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El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

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Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#141

> 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.

Of course, but bitcoin was never meant to be 'banking for the underbanked'.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#142

> 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.

lmaoo..

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#143
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greece here, transactions cost 3 EUR. I think they're possibly free if you use the same bank, but the apps are cumbersome to use and the potential for fees is a deterrent, so nobody uses them for transactions of less than hundreds of EUR.

Greece is part of SEPA, I thought euro transfers would be free in that case.

As far as I know, the only actual legal requirement is that SEPA transfers to other countries can't be more expensive than in-country bank transfers. It just happens that a lot of European countries don't generally have charges for bank transfers.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#144
post #58

Other governments are already accumulating BTC silently. Way too many eyes on the topic lately. There will be some FUD along the way (maybe even El Salvador banning/unbanning BTC up to few times - the classic) but I believe at some time news will start popping left and right that other countries hold BTC on balance sheets. Will eventually start with ETH too if it hasn't already. Re people below: I don't have any sour…

I’m hoping ETH and BTC are mostly sideways over the next year or so. I’d like to continue buying while it’s (relatively) cheap.

I'm looking more towards ETH, so far BTC steals the spotlight but ETH has superior bullish narrative with recent development. But yeah, could be days or months of accumulation, one will never know.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#145

> 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.

The main benefit from this that I can see is that El Salvador will attract bitcoin businesses with a lot of money and other bitcoin whales who might move there and start businesses, employing locals and injecting money into the El Salvador economy.

The average person isn't going to use bitcoin and the average merchant will likely never be paid in it.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#146
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greece here, transactions cost 3 EUR. I think they're possibly free if you use the same bank, but the apps are cumbersome to use and the potential for fees is a deterrent, so nobody uses them for transactions of less than hundreds of EUR.

Greece is part of SEPA, I thought euro transfers would be free in that case.

No, turns out SEPA only stipulates that cross-border transfers cannot be more expensive than national transfers, it doesn't say they should be free :(

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#147

Congratulations to Bitcoin. All it took was a fascist takeover.

For the context, here are some Wikipedia articles about the 2020 and 2021 political crisis in El Salvador… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Salvadoran_political_cr... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Salvadoran_political_cr...

Respeto.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#148
post #122

> 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.

They are using Zap/Strike (Lightning) and zero fees. The phony "fees are $1,000 a tx line" and $10 hyperbole simply show you have no clue what you're talking about when speaking about Bitcoin. Even on chain the past solid week you could send free BTC transactions, or for a couple of cents.

I am sorry but what is the point of adopting BTC if vast majority of the transactions are going to be handled by a third party service. Makes no sense to me.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#149
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honestly, I have completely given up on criticizing BTC - there was a reddit thread about post-apocalyptic society, and the BTC zealots were arguing that was the perfect place for cryptocurrency.

The argument was that, after society had completely collapsed, and people were killing each other over food and water, there would still be a need for wealth transfer and escrow services.

That is when I realized that I shouldn't take most BTC/crypto arguments seriously, because the people are way too invested personally and economically to be rational.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#150

> 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.

My understanding is that Strike is already reasonably popular in El Salvador, because it's much better than taking a bus 2 hours to the Western Union, paying 10% to them, then paying 10% to the gang that hangs outside.

Could a more "conventional" system do the same job? Probably, but I won't begrudge people a working solution.

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