El Salvadoran Government to Back New Token, Bukele Says ‘Don’t Panic’ About Falling Bitcoin Prices

cryptonews.com:

El Salvador’s government is readying another crypto move – some nine months after it officially adopted bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender.

Per ElSalvador.com, the website of the newspaper El Diario de Hoy, the state is unperturbed by the current “difficult scenario for digital assets,” and has teamed up with a Canadian company called Astro Babies to launch a new coin called the Salvadoran Crypto Initiative (SCI). 

Astro Babies has thus far focused mainly on the trading of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The report added that Astro Babies had launched a virtual, crypto-powered casino in El Salvador last week in the country.

The co-founders of the said firm, Mark Al Radan and Canadian Wes Karniej, were quoted as stating that the token had already been developed, adding that “smart contracts are already done.” 

The token’s website is also ready to go live, they added, and talks are now ongoing with a number of “ministers” who are “involved” in the project.

One of those ministers is a key President Nayib Bukele ally in all things crypto-related – Mónica Taher, the head of Technological and Economic International Affairs at the Ministry of Commerce and Investment.

The project’s backers, Taher stated, would be the country’s Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Housing, and the National Sports Institute (INDES).

The parties stated that the coin would be a so-called “reflection token” (aka a rewards token). Typically, these coins reward the token’s holders with a percentage of every transaction. Transactions on the coin’s network are charged with a fee – almost like a form of tax – which is shared and transferred back to coin holders.

The firm, the media outlet reported, “assured that 30% of