A bill called the Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador (ACES) Act introduced by three US Senators back in February 2022 has been passed out by the senate committee that would allow the US to monitor remittances to El Salvador and many other country’s affairs.
As Wealth Growth Insights discussed earlier, the Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador (ACES) Act was introduced by US Senators Jim Risch, Bob Menendez, and Bill Cassidy on February 16, 2022. The ACES Act is a bipartisan legislation to mitigate potential risks to the U.S. financial system imposed by the El Salvador Bitcoin law.
According to a press release by the United States Senate Committee On Foreign Relations on Wednesday, March 23rd, the bill has now been passed by the committee and the full US Senate will now vote on the bill.
The Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador (ACES) Act
The ACES Act is a piece of legislation that requires a State Department report on El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin and “a plan to mitigate potential risks to the U.S. financial system.”
According to the text of the Act, the report should include “a description of the process followed by the Government of El Salvador to develop and enact the Bitcoin Law, an assessment of El Salvador regulatory framework to effectively mitigate the financial integrity, cyber security risks, and its compliance with FATF regarding virtual assets transactions.
Following the report, the ACES legislation requires from the Secretary of State and other relevant Federal departments to submit to Congress “a plan to mitigate any potential risk to the United States financial system posed by the adoption of a cryptocurrency as legal tender” in El Salvador and any other country that uses United States Dollar as the national currency.
US Senator Jim Risch commented:
“As El Salvador has adopted Bitcoin as legal tender, it’s important we understand and mitigate potential risks to the U.S. financial system. Our legislation passed by committee today requires the State Department to coordinate with Treasury and other federal agencies to examine and mitigate these risks, including any potential empowerment of malign actors like China and organized criminal organizations. I’m grateful to Senators Menendez and Cassidy for their partnership on this legislation.”
As expected, El Salvador president Nayib Bukele expressed discontent after the bill received a committee passage. In his Twitter response, he said:
Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that the US Government would be afraid of what we are doing here. pic.twitter.com/QgJPa70mn0
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) March 23, 2022
“Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that the US Government would be afraid of what we are doing here.”
