In it episode 28 Separating Money and StateIndira Kempis, former Mexican senator for Nuevo León and the first Latin American legislator to bring to the plenary session an initiative to recognize Bitcoin as legal tender, talks with Iván Gómez about the paradox that defines it: having entered politics with the conviction that politics is unnecessary. From civic activism to the Senate, his career culminated in an institutional battle against the Bank of Mexico and the SAT regarding the BITSO case, where—as he relates—he received threats of losing his senatorship for putting pressure on the central bank.
Kempis describes Banxico’s autonomy as a disguise, maintains that the Mexican political class uses cryptocurrencies behind closed doors to obscure campaigns while rejecting it in public, and suggests that the historical moment—marked by the criminal accusation against the former governor of Sinaloa—makes it impossible to continue trusting politicians to promote adoption.
The most relevant:
- She is the first legislator in Latin America to present an initiative to recognize Bitcoin as legal tender in a national congress.
- He installed the first Bitcoin ATM in the Mexican Senate as a pedagogical-symbolic act.
- After leaving the Senate in August 2024, he returned to activism and entrepreneurship; He does not continue in public office.
- He quotes a saying from Nuevo León: “if you end up in politics it’s because you didn’t know how to be a businessman.”
- She claims that the next governor of the Bank of Mexico was a friend of the former president, which for her shows that the “autonomy” of the central bank is a disguise.
- He reports that Banxico’s technical staff, privately, recognized that Bitcoin is “what’s coming.”
- He says that when he was teaching Bitcoin in the Senate, the most frequent question from his fellow legislators was whether it could be used to move campaign money without the electoral body detecting it.
- It refers to the book “The King of Cash”, where a journalist from the official party documents political transactions with cryptocurrencies.
- Mentions the criminal accusation against a former governor of Sinaloa for alleged links to organized crime as a historic turning point for Mexican politics.
- It identifies Ricardo Salinas Pliego as a figure already present in the presidential polls towards 2030 and highlights his sustained pro-Bitcoin position since 2021-2022.
- He says that he organized the first Bitcoin course in a public high school in Santiago, Nuevo León, after multiple meetings with the university rector, the mayor and the teachers.
- Mentions Isabella (Isla Mujeres) and José Rodríguez as contemporary leaders of Bitcoin adoption from the grassroots in Mexico.
- Recognizes that in the Mexican business sector there is internal training in Bitcoin but there is a lack of public coordination; He cites Natalia, a business trainer, as an example of silent work.