"Failed Experiment" is euphemism for "IMF pressure."
El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender
71–80 of 930 posts
Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender
#72They have made just over 300 Million off the initial BTC purchase, and as of 15 minutes ago, continue to buy BTC everyday. They even have their own tracker, https://bitcoin.gob.sv/
I'd be surprised if DPRK doesn't already have access to the wallet and is just waiting to get the most out of it.
I highly doubt their BTC reserve is connected to the internet.
Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender
#73It's interesting and nice to see how progressive and creative El Salvador has been. Some failures are perfectly understandable when one is willing to try new things. Their approach to crime is another thing that comes to mind that was lambasted and ridiculed by the "international community" and "experts". Yet in the space of a single decade they went from murder capital of the world to safer than New Zealand (in terms of homicide rate), which is just staggering.
I love that they are innovating and experimenting and trying their own things, and don't let the stuffy pompous status quo hold them back.
Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender
#74I hope this is the domino that tips crypto over the edge.
Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender
#75Speculative asset class fails as non-speculative legal tender class. If king for the day with a sovereign wealth fund I wouldn't forbid investment choices like this on risk grounds, I mean you need risk assets as well as boring ones, right? But I have problems with the moral quality: it's like state investing in the casino business. Monaco? works fine. Anywhere else? It's got problems. Like a lot of people, I probabl…
> sovereign wealth fund
That reminds me of Hong Kong, where I used to live and which maintains a large sovereign wealth fund to ensure its currency is pegged to the US dollar.
While various US think tanks ranked it well on their checklists of "economic freedom", they tended to gloss over the rest of the recipe that made it work. Not just the huge sovereign wealth fund, but also how half the housing is government-run or subsidized and you don't really own land, you just rent it for a very long term from the government.
Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender
#76Do pro-bitcoin people still talk about goals of bitcoin being a currency that people use daily? I don't follow it closely, but that idea seems to have faded and now it's just an asset to buy and hold while it magically goes up forever.
It is not an asset that goes up forever. It is permissionless, very liquid asset that the governments cannot dilute. For many people this is a very big deal. A significant part of the world population lives under regimes where the governments control the money flow, heavily dilute savings in the single local fiat currency and can confiscate savings under a guise of money reform. While not nearly as bad, most democrat…
It's false safety. If the government can't get their drop of blood by diluting their fiat, they will simply do it another, more direct way.
At best it will work as long as few enough people are doing it that the government doesn't care.
Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender
#77Nothing says stability like a "currency" that swings +/-1000% in value.
How does anything swing -1000%?
Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
They did this to receive a loan from the IMF. The IMF was withholding the loan because of BTC and would not disburse it until they got rid of its status as legal tender.
Fair demand by the IMF. Presumably they require their loan to be repaid in fiat because of their internal charter. If Bitcoin adoption eventually removes El Salvador's ability to issue fiat, their loan can't be repaid.
El Salvador doesn't have a fiat currency. They are dollarized since 2001.
Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
They did this to receive a loan from the IMF. The IMF was withholding the loan because of BTC and would not disburse it until they got rid of its status as legal tender.
Fair demand by the IMF. Presumably they require their loan to be repaid in fiat because of their internal charter. If Bitcoin adoption eventually removes El Salvador's ability to issue fiat, their loan can't be repaid.
El Salvador can't issue fiat. They use US dollars. Only the US Federal Reserve can issue USD.
Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender
#80It's interesting and nice to see how progressive and creative El Salvador has been. Some failures are perfectly understandable when one is willing to try new things. Their approach to crime is another thing that comes to mind that was lambasted and ridiculed by the "international community" and "experts". Yet in the space of a single decade they went from murder capital of the world to safer than New Zealand (in term…
Note that their official homicide numbers no longer include bodies found in unmarked graves (as of 2021), people killed in conflicts between police and gangs (as of 2022), and people killed in prison. These are arguably reasonable decisions but unless you backfit the old numbers, you don't have the real trend.
I suspect that the trend would be impressive either way, you'd just lose the "safer than New Zealand" line.