I honestly don't get it. I sent BTC from one wallet to another, and it took like 90 minutes. And $20 fees.
I cannot imagine paying for anything with this. How can user experience be compared to paying with VISA, PayPal or anything else?
El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so
321–330 of 394 posts
Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you are spreading misinformation. Your whole comment is absolutely wrong. [0]: https://twitter.com/OpenNodeCo/status/1435264127241527306
Chivo wallet, the official standard and the new national wallet of El Salvador, evidently has an interface with Lightning and the Bitcoin network, and it is an optional way for merchants and consumers in El Salvador to begin accepting payments denominated in Bitcoin or USD. Nobody is required to use Chivo, but people are required to accept legal tender. There's no reason to expect that Chivo-Chivo transfers will go t…
From a screenshot I earlier today, McD El Salvador is using Opennode.com for Bitcoin payments.
Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so
#323I honestly don't get it. I sent BTC from one wallet to another, and it took like 90 minutes. And $20 fees. I cannot imagine paying for anything with this. How can user experience be compared to paying with VISA, PayPal or anything else?
I tried sending XRP from one wallet to another, and it took a little more than a minute. Much much better than BTC, but still not credit cards...
Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so
#324Earlier 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…
> If you wanted to reform this in the existing world banking system, you'd need the US and El Salvador government to work with each other to some treaty which streamlines these channels; this would lower costs either directly or when competition arose
Major banks in El Salvador accept cheques from US banks, sometimes of them without any fees or very low fees. Main disadvantage is that it is slow.
I haven't seen this used as a mainstream remmitance channel though. But an Salvadoran American relative could give their family a checkbook and they could deposit it here.
This is for cheques though. Different from Panama and Mexico whose ACH systems are connected with the US Fed ACH system in a way El Salvador isn't.
Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect the number of people who would actually do this sort of thing is quite minuscule. They could probably be handled with something like "Well tourist, the cops here think it is a civil matter so you can spend the rest of your vacation dealing with the local legal system if you really want to buy everything in this random shop for some reason." I suspect more likely some rich people will find it more convenient…
I didn't mean one tourist buying everything (which would be problematic no matter what the currency was), I meant in the aggregate. I've added an edit to my comment to clarify.
Bitcoins are currently at $45k, so I guess this would mostly just be an issue at a luxury car place, which... should probably prepare to handle these types of transactions I guess. But that's not like Grandpa's Little Old General Store, so I bet they can handle it.
I'm actually curious how this will be implemented specifically. I guess (although I'm not well-informed on the ecosystem) that most of the places that let you do small cryptocoin transaction either use some smaller coin, or they must have some way of doing fractions of a bitcoin, right? In which case, the fraction system would have to be proprietary, I guess? I can't imagine the law required shopkeepers to use any particular proprietary exchange...
Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
El Salvador’s adoption goes beyond making it legal tender, they require acceptance: > every economic agent must accept bitcoin as payment when offered to him by whoever acquires a good or service https://theconversation.com/bitcoin-will-soon-be-legal-tende...
Bitcoins are at like $45k, if somebody comes in to the local CVS or whatever and buys a stick of gum with a bitcoin, are they expected to have $44,999 in change sitting around? That seems... odd.
Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so
#327I honestly don't get it. I sent BTC from one wallet to another, and it took like 90 minutes. And $20 fees. I cannot imagine paying for anything with this. How can user experience be compared to paying with VISA, PayPal or anything else?
This comes up in every thread about Bitcoin, and in every thread there are numerous responses stating "lightning network is the solution to the fees". And.. that's exactly what El Salvador is using. Instant settlement, with basically 0 fees.
Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fiat currencies can go to zero in an instant via political changes. (Ex, see indian demonitization in 2016). All forms of money have risks. I think the diversification of supporting BOTH USD and BTC seems to get a bit of the best of both worlds.
Right so why not USD coin instead of Bitcoin?
USD-pegged stablecoins kind of have the worst of both worlds - the risks of crypto AND the risks of fed monetary policy. Stablecoins shouldn't be used as a store of value, only as a medium of exchange.
Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jo sends $100 from Bank A to Alice at Bank B, then Bob sends $100 from Bank B to Jo. The banks will have no USD to settle at clearing as a result. Did Jo and Alice participate in a USD transaction?
I think that is a great analogy. If you view Bitcoin on the main blockchain as M0 money supply, then side channels like the Lightning Network and other centralized payment processors that have been popping up can be viewed as M1 and more commonly M2. If Bitcoin's original thesis of truly decentralized P2P cash still holds, then it should be viewed as an M0 money supply. Financial services and products build on top of…
I don't like that analogy. Unlike M0 and M1, every BTC on the lightning network represents one BTC on the L1 chain. The L1 funds are locked in order to participate in L2.
Re: El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so
#330Found this interesting deck[1] on El Salvador's digital climate while looking for smart phone adoption statistics. It would appear that there are more than enough smart devices to allow for such a transition successfully. Already on Twitter we're seeing crypto-punks there using Bitcoin to pay for their McDonalds, paying something like 0.000002 Bitcoin. I can't help but wonder what the outcome +1 year / + 5 years will…
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
Just spreading falsehoods without understanding anything...nice.