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El Salvador to airdrop $30 in Bitcoin to up to 6M citizens

finance.yahoo.com

31–40 of 115 posts

Re: El Salvador to airdrop $30 in Bitcoin to up to 6M citizens

#31
post #15

The current bitcoin transaction fee is about $7, so nobody is going to be using this for everyday transactions, making $30 not much of an incentive. It sounds like there will be the option of choosing to accept cash instead, so it will be interesting to see how many prefer $30 of real, spendable cash over $23 of virtual, difficult to spend tokens. Edit: Perhaps I was a bit glib as using the lightning network will pro…

It will definitely use lightning, and 99% chance it will be a custodial version no different in actual execution to venmo or paypal, as this is exactly what the present solution du jour there has been (strike in custodial mode) specifically to address the underlying fact that without such a config, lightning doesn't really work. (routability of payments scaling based on size sucks, inbound transfers suck, you need to run your own full node which most regular end users are flatly not going to do)

In terms of that obviously negating any of the original promises of cryptocurrency in terms of censorship resistance, financial sovereignty, be your own bank, audit the state of the ledger upon which everybody is actively transacting, etc, yes, of course, that's the entire point of the hijack and sabotage of BTC.

Re: El Salvador to airdrop $30 in Bitcoin to up to 6M citizens

#32
post #15

The current bitcoin transaction fee is about $7, so nobody is going to be using this for everyday transactions, making $30 not much of an incentive. It sounds like there will be the option of choosing to accept cash instead, so it will be interesting to see how many prefer $30 of real, spendable cash over $23 of virtual, difficult to spend tokens. Edit: Perhaps I was a bit glib as using the lightning network will pro…

As has been said before on almost every thread about this, lightning network alleviates the issue of high transaction costs for small transactions. https://www.coindesk.com/strike-launches-bitcoin-lightning-p...

How secure is it compared to real transactions?

Re: El Salvador to airdrop $30 in Bitcoin to up to 6M citizens

#33
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats a gross generalisation. One would think, that average HNer would be a coiner because of their background.

Nope, lots of people here are just like me: proud salty nocoiners. We poor old salty nocoiners can only wipe our flowing tears with the 100$ rags from our fat wallets. Oh poor us, we foolishly put our wealth into cashflow producing assets. Oh the sorrow every quarter as the dividends are deposited in our flash-loan-hack-proof bank accounts.

Thats a weird thing to brag about - if talking about past returns there's few 'cash flow producing assets' that'd have done as well as just putting the money in btc.

Also flash loans don't take anything out of your wallet/account either and I know of people whose bank accounts have been hacked.

There's plenty to complain about btc but you've somehow chosen the least convincing argument for why you are a noncoiner.

Re: El Salvador to airdrop $30 in Bitcoin to up to 6M citizens

#35
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, if you want to receive business for money laundering and want to obfuscate it by using civilians. I don't see another reason to go down this path...

I think el-salvador is going down this path because their current path doesn't work. So instead, they are trying another monetary theory. Short term profits might come, not from money laundering, but from bitcoin whales that are true believers and decide to come live there. Some of those whales might have gotten their bitcoin illegally, and are happy to avoid a fiat off-ramp. I suppose that might be money-laundering…

The core problem about this is that they don't have money.

My statement about money laundering is their attempt to fix it partially. But Bitcoin by itselve won't fix their core issue.

Another one is is connectivity ( to make faster payments and not take the bus), bitcoin won't fix that either.

They are pushing internet access to help Bitcoin, but it creates a false dogma. Since Bitcoin was not the answer, it was internet access for all to make faster payments.

PS. Africa has payments by text, this could have worked there too without Bitcoin: https://onereach.ai/what-the-u-s-can-learn-from-mobile-payme...

Re: El Salvador to airdrop $30 in Bitcoin to up to 6M citizens

#36
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, if you want to receive business for money laundering and want to obfuscate it by using civilians. I don't see another reason to go down this path...

I think el-salvador is going down this path because their current path doesn't work. So instead, they are trying another monetary theory. Short term profits might come, not from money laundering, but from bitcoin whales that are true believers and decide to come live there. Some of those whales might have gotten their bitcoin illegally, and are happy to avoid a fiat off-ramp. I suppose that might be money-laundering…

I don't think blockchains are particularly well suited for solving El Salvador's actual problems, like gang violence.

There's a not entirely implausible theory that says Bukele is going for Bitcoin specifically because El Salvador uses the US dollar and is thus prevented from taking the typical path of printing more its own currency to "solve" problems. With Tether and various dodgy custom apps in the mix, they can now print money.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/06/15/el-salvador-bitcoin-off...

Re: El Salvador to airdrop $30 in Bitcoin to up to 6M citizens

#37
It seems like many here don't get what I think they're doing: government buys 180 million USD worth of Bitcoin, stores it in their wallet, and creates an SQL database (well, with a bank as a wrapper) with 6 million entries with $30 (or whatever that is in BTC) each.

The transactions can just be recorded in this SQL database, and the "reserve" would be untouched. If someone wants to exchange their BTC to USD or Euro, they can go to a money changer, their SQL database entry will be decreased, the money changer's SQL database entry will be incremented, and the total BTC in the reserve remains.

Hmm, I think I just described the so-called Lightning Network, which means in the end you have to trust a central authority after all. (EDIT: After reading about LN, it seems this isn't how the Lightning Network works).

They might as well make something like "El-Salvador-Coin" without needing dumb blockchain stuff.

Re: El Salvador to airdrop $30 in Bitcoin to up to 6M citizens

#38

A small developing country with little industry, high inequality and some of the worst murder rates in world decides to spend their very limited money and attention on populist nonsense like this. I guess the gangs will appreciate it?

About 1/4 of the citizen's wealth comes from US dollar transfers from abroad (ie., from immigrant families). (Their currency is the US dollar.)

Presently very high transaction fees and poor banking-system support eats up a significant amount of this wealth.

Can you see why this isn't "populist none-sense" ?

Re: El Salvador to airdrop $30 in Bitcoin to up to 6M citizens

#39
post #33
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, lots of people here are just like me: proud salty nocoiners. We poor old salty nocoiners can only wipe our flowing tears with the 100$ rags from our fat wallets. Oh poor us, we foolishly put our wealth into cashflow producing assets. Oh the sorrow every quarter as the dividends are deposited in our flash-loan-hack-proof bank accounts.

Thats a weird thing to brag about - if talking about past returns there's few 'cash flow producing assets' that'd have done as well as just putting the money in btc. Also flash loans don't take anything out of your wallet/account either and I know of people whose bank accounts have been hacked. There's plenty to complain about btc but you've somehow chosen the least convincing argument for why you are a noncoiner.

Bitcoins do not produce any cash flow, the only way to profit is to sell them to a greater fool.

Re: El Salvador to airdrop $30 in Bitcoin to up to 6M citizens

#40
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats a gross generalisation. One would think, that average HNer would be a coiner because of their background.

Nope, lots of people here are just like me: proud salty nocoiners. We poor old salty nocoiners can only wipe our flowing tears with the 100$ rags from our fat wallets. Oh poor us, we foolishly put our wealth into cashflow producing assets. Oh the sorrow every quarter as the dividends are deposited in our flash-loan-hack-proof bank accounts.

That's not completely true. I left it at ~18 k. A couple of years ago as i didn't saw a path to become profitable. I suppose a lot of HN'ers joined early on and left by now.

My stocks are doing good enough for me to not care at all about crypto since then. Even if that wouldn't be the case, I wouldn't invest in something that I don't think has a viable path.

Eg. The current solutions are using off-chain centralized transactions to fix core things ( eg. transaction fee).

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