Argentina prohibits banks from transactions with cryptocurrencies

The Central Bank of the Argentine Republic prohibited the country’s financial entities from carrying out or facilitating operations with digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, for their clients, according to a statement.

The measure will also affect other assets whose yields are determined based on the variations that these crypto assets register and that are not regulated by the country’s authorities and authorized by the central bank itself.

The statement issued by the central bank of the South American country comes days after Banco Galicia, the banking entity of Grupo Financiero Galicia, enabled an option in its “home banking” application to be able to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, being the first entity in the country to allow this option.

According to a report by the consulting firm Chainanalysys carried out in 2021, Argentina was the tenth country in the world with the highest adoption of cryptocurrencies. It should be remembered that the country has one of the highest inflation rates on the planet, being 55% year-on-year at the end of March.

The objective of the central bank’s measure “seeks to mitigate the risks associated with operations with these assets that they could generate for users of financial services and for the financial system as a whole.”

At this point, the country’s highest financial authority recalled that the activity of banks must be aimed at financing investment, production, marketing and consumption of goods and services required by both internal and external demand.

K. Tovar

Source: Cincodias