Colombia has just elected a new president, and bitcoin is the hope of both his followers and worried opposition.
Who is Gustavo Petro?
According to the NYTimes, only 58% of Colombia’s 39 million voters turned up to cast their votes. With over 50% of the votes, Gustavo Petro was elected president.
This is a big event for the country. He is their first leftist president, and his economic agenda has been described as “economic suicide”.
As Reuters reported, Petro pledged “to halt new exploration for hydrocarbons and the construction of new large-scale open-pit mines and to end exploratory fracking pilots and offshore oil and gas projects, some of which already has contracts in place.”
He wants the country to move from oil to renewable energy. Colombia is one of the largest producers of crude oil in Latin America, its major export.
Petro’s proposal has been widely criticized, even by prominent members of the left such as former Brazilian President Lula da Silva. Many see this as an impractical solution, seeing oil and mining as essential production for the country’s economy.
Petro has also vigorously flirted with the idea of printing money. Last year, he supported America’s FED money printing policy during the COVID pandemic, seeing it as a success. We all know how this is going for the dollar, and it is looking very ugly for economies with weaker currencies like Venezuela and Argentina.
The printing of money is not part of the official roadmap of Petro. A presidential campaign cannot make promises for future actions that would be undertaken by the central bank alone because the entity is independent of the state. However, some opponents have raised fears that Petro may somehow overstep the authority of the bank to implement the above measures.
As his first left-wing president, Petro’s populist speech won the sympathy of younger generations and many groups of people who had long awaited change in poverty and despair.
Sadly, we have already seen how such promises can become a way of manipulating the public while creating economic instability hanging from a long chain of corruption and poorly managed projects. Colombia’s presidential vote was a cry for help, but the people may get empty handed in return.
All these concerns lead us to the main character: Bitcoin.
Petro bitcoin wants to replace cocaine
One of Petro’s main concerns is the production of cocaine in the country. Colombia is the world’s largest producer of this drug. Basically, Petro has the bankers, the oil and mining sector and against it the most powerful cocaine supplier. It won’t be an easy president.
But what helped him win?
Petro’s speech covered topics often overlooked by other politicians in the country, one of which was bitcoin.
While his rival Rodolfo Hernandez took a stance against suggesting people buy bitcoin, Petro celebrated El Salvador’s bitcoin strategy and even proposed the country mine bitcoin instead of producing cocaine. . I don’t think this is a transition drug cartels will readily accept.
Still, he pointed out that Colombia’s energy matrix is already dominated by hydropower, which could help bitcoin with renewable energy.
“What if the Pacific Coast took advantage of the rapid fall of the rivers of the Western Mountains to produce all the energy of the coast and convert cocaine to energy for cryptocurrency?
Cryptocurrency is pure information and therefore energy“, Petro tweeted.,
“AndE could turn communities, the Caesar region coal workers, the black communities of the Colombian Pacific Coast into the owners of these new forms of energy that are linked to computing cryptocurrencies, and thus we will have a new world. ”, said Petro.
He also claimed to support certain crypto ideals: “Bitcoin removes issuance power from states and confiscation of currency from banks. It is a community currency based on the trust of those who transact with it.” Because it is based on a blockchain, trust is measured and grows, so is its strength.
But it seems to directly contradict his recurrent proposal to print money as a solution to the country’s economy.
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Opponents also like BTC
Some celebrated the results of the President and some scared him. Intellectuals, economists and even bitcoiners around the world continue to criticize his ambitious promises and hope that the next 4 years of his presidency will not be disastrous for the economy.
Some who oppose him and his ideals see his bitcoin speech as political makeup, but strongly support the coin and are recommending it now more than ever, fearing that the country’s The currency will soon start falling.
,Bitcoin The average citizen’s only means of survival is going to be when his policy of printing more money destroys an already weak currency like the peso. Not to mention the impact of inflation, we in Colombia have devastating consequences for the small middle class. Tweet Petro’s answer
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