Page 116 of The Atlas Maneuver

Of course, it was none of the above.

It was the obvious move. The only logical one.

The real question is not if other countries are going to adopt bitcoin, but when. We are so early in this paradigm shift that any logical, commonsense move is controversial. It has many people cheering it on, but it also has many, many detractors. On this occasion I will not analyze the supporters, only the detractors, and they can be separated into three groups. The ones who genuinely think it’s the wrong decision. The ones who think it’s a good decision, but for the wrong reasons. And the ones who are afraid of our decision.

Now, the interesting part is that the first and second groups exist mostly because of the third. Why? Because the most vocal detractors, the ones who are afraid and pressuring us to reverse our decision, are the world’s powerful elites. They are accustomed to owning everything, controlling everything, and in a way theystill do. Who are they? The media, the banks, the NGOs, the international organizations, and almost all the governments and corporations in the world. And with that, of course, they also own the armies, the loans, the money supply, the credit ratings, the narrative, the propaganda, the factories, the food supply. They control international trade and international law.

But their most powerful weapon is the control of the truth.

And they are willing to fight, lie, smear, destroy, censor, confiscate, print, and whatever else it takes to maintain and increase their control over the truth.

Just think about the hundreds, if not thousands, of articles about how El Salvador’s economy was supposedly destroyed because of its bitcoin gamble, about how we are inevitably heading to default, that our economy has collapsed, and that our government is bankrupt.

Most of you have surely seen this, right?

They’re all over. Reported in every financial publication, every major news organization, every newspaper in the world. All of the international financial organizations are saying the same thing. You just need to read their articles and listen to their experts saying that all of this happenedafterEl Salvador lost around $50 million because of bitcoin’s recent plummeting price.

Since we are not selling any bitcoin, this statement is obviously false. But for the sake of making a more profound analysis, let’s say it was all entirely true. A whole country’s economy was destroyed by a $50 million loss? Yes, El Salvador is a relatively poor country, but in the last year alone, we produced $28 billion in products and services. Pushing the idea that a $50 million loss—less than 0.2 percent of our GDP—would destroy our country’s economy, or even put it in trouble, is ridiculous.

According to the International Monetary Fund, our GDP rose 10.3 percent. Income from tourism rose fifty-two percent. Employment went up seven percent. New businesses up twelve percent. Exports up seventeen percent. Energy generation up nineteen percent. Energy exports went up 3.291 percent. Internalrevenue went up thirty-seven percent. All without raising any taxes. And this year, the crime and murder rate has even gone down ninety-five percent.

These are real numbers, facts that cannot be distorted by any false narrative.

But with all that we still ranked as the country with the highest risk of default in the world.

To counter that narrative we did exactly the opposite of not paying our debts. We offered to pay in advance. And that is why, this month, we will be buying all of our future bonds that the holders want to sell, at market price.

You may have also read in the media of huge anti-bitcoin protests in El Salvador. But those have been anything but huge. Furthermore, my government has an eighty-five to ninety percent approval rating, according to every poll conducted in the last year—including several polls conducted by the opposition and several by independent international polling firms. How could this be, if we are handling things so badly?

Even better, come ask the people of El Salvador, see the transformations for yourself, walk in the streets, go to the beach or to our volcanoes, breathe the fresh air, feel what it really means to be free, see how one of the poorest nations in the continent, and the previous murder capital of the world, is changing to rapidly become the best place it can be. And then ask yourself, why are the world’s most powerful forces against those exact transformations?

Why should they even care?

You see it now, right?

The reason for all of this is because we’re not simply fighting a local opposition, or the usual roadblocks any small country may face. We are fighting the system itself, for the future of mankind. El Salvador is the epicenter of bitcoin adoption, and thus, economic freedom, financial sovereignty, censorship resistance, unconfiscable wealth, and the end of the kingmakers and their printing, devaluing, and reassigning the wealth of the majoritiesto interest groups, the elites, the oligarchs, and the ones in the shadows behind them, pulling their strings.

El Salvador has succeeded.

Will you playtheirgame?

Or will you become aware of the truth?

Catherine was pleased.

The audience gave the speaker, the president of El Salvador, a standing ovation. She’d brought him here as a powerful show-and-tell, and the man had delivered. He was an excellent speaker. Of course, her people had drafted the speech and it had been perfected through a series of test audiences.

Dinner had been a Moroccan feast. Pre-dinner nibbles of olives and some crispbreads to dip in a homemade ghanoush. Main courses of lamb, chicken, beef, and a tasty vegetarian option of vegetables and chickpeas along with basmati rice. Dessert had included pomegranate seeds, some mint, natural yogurt, preserved lemons, and toasted almonds. She’d eaten little and had, instead, worked the tables, moving around, talking with her guests. The conversations leaned toward the light and amusing, but there was lots of shop talk about money, finance, and the future.

The consuls had been fanned out, one to a table, there to lobby the various national representatives. Lana had eagerly participated, believing that she could redeem herself. Kelly had also behaved, talking with the president of El Salvador, who’d dined at the head table. Catherine had made sure both Lana and Kelly were properly dressed, having clothes brought down from a Marrakesh boutique.

El Salvador was the showpiece. That small Central American nation had been the first in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender. The government spent about $375 million U.S. on the bitcoin rollout, including incentive programs to encourage citizens to start using it. Privately, the bank was not all that happy with the stats there, but given that El Salvador’s economy was generally cash-based, with a population not all that schooled in high tech, the results were acceptable. The initial idea had been to helpsave hundreds of millions of dollars in remittance fees paid by migrants on money sent home from foreign jobs, which accounted for more than twenty percent of El Salvador’s gross domestic product. Some households received over sixty percent of their income from that source alone. Banks and other service providers charged ten percent or more in fees for those international transfers, which could sometimes take days to arrive and require someone to go physically retrieve the money.

None of that would be required with bitcoin.

Every transfer could be made at the speed of light.

The fees nominal.

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