Sri Lanka central bank Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe believes that adopting cryptocurrency on a nation-wide basis will not be good for the Asian nation’s economy, after American billionaire Tim Draper pitched the idea to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender as part of his “Meet the Drapers” TV show, in efforts to fight corruption which led to hyperinflation in Sri Lanka.

Central bank President Ranil Wickremesinghe was not too fond of Draper’s proposition, and believes that they’re not looking to “make the crisis worse by introducing Bitcoin”. Instead, Weerasinghe feels that the circulation of the country’s own fiat currency was key for the independence of its monetary policy.

Sri Lanka, which marks its 75th anniversary of its independence from Great Britian in 2023, is tangled in a major political and economic crisis which saw it default over $55 billion of foreign loans in the previous year, weighed down by fuel shortages which resulted in mass protests.

Sources:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/sri-lanka-against-bitcoin-adoption-rejects-draper-s-anti-corruption-pitch

https://decrypt.co/120526/billionaire-tim-drapers-bitcoin-pitch-to-sri-lanka-falls-flat-we-dont-accept

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-03/billionaire-calls-sri-lanka-corrupt-then-offers-bitcoin-fix