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El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

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81–90 of 421 posts

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#81
post #39

If creditors were obligated to accept Bitcoin, does that mean that to be a creditor, you must maintain a Bitcoin address/wallet? Or could you still just say, "Sorry, you still have to pay in USD because we don't have a Bitcoin wallet"?

If this is actually implemented, there will be a lot of payment gateways which will take the BTC and give you today's USD equivalent immediately (minus processing fees). Pretty much the same situation as paying by foreign card.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#82
The first thing that will happen is that everyone phones up El Salvador and asks if they really want to be cut off from the entire rest of the world's financial system.

Marshall Islands found this out too. I wrote it up yesterday: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2021/06/04/the-marshall...

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t the Lightning Network scale to millions of transactions per second, which is what El Salvador will be using? Fees are miniscule on LN, as well.

That would mean people aren't actually using bitcoin, they are using this wallet's centralized lightning network balance. If they want to actually send money to someone using bitcoin, they will have to get their balance on to the main chain, which means that they will have to take it off this wallet and then incur the transaction fees for getting to the bitcoin chain. Then they will have to take the hit of the transa…

> If they want to actually send money to someone using bitcoin, they will have to get their balance on to the main chain

Strike payment recipients can withdraw their USD balance as BTC to any Lightning-enabled wallet (or any other wallet, for that matter) [1]:

    How to purchase bitcoin with Strike

    1. Open a Lightning wallet or Bitcoin wallet of your choice. (If
       you do not already have one, see our recommendations below)

    2. Generate a receive address or invoice for the amount of btc you
       wish to purchase.

    3. Scan with Strike and hit send. Done! You have just converted USD
       from Strike to btc in your wallet.
[1]: https://strike.me/faq/howtopurchase

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#84
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that a lot of countries actually don't use dollars and use their own currency right?

They need access to a USD settlement network for imports/exports.

How does BTC change that?

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#85
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, Bitcoin appreciated 300% YoY whereas the dollar is in a constantly depreciating cycle, I know which one I'd prefer.

What evidence is there that the USD is depreciating?

1 year price inflation rate:

#BITCOIN: 543% LUMBER: 372% CORN: 126% COPPER: 104% GASOLINE: 69% COFFEE: 56% HOME SALES: 16%

US DOLLAR: 2% if you believe the official CPI

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#86
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't be surprising if the US government were to take actions against governments that were moving away from the dollar, whether as legal tender, as foreign reserves, or for other purposes like pricing oil, but it doesn't seem likely that the USG knew about this move a month in advance. Are you suggesting that the Salvadorean president is attempting to retaliate for the report by dedollarizing?

You realize that a lot of countries actually don't use dollars and use their own currency right?

The article explains that El Salvador, like Ecuador, is fully dollarized at present. Here in Argentina only the real estate market is dollarized. However, not dollarizing your domestic economy doesn't mean you can hold your central bank's reserves in your own currency; not even the US can do that.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#87
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their work is open source and they are using standard Bitcoin protocols. Zap is their wallet https://zaphq.io Strike is a payment app that uses Bitcoin Lightning network internally to settle payments between financial institutions. It's useful for sending fiat currency denominated remittances instantly and without fees. https://strike.me When they released Strike in El Salvador, it was an instant success. The preside…

Yeah but imagine if you bought a beer for $4 and then next week the beer was actually worth $8 and the next it was worth $7 and then a few months later the beer was worth $50. The whole point of fiat is that it is stable and so you aren't fucking yourself by exchanging it for consumables.

Bitcoin will stabilize in time, when it's big enough to absorb short time supply and demand shocks. It will eventually follow the value of all economic activity through its network. The more economic activity, the less volatility in aggregate.

There's a huge cost in "stabilizing" a fiat currency, in terms of debt and inflation.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only skimmed through, but it looks astronomically light on details with lots of Pathos tying it all together. If I was a journalist in that audience I'd be terrified.

I was in the audience and was rolling my eyes at the theatrics. Maybe his emotions were genuine but I felt I was seeing an attempt at clear emotional manipulation. That being said a country (even a very small one like El Salvador) choosing to accept BTC as legal tender is a huge step forward for its utility as a currency and made me optimistic again about a crypto future that’s not just focused on “number go up” and…

[deleted]

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#89

As someone who readily admits to not fully knowing what legal tender entails, I have a question for the optimists: As I understand it, legal tender status forces creditors to accept bitcoin as debt repayment. Given the volatility of bitcoin, wouldn't this impact risk assessment of loans? Being obligated to accept a high volatility asset as a repayment sounds like a nightmare for creditors. Wouldn't interest rates ris…

https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1401334421773504517

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#90
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need access to a USD settlement network for imports/exports.

How does BTC change that?

Very few people are willing to accept El Salvador Sovereign currency. Many people (and maybe countries) will accept BTC.
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