El Salvador Forges Ahead With Crypto Regulation

El Salvador bitcoin

Legislators in El Salvador are considering a bill that would regulate digital securities, a sign the Central American nation is proceeding with plans to issue bonds backed by bitcoin even as citizens turn away from the country’s crypto experiment.

That’s according to a report Wednesday (Nov. 23) by CoinDesk, which said it had seen a copy of the proposal.

Presented by El Salvador’s Minister of Economy Maria Luisa Hayem Brev to the country’s legislative assembly, the bill aims to create a National Digital Assets Commission that would regulate digital asset issuers, service providers, and other players in the “public offering process” of digital securities.

Last year, El Salvador became the world’s first nation to make bitcoin legal tender. But as PYMNTS reported last month, many of its residents don’t consider the experiment a success.

Two-thirds of Salvadorans call President Nayib Bukele’s bitcoin policy a failure and more than 75% have never used it, German public news outlet Deutsche Welle reported in October.

Under 17% said they consider the initiative a success, a survey by the University Institute of Public Opinion of the Jesuit Central American University found. That makes it “the most unpopular measure of the Nayib Bukele government,” said University Rector Andreu said.

Nevertheless, Bukele remains Latin America’s most popular leader, with an 86% approval rating, CID Gallup said.

Earlier this month, PYMNTS reported that the watchdog group Anti-Corruption Legal Advisory Center (ALAC) criticized El Salvador’s development bank for refusing to release details about the country’s purchase of bitcoins for an estimated $107 million.

ALAC said on Twitter in late October that development bank BANDESAL has said that the information is “confidential,” backing up previous refusals by Bukele.

BANDESAL handles El Salvador’s bitcoin purchases from a $150 million fund.

“That confidentiality limits the possibility for citizens to access and receive information on the operations carried out with public funds” by the agency, ALAC said, criticizing the decision.

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Report: Chinese Hacking Group Silk Typhoon Behind Treasury Department Breach

Department of Treasury, hack, cybersecurity

Chinese hacking group Silk Typhoon is reportedly believed to have been behind the December hack of the U.S. Treasury Department.

Silk Typhoon is believed to have stolen a digital key from a third-party service provider and used it to access unclassified information, Bloomberg reported Wednesday (Jan. 8), citing unnamed sources.

During the incident, the hackers accessed documents stored on laptops and desktop computers, according to the report.

It was reported Dec. 30 that the Treasury Department workstations were breached by China-backed hackers earlier that month, that there was no evidence that the hacker still had access to Treasury systems or information, and that the department was working to assess the impact of the attack with the help of the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

In another, separate case, the U.S. State Department said Jan. 3 that the U.S. imposed sanctions on Beijing-based cybersecurity company Integrity Technology Group, which is a People’s Republic of China (PRC) government contractor, saying the company was involved in malicious botnet operations targeting U.S. victims.

In that case, PRC-based hackers known as Flax Typhoon were working for Integrity Tech when they targeted critical infrastructure in the U.S. and overseas, the State Department said.

In October, it was reported that U.S. government agencies and some companies had begun investigating the possibility that Chinese hackers targeted American telecommunications companies.

U.S. cyber officials have said that by burrowing into America’s critical infrastructure, Chinese hackers aim to disrupt critical services to hinder a U.S. military response during any future crisis.

Some of the most sophisticated and damaging cyberattacks in history took place in 2024, PYMNTS reported Dec. 27. The attacks ranged from ransomware that crippled critical infrastructure to data breaches that compromised millions of user records.

Eighty-two percent of eCommerce merchants suffered cyberattacks or data breaches in the past year, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and Nuvei collaboration, “Fraud Management in Online Transactions.”

The report also found that 47% of the businesses had lost both revenue and customers due to fraud in the previous 12 months, while 68% saw a drop in customer satisfaction that they attributed to security breaches.