El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender • Hacker News Board

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#181

Post by pinkybanana » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

wins32767 wrote: post #108

pinkybanana wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. The stack of hundred dollar bills under my mattress disagrees with you.

Good luck storing and handling that pile of cash, I'll stay with my crypto hardware wallet.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#182

Post by kobieyc » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:56 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…

Feels like this was written in 2016

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#183

Post by ccortes » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #134

BurnGpuBurn wrote: post #86

"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…

The WU fees are likely so high because they can be. If there's no competition, why not rake profits? I'm curious what the fees will be in a few weeks.

Not only that, but handling cash is expensive

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#184

Post by sgeisler » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

To give some technical background: yes, using Lightning (as they seem to do) for affordable BTC payments is challenging for most. As far as I am aware that is why they rely on custodial solutions [1]. People hold their money with someone from their village they trust, which is not ideal but neither is being unbanked. Down the road I could easily see this trust being spread over multiple people using multisig wallets.

The amazing thing about all this is that everyone can become a BTC "bank". You need a bit of capital but orders of magnitude less than a normal bank would require, maybe 2k$ to get started of which you might spend 400$ on hardware and fees to open some channels. The trustless nature of lightning lets you and your users then join the global payment network without asking for permission from anyone and you can engage in commerce internationally.

I think, while we are still early, that this is an awesome experiment. It will highlight the UX problems so we can fix them. Hopefully at some point all this will make sense to the average westerner too, so we can finally have a money not controlled by anyone (states, incumbent banks) again. But that might take a long time.

[1] https://github.com/GaloyMoney/galoy#status-of-the-project

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#185

Post by overtonwhy » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

FreeTrade wrote: post #153

TimJRobinson wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The cost and complexity of opening channels for users is prohibitive. Any widely adopted solutions will therefore be custodial. Might as well use PayPal.

"Might as well use PayPal." for me that applies to 99% of crypto currency projects!

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#186

Post by Sebb767 » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

carloseduardov wrote: post #169

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.

I am salvadoran myself and I do not support the current president but I should say that the law passed by congress says that El Salvador will have it's own bitcoin reserve and an exchange for bitcoin against USD (our current national currency), so there will NOT be a transaction fee involved as you are just moving within a national reserve with a national exchange.

> so there will NOT be a transaction fee involved as you are just moving within a national reserve with a national exchange.

For buying and selling Bitcoin, possibly. Transactions with Bitcoin will still have the usual transaction fees, as you still need to pay the miners verifying/realizing them.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#187

Post by whiskyant » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:59 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?

In the early days of the internet, many things were a complete pain in the ass to do. But then services and apps were built and things became easier, same is happening in this space.

Before, even purchasing Bitcoin was extremely difficult to do, and involved a lot of research + steps - now it's trivial. Before, securing your wallet was extremely difficult, now it's easier but not ideal to those that are less tech saavy.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#188

Post by FreeTrade » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

rawtxapp wrote: post #159

FreeTrade wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost and complexity of opening channels for users is prohibitive. Any widely adopted solutions will therefore be custodial. Might as well use PayPal.

There are easy to use non-custodial wallets (try Phoenix wallet).

Sure, I just installed it and its saying some impenetrable stuff about a swap address that is not controlled by my wallet and deposits will be converted to Lightning channels.

It's prohibitively complex.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#189

Post by victor22 » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

kobieyc wrote: post #182

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…

Feels like this was written in 2016

FUD attacks are real and will only grow stronger as BTC grows.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#190

Post by ashtonkem » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

carloseduardov wrote: post #169

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.

I am salvadoran myself and I do not support the current president but I should say that the law passed by congress says that El Salvador will have it's own bitcoin reserve and an exchange for bitcoin against USD (our current national currency), so there will NOT be a transaction fee involved as you are just moving within a national reserve with a national exchange.

Transaction fees come from the miners who will put your transaction in a block and mine it for you. Creating your own reserve changes nothing for this.

Unless if you’re going to do a bunch of off chain stuff, which seems pointless.