Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

foreignpolicy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 265 posts

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

#131

Post by LightG »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #43
eqmvii wrote: 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.

I remember being shocked that my uncle was doing NFT trading and buying and selling digital land in the metaverse over Thanksgiving (though not his primary job). I thought I was an early adopter for having 1.4 ETH.

When you say "metaverse", what do you mean?

I'm not interested in the trade itself, I just don't see the metaverse as really properly established yet so where is this taking place? Maybe I'm out of touch.

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

#132

Post by CPLX »

dnautics wrote: post #85
mmargerum wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 impoverish…

> 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

I was with you until this point. There are absolutely reasons why there is a difference.

Time is directional and irreversible and human life is exceedingly finite. Thus there will always be a higher value placed on money you get today versus money you get in the future. Given that money, itself, is not a productive or useful asset at rest, inflation at a rate consistent with the gradual increase of aggregate wealth is a natural and healthy outcome of the system.

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

#133

Post by astoor »

CPLX wrote: post #5

> Bukele came onstage to an animation of beaming down from a flying saucer and outlined his plans for Bitcoin City: a new charter city to be built from scratch, centered on bitcoin mining—and powered by a volcano. Bitcoin City would be paid for with the issuance of $1 billion in “volcano bonds,” starting in mid-2022. The 10-year volcano bonds would pay 6.5 percent annual interest. $500 million of the bond revenue wou…

Furthermore "Blockstream first proposed the volcano bonds ... issued as tokenized securities on Blockstream's proprietary Liquid blockchain. Samson Mow of Blockstream assured Bloomberg that all the numbers would work out, under Mow's rosy assumption that the price of one Bitcoin would hit $1 million within five years ... The bonds are set to be issued via Bitfinex Securities, a new unit of iFinex, which runs the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange and the Tether stablecoin".

The thing is, when Bitcoin City fails, it won't make cryptocurrency advocates question their assumptions (like basing your planning on your ROI being 2000%, or that it is perfectly fine to entrust the running of major components vital to its success to convicted fraudsters), it'll make them feel more victimised by the "global elite" conspiracy theories and more aggressive in pursuing future schemes, as happened with the The Crypto-Currency Seasteaders (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28441794).

Can't see how this can end well for the people of El Salvador, and there do seem to be some parallels with Albania in 1997.

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

#134

Post by el-salvador »

jkhdigital wrote: post #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.

That would be very hard for El Salvador. The number one import and export partner is the U.S.

https://wits.worldbank.org/CountrySnapshot/en/SLV

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

#136

Post by vernon99 »

beervirus wrote: post #80
Passthepeas wrote: post #13

So the key reason for btc adoption in El Salvador is cheaper remittance payments, I find it odd that an article that sets out to criticize btc in El Salvador doesn't even mention the original intended use case.

1. Remittance payments were already feasible and happening before they adopted btc officially. 2. They’re not cheaper than other methods. They’re more expensive.

I think in thia case remittance is more of a way to create organic currency supply for btc. If you have btc from your son and the store owner you buy your fruits from has some btc from his son, why not to use btc for trade?

Currency has a gigantic network effect and this is seeding the network.

It’s not about the remittance per se.

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

#137

Post by el-salvador »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #42
throwaway20875 wrote: post #4

Bitcoin isn't the lone currency in the country and the dollar is still widely used there. Expect more of this as the president of El Salvador has invited the ire of the US government by exposing the US's involvement in corruption in his country: https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1469045510442864642 The media is about to go full court press on this guy, BTC is just one angle they'll use.

This is pure deflection. The use of BTC in El Salvador is a joke. Comments about whatever US corruption don't change that.

Many large retailers are accepting Bitcoin here in El Salvador using the Lightning Network or Chivo.

What I've seen is that those who recently bought Bitcoin, didn't want to spend their Bitcoin if they had USD.

At least last month, when Bitcoin price was going up, they preferred to spend USD instead of Bitcoin.

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

#138

Post by KarlKemp »

throwaway20875 wrote: post #16
KarlKemp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like that complaint of Brexiteers, that the European Union, which they wanted to be oh-so-independent of, isn’t giving them the deal they had promised. The whole premise was that Bitcoin would allow El Sal to free itself from under the power of the US($). I can’t even tell if you consider that effort to be successful or not. But considering the average American probably thinks ‘El Salvador’ was the guy Scorce…

>I doubt any theories of “the media” having anything to gain from conspiring against the country Aside from your sweeping and snide remarks on Americans, this is a woefully naive take. The US derives a lot of its power through the global monetary system. It can essentially isolate an entire country from large segments of global trade by simply sanctioning it (severing SWIFT transactions and threatening any banks with…

The snide remarks against Americans are essential for my point; Even if the media had those interests and ability to coordinate, their efforts are directed at an audience, and that audience needs to care for anything further to happen. And unless you find oil or Muslims in El Sal, they don’t and won’t.

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

#139

Post by el-salvador »

dundarious wrote: post #18
Passthepeas wrote: post #13

So the key reason for btc adoption in El Salvador is cheaper remittance payments, I find it odd that an article that sets out to criticize btc in El Salvador doesn't even mention the original intended use case.

Why are retailers forced to support BTC transactions if that is not a key part of the adoption?

Based from what I've seen form the rule of law system in El Salvador for the past months...

That the most possible answer is that...

Someone from the government tweeted or said that they had to do it on a tv interview, otherwise they would officially face fines or perhaps closures.

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

#140

Post by motohagiography »

acdha wrote: post #115
motohagiography wrote: post #111

These are interesting ideas. I like the idea that coin mining's so-called waste of electricity is creating demand for geothermal energy plants that wasn't there previously. There is an argument to be made that the reason we don't have pervasive green energy is that a) we don't need (demand) enough of power to force investment in renewables, and b) energy prices are too low to drive green tech innovation in the sector…

> Cryptocurrencies are a big part of solving the environmental problems activists identify No, they’re not and it’s shameful to try to promote proof-of-waste under the guise of environmentalism rather than just acknowledging that you are trying to find buyers. There’s no shortage of useful applications for green power. Having constant competition to waste that power has incentivized keeping dirty power online and del…

You can't afford not to. The only way we reduce our impact on the planet is by managing its resources effectively, and genuine incentives that drive that efficiency are the only way to achieve that. Poverty is what you get when you don't value what you have, and it's practically the definition of inefficient use of resources.

Making geothermal plants economical by leveraging demand from crypto mining that scales directly in real time to respond to real economic transactions is probably the most elegant and efficient economic system ever conceived of.

The challenge with energy is economic transmission and storage, but by tying currency to it, you don't store or transmit energy, you store and transmit demand for energy in the currency, and this facilitates efficient economic energy production on demand at the time of a transaction for any business conducted in it.

If the ideas in these comments are indeed new, someone should inform the Nobel committee. I don't think they are, but a geothermal energy currency solves a lot of problems.

Post reply on HN