[Music] hello you are watching a series of interviews on the AFC activities today we are having a special guest Mr Juan Carlos Rus Mr Rus is a president of National Commission of digital Assets in El Salvador Mr we are very happy to have you here and we are so excited to hear about your country Salvador could you tell us about the cultural context of Salvador and how these cultural nuances impact the tokenization in El Salvador thank you and and and thank you for for for the warm welcome to to aana uh very beautiful country and
uh very very glad to to to be here um to answer your question let's break it down uh the the first question has to do with the culture of elabor and how tokenization has affected us ER El Salvador has been a country that we have been at War for about 30 years uh we have perhaps the youngest and most revolutionary president in the history in the modern history that has taken uh what was known in 2016 as the murder capital of the world into today a country that is known worldwide for its safety or adoption
of Bitcoin and the the Financial Freedom it offers um this change uh it's something that has really uh impacted the Salvadorian population tremendously and it's something that uh it's it's a fresh birth of from from our citizens when it comes to tokenization and and how we came to uh tokenization it it everything starts back in 2021 when uh our president na Buel decided to legalize Bitcoin and make it our our legal currency in 2001 El salador stopped using the colong which was our national currency uh due to inflation and the potential of it collapsing and
they decided to adopt the US dollar so El Salvador has been a dollarized economy for close to 23 years and now in 2021 it became also uh digital asset economy by adopting Bitcoin what transpire from the adoption is the understanding of what's required to regulate and interact and and use safely uh a digital asset as a currency so in 2023 a the president and his team uh deemed it necessary to create a special regulatory body that looks just after the supervision regulation and promotion of digital assets and gives uh the creation to the law of
digital emissions this law creates the commission of digital assets which is the one that I pride and we are the only country in the world that has an independent body to regulate digital assets digital assets such as crypto but also digital assets that are backed by real world asset organization mhm oh that's great to hear the whole context and the nuances yeah how you became this digital economic country and also even though it had a war as you said for 30 years now it's thriving it's so great to hear it and also how do you
see tonation transforming El Salvador's economy and the benefiting its citizens in future and nowadays also yeah very good question and this is something that for for those of us that that that have been in the industry from the early days and and and um referring to the blockchain industry um the the premises and I mean the the first uh blockchain technology that was proven was Bitcoin and the whole idea or philosophy behind Bitcoin was to decentralize and provide Freedom uh of of access to finances the decentralization I mean for today even today we we depend
on the banks in order to make payments and the bank is sort of a trusted Central person that says yes they do have the money and the money can be moved to this person now in 2008 because of um the collapse of the financial system in the United States due to the banks uh gave birth to bitcoin and the idea of creating a decentralized financial system that doesn't require a trusted middle person and and that's the birth of Bitcoin now the principles of the technology has always been to democratize access to financial services and through
tokenization in El Salvador we're achieving that because now uh one of one of the most uh perhaps interesting and and and and uh and and really valuable products that are coming out of el salador is we're looking at using tokenization to give access to our citizens to financial products that are very stable and that before were only available to the super rich and I mean that because in the past uh some Financial products require you to be a qualified investor and the amount of money you needed to participate was in the hundreds of thousands or
Millions now due to tokenization it creates transparency it reduces the amount of people required to uh manage and monitor and supervise the transactions and it can fractionalize the access of of of the finance so instead of costing $100,000 nowadays these products can cost $10 or $100 and get the benefit of 10 20% return that before didn't exist for the average person so that's one of the examples how tokenization is coming to the masses in elab and it will bring valuable opportunities yeah and the benefit as Citizens for sure and also now here in ASA you
are partnering with afsa uh and uh what is uh what motivated you for this partnership and what factors guided your decision what are the main objectives of the memorandum between afsa and the CN a and how does this agreement reflect their commitment to improve crossb Financial regulations thank you yes uh so I I guess I I am at the top of the mountain now and to use an analogy back in 2023 I was at an event uh put together by bit finex who is regulated in elabor and in Kazakhstan and bit finex invited the national
regul for Kazakhstan and then na regulator from El Salvador and had a very brief experience so so a peak of the mountain of the possibilities of how well prepared how a deep understanding for regulation the country had and and and it really garnished my interest from from from from the early days so after meeting uh your executive director nurat and yargi I was immediately interested in finding more information from them they do come from the traditional financial sector and more the digital asset sector but they are very prodigital assets as well in the sense of
they're understand the technology unlike a lot of other Regulators uh that I've dealt with in the past so so the initial appeal was uh look we specialize in digital assets you specialize in traditional Finance but digital assets are coming to you and the the AFC is it's so well structured that that that we have learned a lot already from it and uh and and it was to to to share the knowledge at the same time given the fact that our Industries when it comes to digital assets are borderless there will be a point where there
will be companies from elsaba doing business here and this mou also allow us to collaborate information between uh obligated subjects which which is the companies that that we regulate and uh and we and build upon that now the next step and this is now the top of the mountain now that I'm here has been achieved by uh the the organization very openly opening the doors and having meetings with every single director understanding what they do and and seeing the synergies that can be created from different Departments of the commission of national digital assets and uh
the the organiz here we are going to continue to expand thatou and focus on building robust uh shared education
