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El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

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Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#211

Post by charlesdm »

sanderjd wrote: post #149
mtalantikite wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is only one part of the story for them. If 70% of their country is un-banked, many transactions are probably in cash, and there probably are a lot of undeclared sales and income that is not being taxed. If they can really get their population using tools that would make it easier for the government to collect taxes, make it easier for tourists to visit and spend money, etc then the mining rewards are onl…

Even if crypto is a good solution for all this, bitcoin is a bad one.

Maybe. But it is better than the alternative? It's the quickest solution. Have a look at what happened when Venezuela ended up launching the Petro.

Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#212

Post by ItsMonkk »

fnord123 wrote: post #136
pocoloco wrote: post #129

As a Salvadoran living abroad but keeping an eye on politics there, I feel the need to comment given the amount of skepticism shown here, which is understandable given the history. I believe that what the president, Nayib Bukele, and his team have done is monumental. The reason is that I also believe that the financial system crashed back in 2008 and has been kept alive by central banks worldwide. Last summer we saw…

> Mandating BTC as legal tender is an awesome move. To me the most important benefit is that the 70% of the population which was excluded from banking and relegated to use physical currency will now be included. If the economy is an engine and money is the oil, El Salvador, which had only some drops of oil, will now get a complete oil change with synthetic on top of that. You are 100% incorrect. Bitcoin is wildly def…

> Bitcoin is wildly deflationary. Therefore it does not encourage an economy to function

With the rapid increase of the Money Supply of the USD, this is no different than any other Asset, especially Buyback driven stocks(where the supply diminishes over time!). To store value you also need to hold onto them with white knuckles. It also does not encourage an economy to function, hence why our GDP growth has slowed to a halt.

Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#214

Post by megameter »

Shaanie wrote: post #200
rawtxapp wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does work, they have been using it in El Zonte town for quite some time now [1]. The volatility will come down as the market caps get larger, but it'll never go away (I mean even fiat currencies and gold's price fluctuate on a daily basis). The energy usage ( not waste if you consider it to be a useful thing) will only go up as the price goes up, but it'll use increasingly renewable % and stranded energy and even…

This "volatility will come down as the market cap gets larger" keeps getting thrown around, yet Bitcoin just lost 50% of its value at a market cap of 1 trillion USD. What market cap is required for Bitcoin to stop being volatile?

Well, how little volatility is needed to be called stable? Over a few years, large swings can happen with major forex pairs. Take GBP/USD for example: High of 1.71602 in 2014. Low of 1.14926 in 2020. It currently trades around 1.4.

So, not the same kinds of returns and drawdowns as BTC/USD, but enough to make one's eyes water and stomach churn. Forex has always had a reputation for volatility.

Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#215

Post by reader_mode »

rawtxapp wrote: post #144
fnord123 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mandating BTC as legal tender is an awesome move. To me the most important benefit is that the 70% of the population which was excluded from banking and relegated to use physical currency will now be included. If the economy is an engine and money is the oil, El Salvador, which had only some drops of oil, will now get a complete oil change with synthetic on top of that. You are 100% incorrect. Bitcoin is wildly def…

> You are 100% incorrect. Bitcoin is wildly deflationary. Therefore it does not encourage an economy to function, it encourages people to hold onto it with white knuckles. It's not oil for the economy, it's sand. In my opinion, that's the biggest lie that people have been made to believe to justify constant stealing of their purchasing power over time. People will always spend money for things they need, they will al…

Yeah that's all fine and dandy until you need to take out a loan and on top of high interest you also need to account for deflation - good luck getting a house mortgage and falling wages. Deflation puta pressure on price of work as well - but people don't like pay cuts.

Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#216

Post by rawtxapp »

pkulak wrote: post #201
rawtxapp wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again, El Salvador is using lightning network which enable almost instant and practically free Bitcoin payments. PoS isn't perfect either and has it's own sets of problems.

Lightning is a horrible kludge to deal with the fact that Bitcoin is terrible at being a currency. It essentially boils down to this process: 1. Pay huge fees to take your money off the blockchain. 2. Whiz it around a new, totally independent, centralized network where you need an always-on connection to anyone you're paying or receiving from and need to trust any intermediaries you're using, with brand new fees for…

Channel factories will open/close many channels at once, so you'll only pay a fraction of the blockchain transaction cost. It has the advantages of Bitcoin's security and p2p network speed.

Security and trust are a lot more important for currency, nano doesn't have that. It has easily been spammed [1]. It barely has a market cap of ~1B$ and has never recovered to it's 2017 prices, so it's not even remotely close to being an ideal candidate for a country's currency.

1: https://www.coindesk.com/nanos-network-flooded-spam-nodes-ou...

Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#217

Post by leesalminen »

thehappypm wrote: post #121

One interesting thing to me is that Bitcoin is a lot easier to steal than money in banks. A bad actor can steal your private key and take all of your BTC, and it's gone forever. Try doing that with a bank account -- the bank will back you up, there are transfer limits.

Tell that to my brother-in-law who had his identity stolen and several lines of credit taken out in his name. He’s spent the past 2 years working to resolve it with limited success. His credit score is still trashed and can’t buy a car nor house.

Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#218

Post by maneesh »

reader_mode wrote: post #215
rawtxapp wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are 100% incorrect. Bitcoin is wildly deflationary. Therefore it does not encourage an economy to function, it encourages people to hold onto it with white knuckles. It's not oil for the economy, it's sand. In my opinion, that's the biggest lie that people have been made to believe to justify constant stealing of their purchasing power over time. People will always spend money for things they need, they will al…

Yeah that's all fine and dandy until you need to take out a loan and on top of high interest you also need to account for deflation - good luck getting a house mortgage and falling wages. Deflation puta pressure on price of work as well - but people don't like pay cuts.

When you're one of the 70% of people who are unbanked in el salvador, there are no needs for loans or interest -- the concept barely exists.

Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#219

Post by rawtxapp »

Shaanie wrote: post #200
rawtxapp wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does work, they have been using it in El Zonte town for quite some time now [1]. The volatility will come down as the market caps get larger, but it'll never go away (I mean even fiat currencies and gold's price fluctuate on a daily basis). The energy usage ( not waste if you consider it to be a useful thing) will only go up as the price goes up, but it'll use increasingly renewable % and stranded energy and even…

This "volatility will come down as the market cap gets larger" keeps getting thrown around, yet Bitcoin just lost 50% of its value at a market cap of 1 trillion USD. What market cap is required for Bitcoin to stop being volatile?

I mean even gold (which is a centuries old asset) is pretty volatile on a yearly basis (high of ~2100$, low of ~1650$ this year).

I think when Bitcoin approaches Gold's price, you can expect similar volatility because by then large institutions/countries would be holding it.

Also on a long term basis, it appreciates an average of ~300% year over year which is much better than the dollar which is depreciating on purpose.

Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#220

Post by rawtxapp »

reader_mode wrote: post #215
rawtxapp wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are 100% incorrect. Bitcoin is wildly deflationary. Therefore it does not encourage an economy to function, it encourages people to hold onto it with white knuckles. It's not oil for the economy, it's sand. In my opinion, that's the biggest lie that people have been made to believe to justify constant stealing of their purchasing power over time. People will always spend money for things they need, they will al…

Yeah that's all fine and dandy until you need to take out a loan and on top of high interest you also need to account for deflation - good luck getting a house mortgage and falling wages. Deflation puta pressure on price of work as well - but people don't like pay cuts.

You know what happens then? House prices will fall because they won't have access to cheap money, so they'll end up being priced at their true value. Housing would stop being an investment, instead it would serve it's true purpose of providing lodging.
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