Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 421 posts

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#181

Post by chii »

SamBam wrote: post #174
derefr wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably, in El Salvador, salaries would be denominated in BTC. That's the only thing that'd make any sense. (And, barring external regulatory force, it's very likely to be what a free job market where employees mostly spend BTC would move to doing.)

I don't see why they would be denominated in BTC, given that BTC will be legal tender alongside USD, and USD is a much more stable currency. Making it a legal currency won't even force anyone to accept it. As far as I understand, it will simply mean that the government will accept payments in BTC.

> the government will accept payments in BTC.

The telling thing would be what the gov't pays in (e.g., for tax returns). Do they pay you back in BTC? or fiat?

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#182

Post by tofukid »

reader_mode wrote: post #150
revnode wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Why does it matter how many dollars the beer is worth? Because you can buy beer for dollars, so if your local beer costs 50$ in BTC it makes sense to sell BTC for USD and order beer. And if your beer suddenly costs 0.001$ in BTC it makes sense to sell it off to someone in USD and refuse selling in BTC. > It is worth the same number of bitcoins yesterday, today, and tomorrow. That's the only stability that is releva…

This goes both ways. Why buy a beer for $5 if Bitcoin is going up? You should just buy Bitcoin instead. Why buy $5 beer if instead you can buy index funds?

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#183

Post by AnonMO »

superkuh wrote: post #177

Unlike the USA which taxes it as if it were an asset but regulates it like a legal tender in an attempt to kill it.

KYC and AML for the purpose of money laundering exists throughout the world. Which regulation is specifically attempting to kill bitcoin if you don't mind me asking?

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#184

Post by superkuh »

AnonMO wrote: post #183
superkuh wrote: post #177

Unlike the USA which taxes it as if it were an asset but regulates it like a legal tender in an attempt to kill it.

KYC and AML for the purpose of money laundering exists throughout the world. Which regulation is specifically attempting to kill bitcoin if you don't mind me asking?

The US government has clearly stated bitcoin is not a currency. But they are still passing regulations saying all transfers of cryptocurrency value over $10k USD equiv have to be reported (as if it was a currency). This kind of obvious double-think has only one purpose.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#185

Post by [deleted] »

tofukid wrote: post #182
reader_mode wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does it matter how many dollars the beer is worth? Because you can buy beer for dollars, so if your local beer costs 50$ in BTC it makes sense to sell BTC for USD and order beer. And if your beer suddenly costs 0.001$ in BTC it makes sense to sell it off to someone in USD and refuse selling in BTC. > It is worth the same number of bitcoins yesterday, today, and tomorrow. That's the only stability that is releva…

This goes both ways. Why buy a beer for $5 if Bitcoin is going up? You should just buy Bitcoin instead. Why buy $5 beer if instead you can buy index funds?

[deleted]

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#186

Post by chii »

atweiden wrote: post #130
bb88 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> A currency needs stability. The word “currency” is inherently a tautology. How does something become a currency? > Speculation only works when there's a stable currency to dump your value into when the the security is going in the wrong direction. Precious metals long predate government monies. Gold and silver couldn’t have become currency under the definition you’ve presented here.

> couldn’t have become currency under the definition you’ve presented here.

gold and silver were bad currencies back then, when people had no real alternative. People clipped coins, and debase the currency. People horded them when times were tough, and prevented lending and circulation, causing issues with the economy regarding liquidity.

Have a read of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Law_(economist)#Economic_... and educate yourself about the past.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#187

Post by spyder »

young_unixer wrote: post #93

Many other cryptocurrencies are so much better than Bitcoin. Off the top of my head: Monero, Litecoin and maybe Ada (Cardano) sound like better alternatives. A good heuristic is "if someone extols the virtues of Bitcoin (instead of crypto in general), then they don't understand much about the virtues of Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency."

Because the guy who is behind this thinks that other cryptos are just an experiment that couldn't work, but bitcoin is the holy grail and just appears to be slow/expensive.

Video interview with him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1pSf_akaig

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#188

Post by warkdarrior »

dariusj18 wrote: post #120
rawtxapp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strike is using lightning where the fees are barely a few satoshis (much smaller than cents) most of the time. This isn't the Bitcoin of 2015, there has been lots of new development, lightning is here and is being used with growing adoption (1ml.com), there are other changes coming to improve the base layer itself (taproot, eltoo, etc).

I still don't understand how the lightning network works and maintains the important blockchain feature of bitcoin.

Lightning is basically a way to avoid trading on the Bitcoin blockchain by passing transactions through third parties.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#189

Post by bufferoverflow »

antihero wrote: post #60
Geee wrote: 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.

Tell how stable it is to the Venezuelans or the Zimbabweans or the Russians.

And Usd isn't doing too well in the last 2 years.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#190

Post by crossroadsguy »

I wonder how many of world’s economy screw-ups would have gone if USA wasn’t able to shove their currency down everybody’s throat. And which ones would have stayed?

What’s the relevance of such central currency today? Especially a currency that’s the fiat currency of just one nation and that’s not even like Euro!

Post reply on HN