El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender • Hacker News Board

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#61

Post by blocked_again » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #59

blocked_again wrote: post #18

> The El Salvador President has previously said the move will open up financial services to the 70% of Salvadoreans who do not have bank accounts. Right. People who can't even afford a bank account would now all be using financial services by paying 10 dollars per transaction.

Where I live ordinary bank transactions are free for ordinary consumers. I never pay a transaction fee or any annual fees. My bank used to charge an annual fee for a credit card but they have stopped charging now. In fact in my whole life (I'm 65 so about 50 years of having bank accounts) I have never paid transaction fees for ordinary transactions (in the UK and Norway).

A lot of banks in many countries charges heavily for not maintaining the minimum balance. I think a lot of people can't afford that. Though the minimum balances are usually much lower than a normal BTC transaction.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#62

Post by HarryHirsch » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

ramayac wrote: post #49

danaos wrote: post #22

I don't see how this is going to benefit Salvadorans. As much as I try, I can't find a use case beyond money laundering, ransomware and extortion.

Avoiding the high fees of remittances when families send money to their loved ones back home.

People have always used Western Union, for which the charges are ten dollars or so, that's bearable. And, yes, they do have SMS banking in Salvador.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#63

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

spottybanana wrote: post #35

blocked_again wrote: post #18

> The El Salvador President has previously said the move will open up financial services to the 70% of Salvadoreans who do not have bank accounts. Right. People who can't even afford a bank account would now all be using financial services by paying 10 dollars per transaction.

What the normal people will use in the beginning is going to be non-custodial LN based solution like strike. Minimal fees, easy to use. If you get a bit more, move to custodial LN wallet/onchain transactions. More fees, more security and less trust. And once you have too much BTC start storing them in an offline cold storage.

The idea that "normal people" will be able to use bitcoin at all without getting their private keys stolen is laughable.

Think of how often online bank accounts get hacked in the US, except the difference now is that your money is gone, permanently.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#64

Post by allo37 » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #59

blocked_again wrote: post #18

> The El Salvador President has previously said the move will open up financial services to the 70% of Salvadoreans who do not have bank accounts. Right. People who can't even afford a bank account would now all be using financial services by paying 10 dollars per transaction.

Where I live ordinary bank transactions are free for ordinary consumers. I never pay a transaction fee or any annual fees. My bank used to charge an annual fee for a credit card but they have stopped charging now. In fact in my whole life (I'm 65 so about 50 years of having bank accounts) I have never paid transaction fees for ordinary transactions (in the UK and Norway).

Where I live (Canada), transactions are usually "free" up to a certain amount per month, but they often hit you with monthly fees. That is unless you can maintain a minimum balance in your bank account, in which case the fees become the interest they earn off that chunk of cash, I suppose.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#65

Post by ardme » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

danaos wrote: post #22

I don't see how this is going to benefit Salvadorans. As much as I try, I can't find a use case beyond money laundering, ransomware and extortion.

This site sucks

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#66

Post by neiman » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #39

neiman wrote: post #26

My 2 cents about it. https://twitter.com/neiman30/status/1401592760084336648 Editing: sorry for sharing the tweet instead of rewriting the content here, it was a lazy move on my side.

>First note, the bill is not yet adopted! Wasn't there a vote?

There was, I wrote it 3 days ago before the vote.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#67

Post by chronicsunshine » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

spottybanana wrote: post #35

blocked_again wrote: post #18

> The El Salvador President has previously said the move will open up financial services to the 70% of Salvadoreans who do not have bank accounts. Right. People who can't even afford a bank account would now all be using financial services by paying 10 dollars per transaction.

What the normal people will use in the beginning is going to be non-custodial LN based solution like strike. Minimal fees, easy to use. If you get a bit more, move to custodial LN wallet/onchain transactions. More fees, more security and less trust. And once you have too much BTC start storing them in an offline cold storage.

You're telling us people that don't have bank accounts are gonna be using bitcoin in some abstruse way?

Or are you saying some other entity (a bank) will help them with it?

And if the latter, why would bitcoin be of help at all? A normal bank account would be simpler and less worrisome.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#68

Post by ankurpatel » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

This is good news in that we will see a real country with decent population use it and fail badly proving that Bitcoin is not viable as a valid currency. Once that is done its value should plummet dramatically. Until now it is not used for any payments and mainly for speculation/gambling to make easy money. Most of the people are just supporting it to hype up the value so they can make most profit.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#69

Post by yokem55 » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #23

breadzeppelin__ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

y'all most not have heard of https://strike.me/ which operates on the lightning network to send whatever local currencies through btc instantly for little / no fee

And before people ask, it uses the lightning network so it's non-custodial.

If you run your own lightning node, lightning is non-custodial. But strike is just a wallet that uses their own lightning node. So, if using strike, strike has custody of your funds.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#70

Post by mnw21cam » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

fennecfoxen wrote: post #3

.

That's not what legal tender means in all parts of the world. For instance, in England and Wales, legal tender has an extremely narrow definition - it means that a law court has to accept it for the payment of a debt. Legal tender doesn't apply to people who aren't law courts, and legal tender only applies to past debt - it doesn't apply to future payments such as a purchase at a shop.

It looks (from the news articles) that it has a broader definition in El Salvador, but unless one is an expert in that country's law, it would be best not to make claims about it. If someone is an expert, I'd love to hear what the actual facts are.