My fear is that this is somehow a way to legitimize black market transactions, and to attract more of that activity to that struggling country.
El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender
101–110 of 421 posts
Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I see. So reserves held in overseas banks might suddenly become inaccessible, even if not actually seized , and Bitcoin (unlike, say, the euro or yen) offers a way to reduce this risk?
If the currency is in a bank that deals with the US it could be seized. Bitcoin doesn't allow this.
Kind of: Bitcoin doesn’t allow transactions without knowing the key but that isn’t true for exchanges and the public ledger makes it easy to block transactions using that address. If everyone subject to US jurisdiction or treaty agreements blocks transactions traceable back to tainted addresses, the value plummets.
Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This kind of fiat stability is very challenging for small and poor countries. In fact, El Salvador doesn't _have_ its own currency for this reason -- they switched to the US dollar decades ago! Is it worse to peg your economy to a decentralized cryptocurrency, or a fiat currency controlled by a large powerful near-neighbor who only occasionally even remembers you exist? (and sure as hell will not modify their fiscal…
> Is it worse to peg your economy to a decentralized cryptocurrency, or a fiat currency controlled by a large powerful near-neighbor who only occasionally even remembers you exist?
A currency needs stability. Speculation needs volatility.
Speculation only works when there's a stable currency to dump your value into when the the security your trading is going in the wrong direction.
Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender
#104My prediction. This won't be used hardly at all. Why use bitcoin when the USD is also legal tender and superior as a currency in nearly every way? About the only thing you can do more easily with bitcoin is buy other cryptos and send it across borders - sometimes. I would also predict that the failure here would finally get people to stop thinking it's a currency. But I doubt it.
> [...] and send it across borders - sometimes
What are the exceptions?
Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender
#105Earlier 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.
Oh are we back to "Bitcoin is unstable" FUD. I missed the memo. I was still going with the "Bitcoin is bad for environment" FUD. I also loved the "blockchain good but Bitcoin bad" FUD while it lasted, that one was fun.
Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Oh are we back to "Bitcoin is unstable" FUD. I missed the memo. I was still going with the "Bitcoin is bad for environment" FUD. I also loved the "blockchain good but Bitcoin bad" FUD while it lasted, that one was fun.
Except that…none of those are incorrect?
Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Oh are we back to "Bitcoin is unstable" FUD. I missed the memo. I was still going with the "Bitcoin is bad for environment" FUD. I also loved the "blockchain good but Bitcoin bad" FUD while it lasted, that one was fun.
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Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Accepting it as legal tender doesn't mean it is what the loans are denominated in. Nobody sane would denominate loans in BitCoin. (There are loans denominated in BitCoin. The obvious syllogism applies.)
Yes of course, I'm still assuming USD denominated loans. However repayments may be done in BTC still, unless I'm misunderstanding what legal tender actually is. Even if I, as a creditor, convert my payments from BTC to USD as soon as I can there will be a volatility, right? I wouldn't dare to predict the impact scale but certainly enough to warrant consideration?
Exchanges already allow you to sell to them, for a guaranteed amount.
It is an existing feature.
Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Oh are we back to "Bitcoin is unstable" FUD. I missed the memo. I was still going with the "Bitcoin is bad for environment" FUD. I also loved the "blockchain good but Bitcoin bad" FUD while it lasted, that one was fun.
Listing other problems with Bitcoin isn’t a good argument to disprove a proposed problem with Bitcoin.
Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender
#110Earlier 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…
I don't think so, if I have inbound capacity on my lightning node (hooked to my full node, so not centralized), they can just send money to me as long as the routes through the network have enough capacity.