Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 732 posts

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#191

Post by rawtxapp »

Sebb767 wrote: post #186
carloseduardov wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are using lightning network which allows almost instant and practically free Bitcoin payments.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#192

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

blocked_again wrote: post #148
BTCOG wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With USD (and indeed any national currency), generally all functions except issuance are handled by third party services, that would be the status quo for a currency, wouldn't it?

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#194

Post by neither_color »

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…

It's important to note that El Salvador's currency is the US dollar. WU doesn't even need to convert currency. They are simply taking up to 10% from a low-earning demographic group in the US just because they can. Even if bitcoinization itself "fails", if it forces WU to lower its fees it'll do net good.

Among U.S. Hispanics and Salvadorans, the median annual personal earnings for those ages 16 and older was $25,000.

Salvadoran Americans, even those who are poor, have an incentive to send money to family and friends in El Salvador because a U.S. dollar buys much more there than in the States. In all, they send approximately $800 million back home per year—close to $1000 per person

1000 bucks per person is not some exorbitant amount, it's some people's yearly starbucks budget.

https://www.everyculture.com/multi/Pa-Sp/Salvadoran-American....

https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/fact-sheet/u-s-hispanic...

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#196

Post by amelius »

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?

This is a valid question for our current tax system, already.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#197

Post by spmurrayzzz »

ashtonkem wrote: post #190
carloseduardov wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lightning network liquidity should actually help solve this. If you maintain a reserve and open a ton of payment channels for folks (those HTLCs are all on-chain), this drastically reduces impact of confirmation time and fees.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#198

Post by tpm »

StavrosK wrote: post #146
tpm wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :(

Yeah I knew it's not a legal requirement but still I thought it would lead to zero fees everywhere, because now when you need to do a lot of transfers, it makes sense to create an account in a foreign SEPA bank and then even the transfers to greek accounts would be free. Granted I don't know how much are bank transfers used in Greece (given the fee probably not to their full potential).

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#199

Post by blocked_again »

rawtxapp wrote: post #191
Sebb767 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They are using lightning network which allows almost instant and practically free Bitcoin payments.

Asking as a noob, isn't the whole point of transaction fees to prevent malicious actors from flooding the network with spam. How does lighting networks prevent that from happening and why can't one use a smiliar approach for the actual bitcoin blockchain?

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#200

Post by waynenilsen »

jasonlaramburu wrote: post #40
spottybanana wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

LN still requires periodic on-chain transactions to close and open payment channels. So either these costs are being passed along to the users in El Salvador or the wallet provider is subsidizing it.

One vision is that checking accounts are custodial LN solutions with savings accounts as cold storage.

Discussion with the "Bitcoin Beach" people https://stephanlivera.com/episode/279/

Post reply on HN