Three U.S. senators introduced the Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador Act on February 16, 2022, turning El Salvador’s Bitcoin legal-tender policy into a formal U.S. foreign-policy question. Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jim Risch, committee chairman Bob Menendez and Bill Cassidy sponsored S.3666, a bipartisan bill that was read twice and referred to the committee.
The filing mattered because it treated sovereign Bitcoin adoption as more than a domestic experiment. El Salvador used the U.S. dollar as legal tender and had made bitcoin legal tender alongside it in September 2021. The proposed U.S. review therefore connected cryptocurrency policy to remittances, sanctions, cybersecurity, financial integrity and the durability of a dollarized monetary system.
What the bill would require
S.3666 would direct the secretary of state, working with other federal agencies, to report to Congress within 60 days after enactment. That condition is essential: introduction did not enact the bill, and no reporting deadline began on February 16.
The requested report was unusually broad. It would examine how El Salvador developed and enacted its Bitcoin Law; the country’s regulatory and technical capacity; compliance with Financial Action Task Force standards; and the effect of Bitcoin adoption on businesses, public finances, democratic governance and people without bank accounts. It also called for analysis of remittances from the United States, relations with the International Monetary Fund, potential reduction in use of the U.S. dollar, and possible cryptocurrency use to evade sanctions.
The bill then would require a mitigation plan within 90 days after the initial report. Its scope extended beyond El Salvador to any other country using the U.S. dollar as legal tender that adopted a cryptocurrency as legal tender. That clause made the proposal a prospective framework for further sovereign adoption, not only an inquiry into one government.
A foreign-policy signal, not a completed rule
On February 16, the verified action was legislative introduction. S.3666 did not itself sanction El Salvador, freeze cryptocurrency, reverse the Salvadoran law or compel a change in Bitcoin’s status. It created no immediate duty for the State Department because both the report and plan depended on enactment.
The sponsors’ claims also must be separated from established findings. Risch said El Salvador’s policy could threaten economic stability, weaken U.S. sanctions and benefit criminal organizations; Cassidy emphasized money-laundering and dollar-reserve concerns. Those were stated rationales for investigation, not conclusions already demonstrated by the bill.
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, rejected the senators’ initiative on February 16 as interference in a sovereign country’s internal affairs. That response showed the diplomatic stakes immediately: a cryptocurrency statute adopted in San Salvador had become an issue between governments in Washington and Central America.
Why El Salvador was the test case
El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly approved the Bitcoin Law in June 2021, and it took effect on September 7, 2021, making the country the first to grant bitcoin legal-tender status. The government presented the policy as a route to financial inclusion and cheaper payments. By January 25, 2022, however, the IMF Executive Board had urged authorities to remove Bitcoin’s legal-tender status, citing risks to financial stability, financial integrity, consumer protection and the public balance sheet.
The ACES Act followed that institutional dispute rather than resolving it. Its significance on February 16 was the bipartisan decision by senior Foreign Relations Committee members to frame another country’s Bitcoin adoption as a potential U.S. systemic and national-interest concern. No event-day evidence reviewed for this reconstruction establishes a Bitcoin price reaction, trading-volume effect or measurable change in Salvadoran usage, so no market-causation claim is made.
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