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El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so

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Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so

#221

Post by Geee »

melenaboija wrote: post #153

Could someone explain me the intuition behind the BTC drop? Why changing the owners of a small fraction of an asset that is not affected by any policy should reflect this? Is it just the feeling from some investors that BTC can not be taken seriously? It is hard for me to understand the logic of it and the only reason that could come to my mind is that some investors don't understand what they are buying.

Maybe it was someone protesting, or sending a message. It was a big trader(s) selling or shorting a lot of bitcoin and causing a cascade of liquidations on leveraged trades (over $1B). However, when the margin traders have been liquidated, the price has a better support for continued upside.

Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so

#222

Post by purple_ferret »

sabellito wrote: post #158
richwater wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, best to troll on Twitter than fix your country that has the literal highest homicide rate in the world. Murder good for Bitcoin?

I have the feeling you don't really care about El Salvador's homicide rate.

I'm sure most Americans do (along with the country's corruption, poverty, and overall decline) as it's part of the reason El Salvadorians are flooding the USA over the southern border

Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so

#223

Post by JumpCrisscross »

la_fayette wrote: post #77
hsavit1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what an awful waste of energy. Each bitcoin transaction uses the energy equivalent the entire lifespan of a tree. Effectively, each bitcoin transaction is cutting down of tree... in this case, for a hamburger

I think awful is how the banks of the developed world are earning money with the poorest. The fees for remitance make up for a large portion of the el salvadors GDP. The developed world is responsible for climate change, so I guess the poorest have their right to use their money how they want and not in the way some banks or you consider it. The impact of the lightning network on energy consumption is even neglible..…

> fees for remitance make up for a large portion of the el salvadors GDP

Average remittance costs for El Salvador are between 1.67% and 4.33%, with the average being 2.85% [1]. Meanwhile, the two Bitcoin ATMs in the country charged a 5% fee.

[1] https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2021/06/Bukeles-Bitc...

Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so

#224

Post by thebean11 »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #215
kleer001 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy use is not energy source. There's been no full accounting of the carbon footprint of bitcoin mining, only its use. Much of it is done using geothermal or other renewable sources. (edit, incorrect) That El Salvador is adopting it refutes your second claim. Then there's the lightning network which increases the transaction throughput. Everything is going to be okay.

Using renewable energy still takes that opportunity away from other users who end up stuck with X% of their energy use provided by non-renewables, so the real carbon footprint is still similar.

Not necessarily. That would only be true if storing and/or transporting energy was cheap or easy.

Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so

#225

Post by la_fayette »

oh_sigh wrote: post #146
la_fayette wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think awful is how the banks of the developed world are earning money with the poorest. The fees for remitance make up for a large portion of the el salvadors GDP. The developed world is responsible for climate change, so I guess the poorest have their right to use their money how they want and not in the way some banks or you consider it. The impact of the lightning network on energy consumption is even neglible..…

In most cases, economic transactions are beneficial for both parties. Yes, banks are "earning money with the poorest", but only because banks and literally every business engage in activities which (ideally) earn them money. Right now, the poor have a choice of using a banks service, or to not use it. The bank could, I guess, not offer services to the poor, but that seems like you're removing choices from the poor, n…

The homo economicus would search for the cheapest way to do so, thats why they start to use bitcoin and tranfer it to tjeir grandmom...

Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so

#226

Post by tehjoker »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #129
la_fayette wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think awful is how the banks of the developed world are earning money with the poorest. The fees for remitance make up for a large portion of the el salvadors GDP. The developed world is responsible for climate change, so I guess the poorest have their right to use their money how they want and not in the way some banks or you consider it. The impact of the lightning network on energy consumption is even neglible..…

> I think awful is how the banks of the developed world are earning money with the poorest. The fees for remitance make up for a large portion of the el salvadors GDP. The fees are high because the costs are high. Existing remittance channels are shackled by anti-money-laundering, anti-organized-crime, anti-terrorism, know-your-customer compliance costs (typically enforced by the governments of multiple jurisdictions…

El Salvador was the site of Ronald Regan's financing of death squads in the 1980s. The cost of preventing these crimes and terrorism pales in comparison to the official terrorism that was perpetrated on that country.

I'm not sure if there's a direct tie to Iran-Contra, but in Nicaragua Regan directly contravened a congressional funding ban and used Iranian and CIA drug money to fund the death squads there. Similar funding sources were probably at play in El Salvador.

Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so

#227

Post by [deleted] »

kobieyc wrote: post #94
aazaa wrote: post #22

> 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

[deleted]

Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so

#228

Post by Tenoke »

dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote: post #206
Tenoke wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than a year after its smart contract introduction devs have still failed to create a single DEX (let alone something more complex) there despite trying. The one Algo were hyping about having a dex last October (idex i believe) have quietly removed mentions of Algo on their site after failing despite all the PR. This should tell you how good of a choice Algo is for anything. There's plenty other promising POS cha…

Is AlgoDex not working? What would be the purpose of rushing out tools and smart contracts that need to be verified and routinely cause irreparable damage due to security and bugs? There are already two HN startups using Algorand: 1) Lofty.AI, which has been a smash hit for tokenizing real estate and making daily income and 2) Algofi, which is S21 and intended for lending. There's also ANote + Opulous for owning toke…

>Is AlgoDex not working?

According to their site[0] no, but now they do have a testnet demo. Looking at the demo it's Order Book, not AMM which further makes me think that AMMs are still impossible there while Order Book-style can always be done with some centralization. The docs are sadly one tiny page that has no technical details so I won't dig further.

>What would be the purpose of rushing out tools and smart contracts that need to be verified and routinely cause irreparable damage due to security and bugs?

But they did publish smart contracts. More than a year ago. They also hyped them up, and hyped up a DEX which was supposed to come last October. Some random PR articles from 2020[1,2,3]. This clearly failed quietly despite supposedly smart contracts already being functional then.

>There are already two HN startups using Algorand: 1) Lofty.AI, which has been a smash hit for tokenizing real estate and making daily income and 2) Algofi, which is S21 and intended for lending.

Cool, if I see them working how I see similar dapps working on so many other chains maybe I'll change my mind.

>Devs are flocking to Algorand for how easy it is to use the wallet and create unique tokens on a fast and scalable network.

Are they? I see devs that try and fail to build there, and less devs discussing it than other chains. I see a lot of PR. That's it. Maybe it has a future but it seems much further behind, despite claiming it was already there in respect to smart contract last year. At this point if they catch up I'll give it another look but for now their PR seems to just make claims that don't reflect reality.

0. https://about.algodex.com/

1. https://blockonomi.com/idex-complete-rebuild-ethereum-scalin...

2. https://coinpedia.org/press-release/algorand-crypto-hidden-g...

3. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/08/06/idex-raises-25m-...

Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so

#229

Post by thomastjeffery »

thebean11 wrote: post #224
thomastjeffery wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using renewable energy still takes that opportunity away from other users who end up stuck with X% of their energy use provided by non-renewables, so the real carbon footprint is still similar.

Not necessarily. That would only be true if storing and/or transporting energy was cheap or easy.

Yes, that is a factor. Other factors include abandoned coal fire plants being restarted for mining.

The question is not if there is a factor that is positive, but whether the positives outweigh the negatives. Every source I have seen is confident they do not.

Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so

#230

Post by thehappypm »

imtringued wrote: post #171
thehappypm wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're joking right? The "bad currency" here is clearly Bitcoin, which cannot actually be used to buy things in 99.999% of global market situations. If El Salvadorian businesses want to buy computers, trucks, fertilizer, food, whatever, BTC is meaningless and will need to get converted to USD.

Salvadorians in USA convert their USD in BTC and Salvadorians in El Salvador convert it back to USD. They aren't trying to invest or hold onto Bitcoin.

You’re agreeing with me. You wouldn’t want to hold onto Bitcoin because it’s the inferior currency option.
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