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

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331–340 of 394 posts

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

#331
post #8

Best part is the President trolling the IMF on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1435263064933285898

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

> Yea, best to troll on Twitter than fix your country that has the literal highest homicide rate in the world.

It used to be like that. Now the homicide rate is the lowest in modern history of El Salvador.

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

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re using the 2nd layer lightning network which has more tps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network#2021_adoptio...

Lightning network still requires you to have on chain transactions to open your connections though, it's not nearly the fix that people pretend it is.

Sure, and to close them. But now one on-chain transaction maps to N actual economic transactions happening, which is great for scaling. Not to say on-chain transactions don't also need to scale, but layer 2 will always be important.

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

#333
post #63
post #29

How are they getting around the very long wait times and large fees for transaction confirmations? I'm guessing the "government digital wallet" is just an account on a government service that changes values in a (centralized) database while holding a bunch of btc under the hood? Or maybe there are private bank options that do the same?

Credit card transactions take 3 days to clear the visa network, but swiping your card to pay for something is still instant. These things have already been solved in the application layer.

This is one of the reasons that many Uber drivers in El Salvador cancel rides paid with credit cards. They prefer to be paid in cash.

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

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mistake, I should have not said security holes. It's leaking and collecting private information. Did you look into the Android Manifest for the virus tweet link? Merci beaucoup for correcting my mistake.

It's leaking and collecting private information. How is this any different from any banking app?

Not much.

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

#335
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You just said having USD was part of the best of both worlds (despite fed monetary policy) and Bitcoin has the risk of crypto as well. Seems contradictory

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

#336
post #184
post #99

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).

Ability to implement monetary policy comes from monetary sovereignty. Monetary sovereignty is a spectrum, with countries having high degrees of MS and low degrees of MS. Since El Salvador pegs its currency to the US dollar it has a low degree of monetary sovereignty. Having a low degree of monetary sovereignty is the reason countries like Greece ran into so much trouble after the 2008 financial crisis. Greece doesn't…

Our currency is the USD. The former local currency only exists in collectors hands or old laws.

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

#337
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your own article admits that the lack of inflation is due to other factors such as reduced lending and velocity of money. All else equal if there were 40 rubles in the economy yesterday and 80 tomorrow, your rubles have half the purchasing power they had before. The printing of the money prevented a deflationary effect that would have enrichened those who held onto dollars under a period of anemic lending and lowered…

Sorry, but "all else equal" doesn't, and can never, exist. Any way to expand M2 itself changes the velocity of money, inflation expectations, and (probably most importantly) the expected future value of the US economy. Your claim was: > It's a drop relative to what it would be if the money supply had not increased accordingly If the money supply hadn't increased, those secondary effects would not have happened , so a…

>If the money supply hadn't increased, those secondary effects would not have happened

I can't tell if this is supposed to be sarcasm, humor, or merely a hilariously misinformed view of the effect of the pandemic on spending and lending behavior (which apparently you think happened instead due to the change in money supply).

>Sorry, but "all else equal" doesn't, and can never, exist.

Which is my point! As your paper explains, these secondary effects from pandemic and other causes help explain the expression of inflation beyond the money supply effects.

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

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you think of a traditional international transfer service that has better rates for I think the only thing cheaper may be to find some company that allows international wire for very cheap, and that normally requires holding a lot of fiat in the bank.

0.5% + an on-chain transaction fee, which varies between $0.50 and $60.00, and of course, you have to price in exchange rate slippage over the course of your (a) initial transaction and (b) the hours-long confirmation times of a BTC payment. BTCs top tercile realized volatility is 79% [2]. Then there's the risk your exchange just up and keeps your money (counter-party risk, see Quadriga). Or that the recipients excha…

How many even middle class Americans have a fidelity account? Do you think the average El Salvadoran sending remittance AND their counterpart are banked with low cost access to international wire transfer?

Transferring crypto, without KYC (which is a real concern for persons from central america who may not have documentation for a bank account or legal status in the US), for $~3 in transfer fees plus whatever rate they can get face-to-face (which could be near 0% exchange fee) is damn good. I doubt most of these marginalized workers in the US (not all El Salvadorans, I'm sure there are plenty of rich ones with Fidelity accounts who haven't been the utilitarian use case for crypto transfer) could do better without packing up a bundle of cash and travelling to El Salvador on a plane.

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

#339
post #14

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…

Celo is a proof-of-stake blockchain.

You're right. I made a mistake and now it's too late to edit my comment.

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

#340

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?

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...

It takes days for a credit card transaction to settle, and the buyer could file a chargeback and erase not only your profits but your cost basis. That (many cryptos) is a hell of a lot faster and more secure for a merchant.
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