Nayib Bukele0:00
Someone can say yes, President, but look, they say there that you are going to do it wrong. Well, that's a hypothetical that doesn't exist. It would have to be proven, right, when we do it. But I want to remind them of other things that they themselves have said and that have not happened. Do you remember when we announced bitcoin in 2021? What did the opposition say? This money is fake, it's internet money that doesn't work, they are going to take away your dollars and give you a fake internet currency. That's what the opposition said, and many people believed them. And I remember that people, sellers in businesses, small ones, all said, they are going to take away my dollars, I don't want it. They interviewed a man who sold coconuts, I think, the video went viral. The man said, I don't want bitcoin, I want dollars. Don't give me bitcoin. And well, we said, of course, he has the right to have dollars, there's no problem, we are not going to de-dollarize. He can use his dollars without any problem. But the opposition told the coconut man that the government was going to take away his dollars, his 5 that he had sold, the government was going to take them away. And that was the rant. And many people got upset. Fear moves people, and they instilled fear in people that we were going to take away their dollars. And we said 20 times, we are not going to take away your dollars. Whoever wants to use bitcoin can use it, whoever does not want to use it, doesn't have to. And that's how it has been. No one had their dollars taken away, and those who exchanged them for bitcoin earned a lot of money. But those who didn't exchange them lost nothing, and they still have their dollars. And then when that didn't happen, people saw, because the bitcoin law came into effect in September 2021. So by October, November, December, January, when people saw that it was a lie that we were going to take away their dollars, the opposition did not say, look, gentlemen, forgive us, we lied, we told you we were going to take away your dollars and it was a lie. They didn't say that. What did they do? They changed the attack. It was no longer 'we are going to take away your dollars,' but it started to be 'the government is losing hundreds of millions of dollars.' And since the price of bitcoin had dropped, we said, no, no, no, we haven't lost, we are just waiting for it to go up. In fact, when it goes down, you have to buy more. But the opposition said, no, they are frittering away, they are going to lose, they are going to lose, they are going to lose hundreds of millions. They even calculated that we were going to lose 300 million dollars. Well, that didn't happen. The price of bitcoin went up, and today we have 300 million dollars in profit. But the opposition did not come out and say, yes, look, we lied, we told you the government was going to lose 300 million dollars, but the reality is they earned 300 million dollars. So it was a good decision to have bought that bitcoin. No. They didn't say that. They changed the attack. Now it is, they should use the bitcoin profits for such and such a thing. But if you didn't believe in those bitcoin profits, now you are the ones who will decide how the bitcoin profits will be used, the opposition. But they were against the bitcoin law, they were against us buying bitcoin, they were against us holding bitcoin when the price dropped, they were against us buying more when the price dropped. And now that we have made money, thanks exactly to doing the opposite of what they said, now they are the ones saying where the bitcoin profits should be invested. The bitcoin profits should be invested in this, the bitcoin profits should be invested in that. But if you did not believe that bitcoin was real, and then you did not believe that bitcoin would yield profits, and then you got angry when we bought more when it dropped, and you said we should sell it and not wait for it to go up, and much less should we buy more when it had dropped. It went up, now we have 300 million. You don't tell people, sorry for having told you that they were going to take away your dollars, it was a lie. You don't tell people, sorry for having told you that the government was going to lose money and that it was going to fritter away the people's money and lose it in the bitcoin casino, as they said. They don't say sorry, but they change. Now I think the government should invest the bitcoin profits in such and such a thing. So they are always changing the attack. The same will happen with mining. Now it's mining will contaminate the rivers. When with the money from mining we start to clean up the rivers that they contaminated, then they will invent something else. Instead of spending on that, better spend on the other. The profits from mining should be used for such and such. And they will start to change the attack, because they will no longer be able to come out and tell the population, excuse us, we lied, mining did not contaminate what we said it was going to contaminate, and instead they did so many environmental compensation works that there is a positive balance, not only economic but a positive balance for the environment and for the quality of life of the people, the quality of air, the quality of water, and the size of our fauna and flora.
