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Here is the retained purchasing power of each of the coins since the law was passed in September 2021: Legal tender 1: -15% Legal tender 2: +115% Guess which one has been deemed a "Failed experiment".
If legal tender #2 went up 115% in 4 years I would feel like a jackass for spending it in 2021 because I would have doubled my money if I saved it. Do you see the absurdity?
Do 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.
Those who continue to invest in and use the Lightning (layer 2) network think it will be used as currency but most see it as a long term storage of value, at least until infrastructure supporting layers 2 and 3 mature. As for “magically,” there’s nothing magic about its increase in value as it replaces legacy technology, chiefly gold as a store of value.
Do 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.
Why would anyone spend a single BTC/sat. if they know it could be worth 10x more in a few weeks/years?
> The government, she assured, will continue buying bitcoin and having reserves in this cryptocurrency Sounds like the term "Failed Experiment" is the writer's assertion and not the government official position.
From the article: > Salvadorans, with the exception of a few, never embraced Bukele’s initiative, who enjoys enormous popularity for his war against gangs, which dropped homicides to historic lows in El Salvador. A recent survey by the Central American University (UCA) revealed that 92% of Salvadorans did not use bitcoin in their transactions in 2024. I would say this points to an actual failed experiment, if true.
Earlier 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.
It'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…
Speculative 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…
This is probably economically a good idea, absent something like georgist land taxes. It eliminates some or all of the incentive to speculate in land, which is of course the whole problem El Salvador ran into with bitcoin as currency.
Do 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.
While it is true that adoption remained relatively low, the reason why they abandoned it is that the IMF made it a condition for the Salvadorian government to be able to receive a 1.4B loan.
Do 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.
Why would anyone spend a single BTC/sat. if they know it could be worth 10x more in a few weeks/years?