161–170 of 421 posts
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Historically, Bitcoin appreciated 300% YoY whereas the dollar is in a constantly depreciating cycle, I know which one I'd prefer.
The difference is that the dollar doesn’t drop 30% of it’s value while you’re asleep - something BTC has done multiple times, including recently.
> Bukele said the country is partnering with digital wallet company, Strike, to build modern financial infrastructure using bitcoin technology. Wow, this seems like an incredibly shitty situation for the people of El Salvador. It looks like some lobbyists got hired by a wallet company stacked with angel investors willing to pour money into the idea of being integrated into the government at such a low level. I wouldn…
> Wow, this seems like an incredibly shitty situation for the people of El Salvador. Indeed it is. The government just mandated that everyone in the country is obligated to use a startup's app, more or less. This has to be one of the most egregious examples of regulatory capture I've seen in a long time. "Legal tender" means that people are legally obligated to accept this as payment. Maybe the law will be broad enou…
I have no idea what their legal definition would be, but lightning is an open standard, and Strike is but one implementation.
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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.
A deflationary coin cannot stabilize without destabilizing the economy that trades in it. https://benoitessiambre.com/specter.html
https://mises.org/library/hayek-paradox-saving
Hayek was later interviewed in the 70s and said he was mystified when Keynes was promoted to godhood upon his death. He claimed the debate had not yet finished.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denationalization_of_Money
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Bitcoin is guaranteed to be deflationary as long as there’s a finite limit – if nothing else, lost keys would reduce the total over time. More importantly, the people hawking it _really_ want it to be deflationary because that effectively makes them landed gentry getting richer without any effort on their part. After a decade of that being integral to the sales pitch I would be extremely surprised to see any major ho…
There isn't monetary deflation in bitcoin (expect for lost coins). As a global reserve currency, bitcoin would act as an "index fund of everything". Economy is expected to grow, but it's not guaranteed. Which means that there's always a non-zero risk associated to it. There's more risk on short time scales, and less risk on long time scales.
So because the number of bitcoin is fixed to remain relevant bitcoin will need to continually deflate (ie increase in value) so that there's enough to represent the size of the economy
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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.
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"?
It's concerning that the government has partnered with one particular startup company with a specific Bitcoin app for this. Depending on how the laws are written, essentially forcing people to use a specific startup's app to transact in the country could be the most egregious example of regulatory capture we've seen in recent history.
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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.
Why does it matter how many dollars the beer is worth? It is worth the same number of bitcoins yesterday, today, and tomorrow. That's the only stability that is relevant.