Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin

foreignpolicy.com

81–90 of 265 posts

Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin

#81
post #26

I’m exhausted by cryptocurrency. There’s a kernel of neat tech innovation and a reasonable argument about monetary policy obliterated by an avalanche of greed, hype, fraud, and magical thinking.

There's a lot of hype but there's also a lot of potential to revolutionize commerce. imagine if you could pay 10 cents to read an article or tip a web site. How badly does this torpedo googles ad biz?

Not to be flippant but I would still just wait for someone to post the archive link.

Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin

#82
post #26

I’m exhausted by cryptocurrency. There’s a kernel of neat tech innovation and a reasonable argument about monetary policy obliterated by an avalanche of greed, hype, fraud, and magical thinking.

There's a lot of hype but there's also a lot of potential to revolutionize commerce. imagine if you could pay 10 cents to read an article or tip a web site. How badly does this torpedo googles ad biz?

And what feature of cryptocurrency allows and or benefits this whereas traditional finance systems cannot?

Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin

#83
I’d love to see El Salvador successfully leave the USD plantation, but there are far too many hucksters and opportunists lurking in their orbit to have any confidence that they’ll make it. Case in point: choosing a Bitfinex-affiliated underwriter for the volcano bonds is either astonishingly poor judgment or willful ignorance.

Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would the problem be to use Transferwise?

Cost! And speed! I did a transfer wise last week and it cost me $15 in fees. What is this, ethereum?(a joke cos ethereum is too expensive to be useful for the retail user). I could have sent BTC and it would have been quicker and cheaper.

$15 is right in line with current btc transaction fees. Maybe a tiny bit higher, but not much.

Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin

#85
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your uncle is gambling, just like every day-trader on the traditional stock market before crypto was ever invented.

At this point the equities market is also gambling based on what the fed decides to do next.

> At this point the equities market is also gambling.

FTFY

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but [also] at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.

"Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become "profiteers," who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.

- John Maynard Keynes (ironically)

Technically he was talking about short term high inflation, but there is no mechanistic reason why this would be false for long-term low inflation, and it is exactly what we are seeing after 50 years of secular inflation as a policy.

Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David Gerard has an anti-crypto agenda and is a regular on r/buttcoin. He has publicly trashed crypto multiple times. [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/nwblbp/podcast_pr... [1] https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2021/0611/In-El-Salvador-... [2] http://blocktribune.com/david-gerard-can-get-long-way-just-b... [3] https://old.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6dkc8w/why_do_we_...

Agenda? Hit-piece? Are people allowed to have opinions any more, allowed to draw conclusions and take a side? As if Albert Einstein authored anti-quantum hit-pieces, had a classical physics agenda (or choose any other contentious issue in history where people had divided opinions).

It’s pure projection: cryptocurrency holders have to promote their goods for sale constantly because there’s no innate value. This does not constitute an “agenda” to them because recognizing it as such would basically be acknowledging their lack of utility.

Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin

#87
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No crypto asset is currency or will be currency. They're tradable assets, not unlike Beanie Babies. And I don't see fiat that way because: 1. I use if every day. It's widely usable as currency, it's inflationary, and its value doesn't fluctuate wildly. 2. Fiat only ever promised to fix the problems with gold, and it did that (in the US and Europe at least). It didn't ride a wave of hype that it couldn't live up to. 3…

There’s plenty of fiat criticism outside of crypto, maybe you are in a bubble of neoliberalism

Not by anybody taken seriously.

Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin

#88
post #26

I’m exhausted by cryptocurrency. There’s a kernel of neat tech innovation and a reasonable argument about monetary policy obliterated by an avalanche of greed, hype, fraud, and magical thinking.

There's a lot of hype but there's also a lot of potential to revolutionize commerce. imagine if you could pay 10 cents to read an article or tip a web site. How badly does this torpedo googles ad biz?

> imagine if you could pay 10 cents to read an article or tip a web site.

1) nobody actually wants to pay this, though; the whole set of pre-existing arguments against micropayments apply, too many to list here. My fave one is "micropayments enable microfraud", though. And if you think cookie banners are annoying wait until you see the cryptobanners.

2) you definitely can't scale this on a blockchain, and any scalable system you build to do it will be Not A Blockchain. How many web pages does the world view in the time of a single bitcoin block? Would you say it was more or less than ten million?

Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin

#89
post #26

I’m exhausted by cryptocurrency. There’s a kernel of neat tech innovation and a reasonable argument about monetary policy obliterated by an avalanche of greed, hype, fraud, and magical thinking.

There's a lot of hype but there's also a lot of potential to revolutionize commerce. imagine if you could pay 10 cents to read an article or tip a web site. How badly does this torpedo googles ad biz?

10c tip, $31 gas fee.

Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would the problem be to use Transferwise?

Cost! And speed! I did a transfer wise last week and it cost me $15 in fees. What is this, ethereum?(a joke cos ethereum is too expensive to be useful for the retail user). I could have sent BTC and it would have been quicker and cheaper.

I don't think you are including all variables.

BTC fees does not include the conversion from currency1 -> btc acc 1-> btc acc 2-> currency 2. Where conversion from 1 currency to another would be more expensive than the BTC fees itselve.

From which currency to which currency did you transfer?

Post reply on HN