The Manager of the Bank of the Republic of Colombia, Leonardo Villar, launched several winks to bitcoin by pointing out that the country requires a payment infrastructure that connects and includes everyone with less cost than the existing options.
During the “Comprehensive Risk Management” congress, organized by businessmen and executives from the insurance sector, Villar spoke about creating alternatives to reduce the use of cash. In this sense, he believes that the interest of the population should be directed towards “low-cost payment mechanisms that are secure enough so that they do not want to use cash.”
The manager of the financial institution seemed to be flirting with bitcoin, mostly because it is considered the safest payment method. Even above traditional systems, such as credit cards, debit cards or bank transfers.
Villar launched so many references to bitcoin that the president of the Colombian Trust Association, Germán Arce Zapata, told him: “that is called cryptocurrencies and it is as the president of El Salvador has done, who is conducting a live experiment.” It was then that the official mentioned the need to “distinguish between cryptocurrencies and the development of digital payments.”
If not bitcoin, will it be a central bank digital currency?
Leonardo Villar acknowledged that “cryptocurrencies are mechanisms that have elements that could be interesting for the future.” However, it considers that, above all, it is necessary to regulate them.
Added that the use of cryptocurrencies in Colombia is relatively high, although from their perspective this could be linked to money laundering.
Cryptocurrencies are mechanisms that generate very high risks whose support is not fully known and many people use them, not for savings, but because they simply want to speculate. They are also used because, paradoxically, it is an alternative to generate transactions that do not leave a trace and that can be a terribly dangerous thing. That is why I believe that this forces us to have this type of activity highly regulated and to be very careful with the way in which they are carried out.
