A friend wants to visit a country and they were enquiring for proof of funds for him to be issued a Visa. This young man has invested heavily in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that he might not be able to present the minimum amount they want in his fiat account. But he can present ten times more than the amount the embassy is asking if they want it in cryptocurrency.
The embassy is insisting that although Bitcoin is legal in the country, they cannot accept it as proof of funds. The guy is a little bit frustrated because he is been forced to sell his coin prematurely in other to present the amount they are requesting. The visit is for an important business where he needs to test run and evaluate some equipment he wants to acquire. Taking a loan might not be appropriate since the embassy wants to see the flow of cash and not just a lump sum.
I suspect that countries like El Salvador might accept Bitcoin for such proof. How is the situation in your own country? My country will not accept Bitcoin because the government is anti-crypto.
I wanted to study abroad in Europe and they demanded 10K EURO in a blocked account in the destination country's local bank. When I asked a question about crypto, they laughed. I'm afraid they don't even know what crypto or Bitcoin is. Your friend will be forced to convert his Bitcoins into fiat, Bitcoin being legal means nothing in terms of proof of funds, it only means that you can buy/sell/send it and don't get arrested for that.
Yes, El Salvador is more likely to accept Bitcoin for such proof but besides El Salvador, no country will accept it.
No, I can understand why the embassy do not want to accept that as a proof of funds, because anyone can bring a wallet and show a balance and then transfer those funds back to their friends after they received approval for their VISA application.
The Banking industry are very regulated and a credit card application goes through a lot of "red tape" to be approved, so they trust that process and also the credit it provides.
Bitcoin for the most part are still very unregulated, so governments do not trust it..... yet.
I can ask my friends to withdraw money from the ATM, give me cash and I'll manually deposit that money to my bank account, so that's not the reason why the embassy doesn't accept Bitcoin as proof of funds.