El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender • Hacker News Board

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#261

Post by dylkil » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 9:42 AM UTC

runeks wrote: post #238

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 mer…

lightning network is a broken mess. It baffles me that so many people still pump resources into after all these years.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#262

Post by jeroenhd » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 9:47 AM UTC

As if wasting energy on speculation and get-rich-quick schemes wasn't enough, now an entire country is made dependent on crypto? That's a terrible precedent.

I understand that countries want to get away from foreign influences on their monetary system, but decentralised currency isn't going to solve that problem. One tweet by Elon Musk can send the price of their "currency" flying high or plummet to the ground.

If crypto currency has any real value that isn't based on schemes and speculation, at least pick something less wasteful for the environment as a currency. A proof of stake currency would work just as well in a system where the government decides on the coin.

I'm sure the guys that convinced the government to use their system made a boatload of crypto cash by buying in early and riding the price as this system is unleashed upon the country.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#263

Post by nly » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 9:49 AM UTC

gbear605 wrote: post #144

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.

That’s fine as long as my job is willing to pay me in a constant amount of bitcoin and everything else I need to buy can be bought with bitcoin. If my salary is still in dollars, then what I can purchase for a day’s wages will vary hugely.

The real currency we all have is time

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#264

Post by tonfa » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 9:52 AM UTC

rawtxapp wrote: post #31

ineedasername wrote: post #30

I'm sure the people of El Salvador won't mind having 20% of their wealth wiped out every time Elon Musk tweets something that changes his mind in some way. Certainly if I was selling something I'd denominate it in something relative stable and then change Bitcoin asking price to match the exchange rate to that stable currency. Since the currency there is the USD... Yeah, I'd still be pricing my goods and services in…

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

Sounds like one is exhibiting features of a currency and the other isn't.

I don't think you're supposed to store your wealth in cash if you want to preserve it (diversified equity holding are a popular investment too in case you find cryptocurrencies too volatile).

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#265

Post by Iv » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 9:56 AM UTC

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.

My understanding is that you start by doing an actual BTC transaction of, say X USD, for which you pay the fee, and then you can "spend" up to X-fee USD in the lightning network. People who receive payment from you can opt for getting a BTC transaction from your stash or use it to do other payments.

The base idea is that it uses the BTC network as a dispute settlement fallback. "It works but is expensive, let's just exchange through the lightning network".

You can see Lightning as being a network that exchanges "BTC IOU". If the network decides for some reasons to be hostile to you and refuses to broadcast the transactions where you receive money, you still have a signed token that proves you have the BTC IOU and that are acceptable by the BTC network (for the cost of a fee)

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#266

Post by mr_m30w » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 10:15 AM UTC

Americans can skip reporting or paying taxes on small transactions under $200 in foreign currencies.

Appears Strike (Zap wallet) recognized user base consists largely of U.S. based drug dealers, so by lobbying El Salvador into doing this they'll shield U.S. drug dealers from prosecution for tax fraud.

It'd theoretically benefit other Americans doing small transactions in BTC, but really only drug dealers do such small transactions in BTC, everyone else uses it as a reserve for speculation.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#267

Post by itsdsmurrell » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 10:30 AM UTC

dylkil wrote: post #261

runeks wrote: post #238

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 mer…

lightning network is a broken mess. It baffles me that so many people still pump resources into after all these years.

Correct, that's why many left and support Bitcoin Cash now.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#268

Post by gverrilla » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 10:32 AM UTC

lottin wrote: post #249

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #227

This is what bitcoin - and the world - through non-authoritarian controlled currency, needs. BTC is a currency. People who treat as such - by simply accepting it or spending it - drive it's growth, and more importantly its acceptance. People who treat it as purely an investment stagnate its growth. Feel free to read (or not) my more detailed comment on this concept here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27338320

But bitcoin is more authoritarian-controlled than the US dollar. The US is democracy, whereas the Bitcoin development team is not.

Bitcoin devs do not have control of the network. Anyone can fork bitcoin.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#269

Post by wokwokwok » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 10:35 AM UTC

tomtomtom777 wrote: post #253

atweiden wrote: post #64

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.

> .. millions of transactions per second, which is what El Salvador will be using? Why would that be what El Salvador is using? That is such a weird notion, and one of the reasons Bitcoin is often incorrectly called unscalable. How many financial transactions do you think an average person does per day ? I don't know but probably not much more than one, maybe even less. If you handle special B2B cases like high frequ…

You think the average person does less than one financial transaction per day? O_o

I mean, sure, not everyone is out getting a coffee every morning, but that strikes me as roughly an order of magnitude below reality.

Let’s say, shopping three times a week, with 5 transactions per shopping trip; that’s already an average of 2 transactions a day, but worse, since it’s clustered in small time intervals.

How do possibly get 0-1 transactions per day per person?

That’s.. a society where people don’t use money. It’s not a thing.

Re: El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender

#270

Post by incrudible » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 10:58 AM UTC

lottin wrote: post #235

landemva wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> A few transactions like these every day...

You don't do "a few of these" every day. It's for moving significant amounts of money, where security starts to matter.

Lightning network is for small transactions. You don't need your daily purchase of a coffee to be on the Bitcoin blockchain for the rest of history.

> Whereas you could use cash and pay no fees.

Somebody still has to spend time and money managing all that cash, particularly in less safe countries.