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El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

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Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#231

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

superkuh wrote: post #184
AnonMO wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They hate it because they can't control it.

Remember, the payment processors and paypal all decided to cut off wikileaks and ban people who try to paypal money to them as punishment for exposing US war crimes.

Control of the currency is control of the populace. It's why crypto, is so wonderful, and everyone needs to accept it.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#232

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

jpxw wrote: post #10

I wonder why a country would choose Bitcoin as legal tender when better, faster, more environmentally friendly cryptos exist (ones which can feasibly be used to transact money in real-time, for instance).

Honestly? First to market, and name recognition.

Acceptance decides viability of currency. Nothing else really matters.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#233

Post by stickfigure »

noahadavis wrote: post #204
Geee wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments that overspend or misallocate capital are a burden to the economy. With sound money, a badly managed country can go bankrupt because they can't print more money. It isn't the fault of the money, while this is the usual argument. It's just the nature of honest money. So, it results in destabilizing governments that are overspending, but stabilizing those that are not.

You don't see the side-effects of destabilizing a government as potentially disastrous for an economy? Governments and economies can have many different forms, but there are clear cases where destabilizing one will destabilize the other and ultimately lead to mass suffering for a period of time. Imagine what would happen if a government in a place like the Middle East or parts of Africa collapsed. History has shown t…

> Imagine what would happen if a government in a place like the Middle East or parts of Africa collapsed.

The Zimbabweans that lost all of their savings to hyperinflation were literally counting the days until Mugabe's government collapsed.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#234

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

auxym wrote: post #53
rawtxapp wrote: post #31

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.

Deflation is not something desireable in macroeconomics. It incentivizes hoarding cash instead of spending it on productive things (hiring people, capital investments to improve productivity, etc). Slow and steady inflation is a stated goal for most governments and central banks.

>Slow and steady inflation is a stated goal for most governments and central banks.

Because they like controlling their people, keeping them poor, and robbing the value they create.

Authoritarianism is tyranny by another name.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#235

Post by lottin »

landemva wrote: post #194
CyberDildonics wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When that article was written the transaction fees were around $1.50-$2.00 USD which is already a lot for meals and snacks. Now that the average transaction fees are anywhere from $7 - $60 I doubt people are buying much with bitcoin's dialup throughput. https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...

The fees do fluctuate, thus layer 2 solutions. A few days ago I moved some bitcoin and two transaction fees were equivalent of USD 0.78 and 0.72. For finality in a few minutes, I thought it was reasonable.

It depends on what country you live in. A few transactions like these every day would amount to $20-30 per month. Whereas you could use cash and pay no fees.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#236

Post by AnonMO »

superkuh wrote: post #184
AnonMO wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But this only applies to businesses, and if you had a business relating to crypto you would at least i was reporting much less in dollar value other’s in my circle as-well. This regulation does nothing in slowing let alone killing bitcoin nor crypto.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#237

Post by atq2119 »

nairboon wrote: post #217
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that graph only shows a discontinuity because the definition of M1 money supply was changed on that date. They explained it fully here: https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2021/01/whats-behind-the-rec... Sharing the graph without the context is misleading.

But the money was still printed as you see in the M2 supply: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

I seriously doubt that the money was printed. It's all electronic nowadays.

There's so much confusion and cargo-culting around money, it would serve as well to use accurate language. The money was created, but not printed.

This is significant because "printing" evokes a picture of the money being distributed to people who then spend it, which is not quite the case here.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#238

Post by runeks »

Why is no one pointing out that, in order to receive bitcoins on the Lightning Network (LN), you need to lock bitcoins in a payment channel?

So, if a consumer wants to send bitcoins to a merchant, either the consumer needs to lock up bitcoins in a payment channel which can only send bitcoins to that given merchant, or the consumer needs to lock up bitcoins in a payment channel to an intermediate gateway, and the merchant needs to lock up the amount of bitcoins it wants to receive in a payment channel between it and the gateway.

So if 1000 consumers want to send 0.001 BTC to merchant A, via a gateway, then 1 BTC needs to be locked in a payment channel between the gateway and merchant before this can happen. This means that LN needs 2 BTC to send 1 BTC when using a single gateway.

So, first of all, the gateway needs to know how many bitcoins the merchant will receive in the future, and secondly the gateway needs to borrow this amount of bitcoins in the market and lock it up in a payment channel between it and the merchant. In the end I think the capital cost of this will be too high.

I think it makes more sense to use a decentralized, credit-based system such as GNU Taler (think “decentralized BTC debit card”). Merchants are then free to choose which gateways (“exchanges” in GNU Taler speak) to trust, and a payment app can work with any Taler gateway, making the system decentralized in the same way as email.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#240

Post by lottin »

acdha wrote: post #140
Geee wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument isn't true. Deflationary currency can destabilize governments, not the economy. Econonomies fail because they're run by incompetent governments, who spend more than they can afford. Bitcoin is not guaranteed to be deflationary. It's deflationary when the economy is growing. It's inflationary when the economy is shrinking. Deflation will slow down economy, and inflation will accelerate economy. It's a st…

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…

No currency is guaranteed to be deflationary. You may guarantee that the currency supply will behave in a certain way (although even that is debatable), buy you cannot guarantee that the price level in terms of such a currency will continuously fall.
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