One of the first country to do it and definitely not the last country. More will follow in the next years I am pretty sure about that.
El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender
281–290 of 732 posts
Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender
#282> 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.
This is plain wrong. I don't know why it is upvoted to the top.
Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
In Latin America people kidnap you and take you around to ATMs at gunpoint until you've reached the withdrawal limit. This seems so much more dangerous with bitcoin wallets.
Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender
#284Earlier 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…
Yes, I think cryptocurrency has a potential use case of cheap international transfers. I too faced issues living abroad and transferring money back and forth from the US. There are both flat fees, making small transfers expensive, and %age costs, since banks don't give you spot price for cross currency transactions but instead skim the spread between spot and whatever exchange rate they choose.
If the above doesn't sound correct to a reader here, then either you've never lived outside of the US or, please tell me how to transfer money via banks and not get fleeced.
Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender
#285Wouldn't be better to just start a government run block chain and use USDT.
The folks behind tether will probably "loan" them a reserve to start with. It costs them nothing to create so they "loan" them out like candy and the price stays fixed at or near 1 USD.
Amazing!!!
Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender
#286> 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 .
It varies over time. But I think everybody agrees that if BTC takes over the world then the transaction fee will be much much higher.
Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender
#287Earlier 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).
Living in Germany here. Many traditional banks charge a monthly fee of 10 euros for maintaining the bank account. Additionally, my parents wanted to send me some money from another country and the cheapest fee they could find was $10.5 (Wise) most other options were from $30 to $100. This was for transferring roughly $2000. I can agree that for a simple in country tx I've not had to pay living in Germany, that is lar…
Then you're with the wrong bank.
Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
While you do need to close/open payment channels if you want to move the funds off the lightning network, I don't really see why you'd need to "periodically" do it. Lightning channels can stay open indefinitely so you can theoretically park your money on there indefinitely.
I have no clue, so Lightning is Bitcoin without the Bitcoin and blockchain? Without the blockchain how is it different from a MySQL database table?
If someone sends me 1 BTC and the transaction is recorded in mysql, the database operator can revert the transaction and I have zero recourse. That's not possible with lightning. If someone sends me 1 BTC over lightning, then decides to reneg on it by trying to commit an older state of the channel (where they haven't sent me 1 BTC), then my recourse is to rebut that transaction with a newer one.
Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender
#289Amazingly 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…
"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 ..."
This bitcoin to dollars confluence is even more interesting in the case of El Salvador where the US Dollar is the official currency.
When you are in El Salvador you use actual, physical US Dollars for all cash transactions.
This is not a de facto standard as in some other countries - it is the official legal currency in the country.
So that's interesting in terms of geography, currency usage and the ability to wash bitcoins into (physical) dollars...
Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
While you do need to close/open payment channels if you want to move the funds off the lightning network, I don't really see why you'd need to "periodically" do it. Lightning channels can stay open indefinitely so you can theoretically park your money on there indefinitely.
[deleted]