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El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

bbc.com

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Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#401

Post by thinkmassive »

spottybanana wrote: post #35
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.

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.

I think you have your custodial/non-custodial terminology mixed up.

If you aren’t holding the keys that control your funds the entire time, it’s a custodial service. If USD is involved in any form besides paper cash in your own hands, it’s a custodial service.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#402

Post by chitowneats »

dragonwriter wrote: post #328
jvanderbot wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds fairly easy on a national exchange level, actually.

Unless the national exchange is hosting wallets it controls on behalf of individual citizens, or acting as an intermediary for all transactions—in which case you’ve negated all the features of Bitcoin and may as well be using any random currency with the government as shared banker—I don’t see how it does. I mean, sure, “the government will be your bank for free” solves the problem of the unbanked, but renders the id…

Exactly. With this model, poof, there goes all your supposed benefits of "digital gold".

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#403

Post by throwaaskjdfh »

rawtxapp wrote: post #356
paulgb wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to calculate the transaction volume in BTC over the lightning network, or is the ledger non-public in the same way that Bitcoin's is? If I understood the Satoshi paper right, after the block reward is exhausted the network's security depends on transaction fees being high enough to sustain a strong level of security. If Lightning brings transaction fees down, is that not a threat to the security of the…

If you run a node on lightning, you would know how much transactions you've forwarded, so you can make estimates, especially if you run a large node (say Bitfinex that runs their own nodes), but lightning isn't public the same way blockchain is. The 1MB block limit makes it highly likely that there will be transactions in the mempool, you still need to open/close channels (even batched ones) and presumably large tran…

> [I]t's very difficult to say what happens in year ~2140, we'll all be long gone by then

I think it's more likely that at least one young person reading this news today will live to ~130 than Bitcoin making it that long.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#404

Post by jasonlaramburu »

gruez wrote: post #269
jasonlaramburu wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you buying daily essentials using LN, or running a small business? Also how could someone in El Salvador run a node without reliable electricity and internet? Also remember that the hardware cost of a full node is likely more than a month’s wages.

>Also how could someone in El Salvador run a node without reliable electricity and internet? A lightning node doesn't need to be on 24/7. To prevent your counterparty from stealing your funds you only need to be online every 2 weeks (or never if you use a watchtower service). Syncing is also fast, so 1 hour of internet access/electricity should allow you to catch up 2 weeks of blockchain history. >Also remember that…

Right but the node needs to be online anytime you transact, correct?

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#405

Post by gruez »

lawn wrote: post #361
gruez wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And before people ask, it uses the lightning network so it's non-custodial.

Strike is custodial... Yes you can run LN in a non-custodial manner, but the user experience is really bad.

> Strike is custodial...

You seem to be correct, based on their suggestion that you download another lightning wallet[1]. My prior impression was that strike contained a lightning wallet and a custodial wallet (for their fiat exchange). That said, with low cost and instant lightning network transactions you can basically use it in a non custodial way (ie. transfer out the moment you exchange for fiat).

[1] https://strike.me/faq/howtopurchase

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#406

Post by thinkmassive »

enlyth wrote: post #48
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.

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

Multisig solutions are available for increased security and reliability. Services like Casa and Unchained Capital will even hold a single key from your set, allowing you to recover your funds if one of your keys is lost, however they can never move your funds on their own because they never possess a quorum.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#407

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

IncRnd wrote: post #105
iso1210 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government buys 10,000 coins at $30k/coin Announces it's legal tender Price increases to $40k/coin Government sells Government makes $100m it no longer needs to raise in tax

Government investigates Government for purchasing arrangement at below market value. Government investigates Government for illegal pump & dump scheme. Bitcoin value drops. Citizen held Bitcoin is worth less.

Pretty sure the salvadorian government isn't going to be investigating it's self other than for more power grabs for the moment:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Salvadoran_political_cr...

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#408

Post by ChainOfFools »

rawtxapp wrote: post #262
ddtaylor wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LN requires opening and closing channels, each of which have to be done as a regular Bitcoin transaction. The value proposition of LN is that repeated transactions with the same entity (or some subset of) can be done without high fees, but considering almost nobody is currently using LN that doesn't change things right now.

Channel factories will bundle channel open/closes into a single transaction significantly reducing the burden on the blockchain. LN adoption is growing very nicely (1ml.com), there are lots of wallets and users now.

this is centralization with extra steps.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#409

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

RivieraKid wrote: post #212

Bitcoin will never be able to beat official currencies in developed countries in this important metric - short term inflation risk. People tend to forget this but no other asset is safer in the short-term than the dollar, euro, etc. Why? Because no other asset has a powerful central entity whose job is to prevent loss of value above the 2% inflation target.

Beat at what?

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#410

Post by jbverschoor »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #280
jbverschoor wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about "affording". Banks outright refuse people, businesses etc.

Then it's easier to give everyone the right to a bank account than introduce a new payment infrastructure.

Banks are free to accept, reject, or kick people.

Not just there. Also here. Banks, PayPal, all the same shit in terms of exclusion and power imbalance

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