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 love this sentence. Might steal it. Thanks
Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin
201–210 of 265 posts
Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
>It’s not about the remittance per se
Exactly my point.
Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Globalist” is also often used as a codeword by antisemitists, which always raises the question of intention when you see someone using it: https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-how-did-the-term-gl...
Holy mackerel, you're actually going to twist my statement and say it's anti-semitic. What a jerk you are. I am being kind to you; what I'm thinking is quite worse.
Well, here's your chance to explain exactly what you did mean and why you used a poorly-defined term with a lot of baggage in attempt to attack the forum rather than engaging intellectually with the content. The innocent definition of the term isn't a pejorative and certainly doesn't have a meaning which would say it's okay to ignore something just because it ran in Foreign Policy.
Also, while you may have had purely innocent intentions note that your use of that term apparently made someone else feel safe calling me an anti-Jewish slur and telling me to kill myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29521708
Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
That doesn’t make any sense — a carbon tax has the positive feedback cycle you’re describing. Cryptocurrency doesn’t have that effect because it doesn’t care about the source of the power it’s wasting — as we’ve seen with coal plants coming online — and the waste has no connection to benefits so the demand is insatiable, and miners will use whatever source is cheapest after exhausting surplus renewables no matter its…
I will restate that the incentives of making a geothermal cryptocurrency may be the highest positive impact we can have on the planet in our lifetimes. How do you exhaust a renewable? By driving up its price, which creates higher rewards on innovation that brings it down. So you don't exhaust it. Carbon taxes were a farce invented and promoted by academic managerialists with no understanding of human desire, as a way…
> How do you exhaust a renewable? By driving up its price, which creates higher rewards on innovation that brings it down.
This is a naive position: geothermal, like hydropower, have only a few locations where they can be feasibly tapped. If that power is used by cryptocurrency miners, that will drive up the price until it's no longer cheaper than the alternatives and that region will not be attractive to relocating industrial operations.
That could be excusable if cryptocurrency was useful but since over a decade and billions of dollars have yet to find a productive application, there's no way it's worth taking capacity away from useful activities. There's no shortage of demand, so anyone who makes a cheap non-carbon electricity source will have customers even without being subsidized by proof-of-waste speculators.
Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the article: > More than 91 percent of Salvadorans want dollars, not bitcoins. The official Chivo payment system was unreliable at launch in September—the kiss of death for a new system. Users joined for the $30 signup bonus, spent it or cashed it out, then didn’t use Chivo again.
9% of the population of an entire country wanting bitcoin sounds like a decent win to me. It's not clear to me where that optimistic number comes from though.
Wait this is far from a decent win! In such a fragmented societies as the ones from Latin America, I wouldn't be surprised if this <9% is actually part of the population that benefits from this the most
Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the article: > More than 91 percent of Salvadorans want dollars, not bitcoins. The official Chivo payment system was unreliable at launch in September—the kiss of death for a new system. Users joined for the $30 signup bonus, spent it or cashed it out, then didn’t use Chivo again.
9% adoption rate in 2 months for something optional is amazing. It takes time for people to learn to use it, as it's very different from the traditional banking system.
There were also incentives to join the system, which is what (most of the) people go for.
Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin
#207I’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.
The most innovative part of crypto is how it encourages "normal" people to become personally financially invested in promoting it.
Let's call it "Scamtech"
Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin
#208Why does he insist on Bitcoin? Their biggest use cases are 1. incoming USD payments from relatives in the States and 2. Retail USD transactions. BTC is really bad for both of these. Why not stablecoins on some cheaper chain?
I think the focus on BTC is a bad thing too. But I also don't think stable coins only are the way. The new economy needs a mix of both.
They're not building a new economy really. It's a country with incompetent leadership and failed local currency, they don't seem to be able to pull it off.
And regular folks are just trying to survive - they heavily depend on USD from relatives, but they pay massive fees to corrupt institutions. They are trying to work around that using BTC, but it also has high fees, and brutal volatility on top of that. If your monthly income is $500 and you risk losing 20-30% of that to fees & volatility, you're screwed. No wonder people protest in the streets.
What they really need right now it a stablecoin on cheap network. It's not gonna change the world, but it's gonna solve their biggest problems right now.
Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin
#209Why does he insist on Bitcoin? Their biggest use cases are 1. incoming USD payments from relatives in the States and 2. Retail USD transactions. BTC is really bad for both of these. Why not stablecoins on some cheaper chain?
Stablecoins won’t go up and lift up the country in a world of money printing and fiat debasement.
it's a country with failed currency and failed leadership. USD printing is far from being their biggest problem.
Re: Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Crypto is fiat currency without even so much as the fiat. Meaning it floats completely at random based on the mood of the participants... which now is driven solely by wanting to sell that crypto to some Greater Fool.
What about company stocks, maybe Evergrande. Hold them while waiting for Greater Fool.
Sure, if the company becomes insolvent, then the stocks will be backed by as little as Bitcoin, and more fixed in supply. Perhaps HODLers of crappy stocks should just forget about the whole revenue-generating business that was supposed to be behind them, and insist that they're a store of value