[kerng]

The world bank responding to such a request shows how big of a thing Bitcoin has become.

It also appears that the concerns are not strong, more wishy-washy comments that could be disputed or clarified eventually. Wonder what they say if/when more countries do inquiries and adopt Bitcoin.

[culturestate]

> The world bank responding to such a request shows how big of a thing Bitcoin has become.

Does the World Bank get to choose which member requests it responds to? I would think they have an obligation to give every request at least a cursory evaluation.

[rsj_hn]

It did respond, but it responded with a "no" (not unusual for a bank). There is no international right to obtain whatever assistance you want from the world bank.

[rualca]

> The world bank responding to such a request shows how big of a thing Bitcoin has become.

No, not really. The World Bank answers the questions their members ask them.

In this case El Salvador's president asked the World Bank to help him out implementing his plan to adopt Bitcoin as a parallel legal currency, but the World Bank rejected the request citing environmental and transparency concerns.

If anything, the only big thing in this story is that El Salvador's president made a promise to adopt a new currency even though he has no clear plan, or realistic, to pull it off.

[threeseed]

> The world bank responding to such a request shows how big of a thing Bitcoin has become

My local bank would also respond to a request for $1 billion dollars to buy Bitcoin.

[jollybean]

The World Bank would respond to such a request from a Government, it doesn't mean it's a 'big deal'.

Their statement is clear.

They very politely and in so many words saying:

1) To start you are corrupt and none of this will work without solving that 2) it makes no financial sense and 3) there are real environmental concerns.

When they sat 'transparency' what they mean is 'you are corrupt'.

When they cite 'regulatory, financial and legal concerns' they meant it.

And the environmental concerns are legit.

It's exactly and predictably the answer that any of their sane financial leaders would expect.

[LudwigNagasena]

What are the regulatory, financial and legal concerns? Why are they a deal-breaker? If there were no concerns El Salvador wouldn’t need to ask any help, would it?

[tsimionescu]

KYC and AML are some of the biggest regulatory and legal hurdles for bitcoin. On the financial side, tying your country to a coin whose value you can't control, and is known to fluctuate wildly, is obvious financial insanity.

[errantmind]

You could say the same thing about cash.

Also, gold's value seems to fluctuate quite a bit and it was / is the basis for some currencies

[tsimionescu]

Yes, cash is problematic for KYC and AML. That's why cash transactions and ownership are highly regulated in most of the world.

And gold's day-to-day value doesn't fluctuate nearly as much as bitcoin. Still, it does fluctuate too much, which is why the entire world has abandoned the idea of using it as a representation of the value of money.

[Kbelicius]

Currently there are no currencies that are based on gold. Must be a reason for that.