101–110 of 394 posts
It’s amazing how countries are wholeheartedly adopting this thing as an official currency that we have no idea who invented and for what purpose. I mean sure, there’s a white paper that says why it was invented, but why should anyone believe it? If it does turn out to be malicious it’s going to make for one hell of a cautionary tale.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are using lightning wallets. So no on chain settling. No (extra) trees were harmed for hamburgers (though obviously opening and closing of channels and initial mining it self is energy intensive).
Actually, they are not even using lighning wallets. They are using a centralized payment processor that has personal accounts for users, like any other payment app. This centralized processor happens to use lightning wallets in its backend, but there is no 1:1 mapping of payment_account:lightning_wallet. And since Lightning itself doesn't interact with the blockchain except when you open/close payment channels, there…
Monetary Policy. Can someone explain how a country plans to implement a monetary policy (e.g. inject new currency during a recession to fund expansion) when they don’t control their national currency (Bitcoin).
My guess is ppl will quickly cash out to dollars. But how will the dollars get back to the local exchanges unless people are buying bitcoin there?
This seems like a disaster in the making.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm envisioning a lot of dirty looks from paper cash-preferring shopkeepers to crypto tourists when the tourists buy up all shop's inventory and leave the shopkeeper with just a few numbers in some app. EDIT: To be clear, I mean tourists each individually buying a normal amount of things using BTC, which adds up to the store exchanging it's inventory for a number in the app.
Didn’t the grandparent comment explain that in such a case, legal tender doesn’t apply? There’s no debt in a normal shopping transaction, the shopkeeper is free to accept whatever they wish or reject the transaction entirely.
> To warm up a skeptical public, Bukele has promised every citizen $30 in bitcoin if they sign up for a government digital wallet. Ahead of the launch, El Salvador bought 400 bitcoins, Bukele said, helping drive the currency price above $52,000 for the first time since May. > In the early hours of Tuesday the wallet had not appeared on Apple Inc., Google and Huawei’s app download platforms, however, prompting a serie…
I've been watching this situation from 50K feet and I think the reason they built their own wallet is for the ability, for merchants, to cash out any bitcoin payment in USD instead of BTC using the government swap system
Why go with Bitcoin specifically? Why not use the Celo blockchain or Algorand instead and create their own stable coins on there? Both these networks are proof of work, transactions are very fast and cheap as well. Bitcoin is slow to validate transactions, is environmentally costly, and its value fluctuate, so I'm not sure what they were thinking. I wonder what the 30$ they receive from the gov is worth today after t…
He’s on record at a Bitcoin conference saying “BTC is worth x billion dollars, if we can attract just 1% of that to El Salavador as investment…”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm envisioning a lot of dirty looks from paper cash-preferring shopkeepers to crypto tourists when the tourists buy up all shop's inventory and leave the shopkeeper with just a few numbers in some app. EDIT: To be clear, I mean tourists each individually buying a normal amount of things using BTC, which adds up to the store exchanging it's inventory for a number in the app.
Didn’t the grandparent comment explain that in such a case, legal tender doesn’t apply? There’s no debt in a normal shopping transaction, the shopkeeper is free to accept whatever they wish or reject the transaction entirely.
[1] https://u.today/el-salvador-government-to-punish-businesses-...
Monetary Policy. Can someone explain how a country plans to implement a monetary policy (e.g. inject new currency during a recession to fund expansion) when they don’t control their national currency (Bitcoin).
It seems their monetary policy is remittances. My guess is ppl will quickly cash out to dollars. But how will the dollars get back to the local exchanges unless people are buying bitcoin there? This seems like a disaster in the making.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In El Salvador it means an obligation to accept it. Which is good for bitcoin adoption but does reduce people's freedom to refuse it
I'm envisioning a lot of dirty looks from paper cash-preferring shopkeepers to crypto tourists when the tourists buy up all shop's inventory and leave the shopkeeper with just a few numbers in some app. EDIT: To be clear, I mean tourists each individually buying a normal amount of things using BTC, which adds up to the store exchanging it's inventory for a number in the app.
I suspect more likely some rich people will find it more convenient to pay their tax bill.
> To warm up a skeptical public, Bukele has promised every citizen $30 in bitcoin if they sign up for a government digital wallet. Ahead of the launch, El Salvador bought 400 bitcoins, Bukele said, helping drive the currency price above $52,000 for the first time since May. > In the early hours of Tuesday the wallet had not appeared on Apple Inc., Google and Huawei’s app download platforms, however, prompting a serie…
I’d be skeptical about using a government wallet as well, though it could potentially make initial disbursements easier.