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El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

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Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#221

Post by bun_at_work »

singularity2001 wrote: post #133
aNoob7000 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I personally think the day the digital US dollar is developed … The digital US dollar is pretty much in use already, or do you think your bank has anything physical resembling the number on your account?

The bank does hold a fraction of your deposits, as our banking in the US is fractional reserve banking. This has been the case for quite some time, and isn't really the same thing as digital currency, even if we transact digitally.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#222

Post by mumblemumble »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #121
angry_octet wrote: post #79

Amazingly shortsighted. The primary beneficiaries of this will be organised crime, who will now be able to wash the Bitcoin via El Salvador to convert it to dollars, which they can use to buy trade items and export the profits. The number one export of El Salvador is actually people. If they were concerned about remittance fees they could just set up a bank in the US with low fees, instead of getting kickbacks from O…

El Salvador has (and will have) negligible impact on both generation of and popularity of cryptocurrency, so I don't think that argument is very important given the far more pressing matters they have to deal with as a country, and ones they have control over. The point about opening up a bank is interesting though. The amount of money WU is skimming off the top must be a non-negligible percentage of the country's GD…

> The amount of money WU is skimming off the top must be a non-negligible percentage of the country's GDP.

20% of El Salvador's GDP is remittances, and WU takes a 5-10% cut. I don't know how much of that business WU controls, so let's pick a range out of a hat: 75%.

That would imply that WU fees represent something in the neighborhood of 1% of the country's total GDP.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#223

Post by HWR_14 »

mastax wrote: post #150
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.

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.

Yes, it's far more efficient now. Now the gang will just take 10% of your entire savings (because it's all on your phone) every time they see you. Or 30% if they don't like you that one day. Because if it's one thing I try to do in a situation with lots of street crime, it's carry the maximum amount of my net worth on my person in the least recoverable form in case I get robbed.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#224

Post by systemvoltage »

dougSF70 wrote: post #161
systemvoltage wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like physical analog cash even though its a pain in the ass to carry. Cashless society is terrifying to me.

I think that using cash makes money expensive which adds some base load inflation - this will help reduces homelessness and other societal ills (such as wealth inequality). Electronic money is never lost, not like those pounds, pennies, dollars, quarters. Losing money, takes out of circulation. While not much is taken out, it might be enough to create a base load of inflation - money becomes more scarce and therefore…

Homelessness is a California’s complex housing shortage and governance/policy problem. The world is much bigger than issues in SF/Portland/Seattle. I am not following the strawman from utilitarian aspects of cash -> inflation -> homelessness & inquality.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#225

Post by JKCalhoun »

dougSF70 wrote: post #161
systemvoltage wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like physical analog cash even though its a pain in the ass to carry. Cashless society is terrifying to me.

I think that using cash makes money expensive which adds some base load inflation - this will help reduces homelessness and other societal ills (such as wealth inequality). Electronic money is never lost, not like those pounds, pennies, dollars, quarters. Losing money, takes out of circulation. While not much is taken out, it might be enough to create a base load of inflation - money becomes more scarce and therefore…

Counterpoint: those pounds, pennies, dollars, quarters never end up in a Nigerian Prince's bank account.

Oh, electronic money is "lost" all the time. Alarmingly so. :-)

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#226

Post by kragen »

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.

Even without Lightning, it's not US$10 per transaction; I commented in more detail at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27448744.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#227

Post by angry_octet »

cft wrote: post #115
kwhitefoot wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (USA) I tried to transfer money between my Wells Fargo account (that charges large fees for foreign ATM withdrawals) and a credit union account (that required heavy bureaucracy to open a business account, that's why my main accounts are in Wells Fargo, but the credit union withdrawals at the foreign ATMs are free). Wells Fargo offered Zelle for ACH but I got confused. Then I tried transferring through Ro…

The baroque steam punk vibe of signing a cheque to yourself, then depositing it to your own account by taking a photo of it with your handheld supercomputer... I must order some more cheques.

I wonder if you could just fudge it with Photoshop (Gimp)? Could you get in trouble for forging a cheque to yourself?

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#228

Post by jwolfe »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #220
systemvoltage wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like physical analog cash even though its a pain in the ass to carry. Cashless society is terrifying to me.

I understand. For perhaps the same reasons as you, I decline/turn-off auto-pay of any services I subscribe to. I actually cut checks every couple of weeks to pay bills. I need a regular reminder of how I am being nickeled and dimed. My big fear is a constant drain on my account from a service that I had forgotten about or just the accumulative damage a lot of services add up to. To be sure, our corporate overlords lo…

I have all of my credit cards and bank accounts set to notify (text) me whenever there is any transaction whatsoever. I find that helps with the subscription concerns, as well as confidence in catching fraud/incorrect charges quickly.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#229

Post by kristjansson »

ccortes wrote: post #183
viraptor wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, operating a cash-heavy business _in El Salvador_ probably has some costs.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#230

Post by jokoon »

I think it's time that we need some expert opinion and debunking of bitcoin.

Elon Musk sold his bitcoins, Bill Gates was against it, Warren Buffet mocked it.

One could easily make a fun documentary about all the disappointments of bitcoin. The MtGox theft was a wakeup call.

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