The architect of a draught Panamanian private member’s bill that proposes allowing the use of cryptocurrency as a form of payment claims that there are significant differences between his proposed law and the Bitcoin Law passed in El Salvador last year.
The Salvadoran law made bitcoin (BTC) legal tender alongside the fiat USD, but it also states that merchants may not refuse a BTC payment if a customer requests to pay in the cryptocurrency. It also encouraged people to use its own state-run BTC wallet and app.
According to Gabriel Silva, the 32-year-old independent Panamanian congressman who created the bill, if his bill becomes law, the above would not apply, and the door would be open for other tokens, not just BTC.
Following a successful first reading, the bill, titled “Crypto Law: Making Panama Compatible with the Digital Economy, Blockchain, Cryptoassets, and the Internet,” will be debated again in parliament in the coming weeks, and Silva has stated that if adopted, the bill would bring “legal, regulatory, and fiscal certainty to the use, holding, and issuance of digital value and cryptoassets” to Panama.
As previously reported, private-sector and banking industry support for the measure has increased this year.
Silva went on to say that under the terms of his bill, crypto usage would be “optional,” with merchants free to refuse crypto payments.
As he was quoted, he said, “Here in Panama, we are making this optional. That means that if I have cryptocurrency in Panama and I want to pay with it and [a vendor] does not want to accept it, the [vendor] is not obliged to accept it. In addition, the El Salvador law speaks only of bitcoin. However, the plan approved in the first debate establishes the possibility of using any cryptocurrency. We cannot and do not want to close the door to the use of more than one [type of] cryptocurrency.”
Silva went on to say that this was in keeping with the spirit of Panamanian constitutional law.
“The constitution forbids the use of only one currency.” Different currencies are accepted in Panama. It would be unconstitutional to impose rules that forced citizens to use a single currency. “We were discussing a number of cryptocurrencies, not just bitcoin,” he explained.
Silva has previously stated that his bill will spur job creation, attract investors, and promote governmental transparency, with business leaders who support the bill claiming that Panama now “lags behind” other countries “in terms of the implementation of cryptocurrencies, in their use, and in the economy.”
