El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender • Hacker News Board

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#81

Post by shp0ngle » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:29 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.

I don't know how do you expect people to understand two disparate, absolutely differently working payment systems (LN and BTC) with different threat models, and moving between them always costs a lot of money.

But hey whatever works.

I think this will work as well as Petro worked for Venezuela.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#82

Post by lui8906 » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

slver wrote: post #42

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you feel like it'd be better than cash in this case?

You don't have to pick bitcoin personally, obviously. Yes, after that you have to launder it, but that's a smaller problem comparatively.

Is it a smaller problem? It is fairly trivially traced on a transparent blockchain whereas cash is not.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#83

Post by fastball » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

ChrisRR wrote: post #51

I wish bitcoin hadn't become the go-to crpyto. As a world, we shouldn't be encouraging the use of a currency which is literally churning out CO2 into the air when there's so many less wasteful cryptos out there

It has years more momentum than everyone else, not really surprising it's on the top. But if there is better tech, it will get usurped eventually.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#84

Post by Daishiman » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

ardme wrote: post #65

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

And yet you didn't mention an example.

Typical, because there aren't any and whenever BTC supporters are encountered by this they turn to critizing anything that's not BTC.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#85

Post by rawtxapp » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

FreeTrade wrote: post #56

Sigh. Bitcoin BTC, at 3 transactions per second, doesn't have the capacity to support El Salvador's economy. Even if Lightning worked (it doesn't), BTC doesn't have enough capacity to open channels for users at a reasonable cost. Salvadorians will end up forced to use proprietary payment networks denominated in BTC. BTC is not cash anymore, it won't work as such. There are other cryptos that could work, we'll have to…

I'm not sure how you can say lightning doesn't work when it in fact does, 1ml.com shows you growing adoption and there are many private channels that won't even be known. There are many easy to use wallets, etc.

Channel factories will bundle channel open/closes into a single transaction, so it won't be burdensome on the main chain.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#86

Post by BurnGpuBurn » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

"Bitcoin is positioned to disrupt the remittances industry in El Salvador, estimated at about $5 billion annually. Most families in towns like El Zonte do not have bank accounts, and rely on services such as Western Union WU +0.5%, which take 5-10% in fees. The closest Western Union is approximately one hour by bus, requiring the recipient of the cash transfer to take the bus back with cash on hand, creating a safety issue." [0]

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2020/07/14/this-...

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#87

Post by fastball » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

ffggvv wrote: post #76

the home of ms-13. it’s fitting the child traffickers can use bitcoin to transact in.

Yep, and I hope you've never done business with any of these[1] companies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#88

Post by jonnycomputer » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

ardme wrote: post #65

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

Instead of being a jerk and trying to shut down a conversation, and making completely unwarranted assumptions about people participating in it, perhaps you could actually make the case. Yeah?

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#89

Post by TimJRobinson » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

FreeTrade wrote: post #56

Sigh. Bitcoin BTC, at 3 transactions per second, doesn't have the capacity to support El Salvador's economy. Even if Lightning worked (it doesn't), BTC doesn't have enough capacity to open channels for users at a reasonable cost. Salvadorians will end up forced to use proprietary payment networks denominated in BTC. BTC is not cash anymore, it won't work as such. There are other cryptos that could work, we'll have to…

They're literally using Lightning for payments right now in El Salvador. They didn't do this without having local projects already. Bitcoin Beach (https://twitter.com/Bitcoinbeach) made a lot of this happen.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#90

Post by pinkybanana » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

aNoob7000 wrote: post #72

enlyth wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see someone explaining to their grandmother about having to move her BTC to offline cold storage and storing her private keys securely or she could lose her life's savings in an instant with no recourse

LOL! Very true.. Who the hell has time to figure out all this stuff? I personally think the day the digital US dollar is developed and can be stored in your IPhone. If I can take my locally stored digital dollar and then send it via imessage or whatsapp, then the game is truly over for Bitcoin.

> Who the hell has time to figure out all this stuff?

Nobody will have to learn this stuff, if the BTC economy develops there will be professional custodials for all levels. Eg. banks.

But the importance is that there is always the option to self-custody if you want to. With fiat you don't have that option even in theory. I think the option for self-custody is what makes BTC powerful alternative, not necessarily how widespread self-custody is going to be.