Argentine crypto influencers hope Javier Milei will shun FATF Travel Rule

After libertarian Javier Milei was sworn in as president of Argentina on Dec. 10, the local crypto community is hoping he’ll keep some of his most radical promises and take the country to the same level of crypto adoption as his counterpart Nayib Bukele did in El Salvador. 

On the day of his inauguration, Latin American outlet Cryptonoticias published “three requests to Milei from the Bitcoin (BTC) community.” The vice president of the non-governmental organization Bitcoin Argentina, Camilo Jorajuría, called for Milei to respect the privacy of his people and not introduce the “draconian measures” of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

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The measure Jorajuría referred to is the FATF’s Travel Rule, which obliges virtual asset service providers to share information about the senders and recipients of virtual assets. The crypto lobbyist also pointed to the example of El Salvador as a model way of adopting and regulating Bitcoin.

Adam Dubove, an Argentine crypto advocate and columnist, believes that the newly-inaugurated president should keep his promises of radical monetary reforms and “begin to dismantle” the regulatory structure of the Banco Central de la República Argentina (BCRA), the country’s central bank.

The most moderate commentary came from a former employee of the government of El Salvador, Mónica Taher, who welcomed Milei’s stance on cryptocurrencies and predicted that, due to the size of its economy, Argentina could divert investors from El Salvador, should its government help to boost the digital ecosystem.

Javier Milei triumphed in Argentina’s presidential election on Nov. 19 on a wave of promised radical reforms, such as abolishing the BCRA and conducting a full dollarization of the national economy. However, as Fernando Nikolić, an Argentine Bitcoin advocate and founder of media analyst firm Bitcoin Perception, told Cointelegraph after the election, the enthusiasm for Milei from the crypto community should be tempered by the fact that “passing any sort of law that is considered ‘Bitcoin-friendly’ is not a part of his official program.”

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