Welcome to Latam Insights, a compendium of Latin America’s most relevant crypto and economic news from the last week. In this issue: El Salvador holds talks with the IMF despite its Bitcoin allegiance; Brazil greenlights the first Solana spot ETF; and Polymarket gets criticized for its decision on the Venezuelan presidential election bet.
El Salvador and IMF Advance Talks on Bitcoin Risk Mitigation and Economic Reforms
An International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission issued a statement on Tuesday after months of discussions with Salvadoran authorities regarding policies for an IMF program to address macroeconomic imbalances and enhance growth and resilience. The statement details:
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Progress has been made in the negotiations toward a Fund-supported program, focused on policies to strengthen public finances, boost bank reserve buffers, improve governance and transparency, and mitigate the risks from bitcoin.
The IMF explained that agreements include improving the primary fiscal balance by 3.5% of GDP over three years through fiscal consolidation, primarily by rationalizing the public wage bill while maintaining social and infrastructure spending. Plans to strengthen financial system reserve buffers will support private sector credit and growth, reducing reliance on domestic financing with potential IMF and multilateral development bank support. Structural reforms involve a multi-year strategy to enhance governance, transparency, and the investment climate. Legislative proposals to address corruption, money laundering, and procurement weaknesses are being prepared with international support.
Brazilian Regulator Approves Solana Spot ETF
Solana is gaining ground as another cryptocurrency aiming to make the jump to traditional investment markets. The Brazilian securities regulator (CVM), the country’s equivalent to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has reportedly greenlighted an application for launching a solana spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) in national markets.
The product would be the first solana spot ETF approved in the world, highlighting Brazilian regulators’ pioneering and open stance towards cryptocurrency products. It is an offering of QR, which has already offered other cryptocurrency-based products like QBTC11, one of the first bitcoin ETFs approved in 2021, and will be managed by Vortx.
The spot ETF will have the CME CF Solana Dollar Reference Rate as its price reference, which was developed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and Crypto Facilities (CF) to have an accurate quote for the price of solana based on prices of different centralized exchanges.
Polymarket’s Integrity Questioned Over Venezuelan Presidential Election Bet Outcome
The Venezuelan presidential election bet has put Polymarket, one of the leading cryptocurrency-based prediction market platforms, in the spotlight due to its outcome. Polymarket finally decided to award the victory to Edmundo Gonzalez, an opposition candidate who according to fraud allegations and voting tallies collected surpassed Maduro by over 3 million votes.
However, the official results offered by the National Electoral Council (Spanish: Consejo Nacional Electoral, CNE), the institution in charge of elections in Venezuela, announced Maduro as the winner with over five million votes. The institution has failed to show detailed voting center numbers, which has caused part of Venezuelan society to distrust the disclosed numbers.
The outcome of the bet that reached $6.1 million has angered some users, who criticize the decision taken due to the conditions declared for ending the bet in favor of any candidate. The prediction market conditions specified that “the primary resolution source for this market will be official information from Venezuela, however a consensus of credible reporting will also suffice.”
Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/latam-insights-el-salvador-advances-talks-with-imf-despite-bitcoin-allegiance-brazil-passes-first-solana-spot-etf/