Key facts:
The comments began on Friday, starting with a tweet from renowned bitcoiner Max Keiser.
The Digit News portal stated that President Xiomara Castro would make the announcement this Tuesday.
The Central Bank of Honduras (BCH) denied this Wednesday, March 23, the alleged adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender in its country. The Honduran issuing entity issued a statement on the subject, after the rumor went viral on social networks this week.
The BCH ratified its powers in monetary matters in Honduran territory and reiterated that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are not regulated in that country. “The BCH is the only issuer of banknotes and legal tender coins in the national territory. Likewise, Article 1 of the Monetary Law indicates that the monetary unit of Honduras is the Lempira”, says the official document,
Rumors of bitcoin adoption in Honduras intensified after the publication of the portal DigitNews on Monday, March 21, according to which President Xiomara Castro was expected to declare BTC legal tender on Tuesday. The publication attributed to Castro a statement according to which Honduras would join El Salvador in escaping dollar hegemony. “Honduras has the right to advance towards the First World,” the president reportedly said.
Last Friday, March 18, Bitcoin communicator and evangelist Max Keizer had published on his Twitter account a Honduran flag with the comment “It’s happening…”. Nayib Bukele himself included the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender in at least two countries, in his “predictions” for 2022. The president also published the comment in a tweet on January 1 of this year.
The Central Bank of Honduras recalled in its statement that “it does not supervise or guarantee the operations carried out with cryptocurrencies as means of payment in the national territory, so any transaction carried out with this type of virtual assets is under the responsibility and risk of those who carry it out” . This statement has been reiterated by the agency in 2018, 2020 and 2021.
Honduras remains on the path of creating its CBDC
The Central American country of 112,492 square kilometers of territory and a population of 10 million inhabitants, it has a large diaspora that contributed 20% of the Honduran gross domestic product in 2021.
Advertising
According figures reported by the local press remittances to Honduras reached the figure of USD 7,370 million last year and registered a year-on-year increase of 23% in January 2022. The adoption of Bitcoin by the Honduran government could minimize the cost of money transfers from abroad and incorporate new models of state financing.
Unlike El Salvador, a precursor country in the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender, Honduras has its own fiat currency, called the Honduran lempira (HNL), which is equivalent to USD 0.041 at the time of writing. On the other hand, the Honduran economy showed a recovery 8.2% year-on-year after the COVID 19 pandemic, according to figures from the Central Bank of Honduras.
As for the adoption of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, P2P (peer-to-peer) trading is possible in the Central American country through the LocalBitcoins, LocalCryptos, Paxul and Binance platforms. In addition, trading operations can be carried out through Coinbase. Also, at the end of December, the second Bitcoin ATM was installed in the capital, Tegucigalpa.
As CriptoNoticias reported, in September 2021 the president of the Honduran Central Bank, Wilfredo Cerrato, stated that his country had begun to carry out the feasibility studies to launch a pilot of your own digital money or CBDC (central bank digital currency). This same approach was ratified in the statement issued today.