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El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

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Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#391

This is going to be great for drug traffickers and other shady elements operating in El Salvador. What they did was just opening the door for the worst individuals to laundry money and buy assets in El Salvador.

El Salvador's AML laws are very strict, much more than other countries.

Most payments over US$ 100 require and ID, and every bank deposit, require an ID or Passport.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#393

Is bitcoin specifically legal tender, or other digital currencies, or layer 2 solutions, or what exactly? If bitcoin only was made legal tender, then layer 2 solutions will not be legal tender, and businesses could choose to only accept direct bitcoin payments via the blockchain, forcing customers to pay high fees.

Sure, if businesses collude to undertake user hostile actions, they could get this experiment to fail. Let's hope the incentives lead them to treat their customers better.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#394

> 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.

This seems ready made for government theft.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#395

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.

This seems ready made for government theft.

Feature, not a bug

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#396
post #377
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This president of El Salvador sent soldiers into the Legislative Assembly to coerce the parliament to vote in his favor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Salvadoran_political_cris... He is not a friend of democracy, except the performative "chatting with laser-eyed crypto stans on Twitter" kind.

Sorry if this is not on your sensibilities, but that assembly was very corrupt so much so that people wanted them out as soon as possible, he did not command the military to do what they did, the military showed up in support for the people who were also there. He has 90% approval rate on the opposition owned polls, and he has supermajority of the assembly for a reason, 30 years of pure corruption without any consequ…

This is one of the best explanations of what's actually going on there.

The level of condescension elsewhere in this thread combined with total ignorance of the actual events taking place is stunning.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's closer to each individual bank having their own digital currency, all of which are worth 1 USD each. The digital US dollars at my bank are not directly exchangable with the digital US dollars at your bank. You need to settle up with an ACH transaction, which takes at least a day to transact as it has to run in a central batch job. In addition, only US domestic institutions can use this mechanism to transfer US d…

> The digital US dollars at my bank are not directly exchangable with the digital US dollars at your bank. You need to settle up with an ACH transaction, which takes at least a day to transact as it has to run in a central batch job.

FedNow will reduce that latency from days to minutes. US is slow in that game, but RTP is widely deployed in UK, France, etc.

For international transactions, one can use SWIFT (days) or TransferWise (minutes) or Western Union (under one hour).

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both. Some people (probably minority) will use self-hosted wallets. Majority will use custodials (banks). > And if the latter, why would bitcoin be of help at all? A normal bank account would be simpler and less worrisome. USD will still stay as the official currency of El Salvador. However now merchants have to accept also BTC. The hypotheses is that for example foreign businessmen will bring BTC in form of investme…

The original conversation was about how Bitcoin could help the 70% who are unbanked have access to something like a bank account. The proposed mechanism for this is "well, they can go to a bank and register something like a bank account, or else they can be a high-SES self-educated tech person who builds their own bank using computer hardware". I do not think this could help the 70% who are unbanked have access to so…

let's not put the cart before the horse? you can't solve the trickiest problem in a day. This news, is a major development and is going to open many, many doors, eventually solving this problem, too

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#399
post #344
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of primarily-online banks. I haven't set foot in a brick and mortar bank in well over a decade.

You presumably live in a developed economy. There's a reason 70% of El Salvadorans don't have bank accounts, and it isn't a context of easy online banking.

It's small payments what are are mostly done in cash, like the $0.20 bus fare, $1.25 lunch, $0.50 soda or $0.25 tortillas. There is no widespread electronic alternative for those payments yet here.

Free mobile banking accounts have been available for a while in El Salvador, and can be opened with a selfie and a photo of your national ID. They are only avaialble for those 18+ and older though.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#400

> 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.

>> by paying 10 dollars per transaction

I really wish comments would be more focused on telling the whole story rather than focusing on outdated information.

Lightning transactions are cheap and fast - so this argument is misinformed.

A core reason for El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin might be related to remittance - big part of their GDP is based on remittance and this will save people money.

Source: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS?lo...

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