Sri Lanka says no thanks to billionaire Tim Draper’s bitcoin pitch to fix corruption
- The central bank chief told the Silicon Valley investor ‘we don’t want to make the crisis worse by introducing bitcoin’ as Draper tried to pitch the adoption of cryptocurrency
- He argued Sri Lanka could avert corruption by keeping perfect records after adopting bitcoin
A billionaire cryptocurrency evangelist may have got a tougher reception than he expected when proposing widespread adoption of bitcoin to a bankrupt country.
He journeyed to the central bank the next day with the same pitch – but embattled Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe, who’s still working to calm financial mayhem, was having none of it.
“I come to the central bank with decentralised currency,” proclaimed Draper, dressed in a bitcoin tie for the meeting that took place in a teak-panelled room overlooking the sea.
“We don’t accept,” Weerasinghe said, taking another sip of fizzy ginger beer.
It’s a frostier response than Draper has got in some other locations. The tiny island country of Palau in the Pacific made him the founding resident of its digital-residency programme, for instance.