspect of the activity.
“Although there is still no regulation of cryptocurrencies or a central oversight body, fiscal control has started to be exercised,” said the company Wordys, which offers solutions to help companies comply with regulations.
As the company highlighted, since 2021 organizations operating with cryptocurrencies are taxed on bank credits and debits.
In addition, exchanges operating in the country are required to submit information about their transactions on a monthly basis.
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