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El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

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Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#191

Post by kristjansson »

portaouflop wrote: post #188

IMF gave them 1.4 billion to abandon the “experiment”: > The IMF made this a condition for a loan of 1.4 billion US dollars (1.35 billion euros). In December of last year, the IMF reached an agreement with President Nayib Bukele’s government on the loan of the stated amount to strengthen the country’s “fiscal sustainability” and mitigate the “risks associated with Bitcoin,” as it was described. —- I dislike cryptocur…

Conversely if that’s all it takes to induce them to give up it tells you something about the benefits they felt were accruing from BTC.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#192

Post by hammock »

odo1242 wrote: post #171
ggm wrote: post #4

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…

It might have worked if El Salvador made their own cryptocurrency which they control and could mint more of and backed it properly as a non-speculative legal tender, but they didn’t and that didn’t happen.

Correct. The IMF can’t run its debt trap/looting playbook without more currency control

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#194

Post by syndicatedjelly »

kristjansson wrote: post #191
portaouflop wrote: post #188

IMF gave them 1.4 billion to abandon the “experiment”: > The IMF made this a condition for a loan of 1.4 billion US dollars (1.35 billion euros). In December of last year, the IMF reached an agreement with President Nayib Bukele’s government on the loan of the stated amount to strengthen the country’s “fiscal sustainability” and mitigate the “risks associated with Bitcoin,” as it was described. —- I dislike cryptocur…

Conversely if that’s all it takes to induce them to give up it tells you something about the benefits they felt were accruing from BTC.

Is that really the message?

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#195

Post by MaxPock »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #165
jaggederest wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you don't really own land, you just rent it for a very long term from the government. 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.

Economically, communism is a great idea. In practice, you get "collectivization" in the Soviet Union that basically starves millions to death

Don't millions starve too in capitalism?

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#196

Post by awnird »

portaouflop wrote: post #188

IMF gave them 1.4 billion to abandon the “experiment”: > The IMF made this a condition for a loan of 1.4 billion US dollars (1.35 billion euros). In December of last year, the IMF reached an agreement with President Nayib Bukele’s government on the loan of the stated amount to strengthen the country’s “fiscal sustainability” and mitigate the “risks associated with Bitcoin,” as it was described. —- I dislike cryptocur…

If bitcoin was such a success then why did they need an enormous loan?

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#197

Post by LudwigNagasena »

georgeecollins wrote: post #105
ptero wrote: post #17

That's heavy editorializing: El Salvador keeps buying the Bitcoin for its strategic reserve. Businesses and citizens can keep using it. But for getting an IMF loan, IMF (which, to put it mildly, doesn't like Bitcoin) required the end to Bitcoin legal tender status. Now the businesses are free to accept it or not instead of being required to accept it. That's all. The government plans to keep buying and using it.

There seems to be two concepts that are getting conflated. One concept is that BTC is a good investment. Historically that is undeniable. The other concept is that it is a good medium of exchange. I think that is not so true because 1) its neither cheap nor easy to buy a lot of things with it 2) a thing that goes up in value is not a good medium of exchange because people don't want to spend it, they want to hoard it…

> a thing that goes up in value is not a good medium of exchange because people don't want to spend it, they want to hoard it.

So... traditional money is good because it forces poor people to spend it? Rich people have no problem converting cash into assets that go up in value and holding onto them converting back at need. It's only poor people that have to hold comparatively high percentage of their assets in something that loses value.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#198

Post by arthurbrown »

fode wrote: post #184

I spent three months in El Salvador before the Bitcoin Legal Tender law passed, then another three months after it was enacted. From day one, I knew it wasn’t going to work. That’s when I flew back to Miami, went back to the drawing board, and stopped being a Bitcoin maxi.

Can you speak more to the difference between the two experiences?

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#200

Post by stephen_g »

portaouflop wrote: post #188

IMF gave them 1.4 billion to abandon the “experiment”: > The IMF made this a condition for a loan of 1.4 billion US dollars (1.35 billion euros). In December of last year, the IMF reached an agreement with President Nayib Bukele’s government on the loan of the stated amount to strengthen the country’s “fiscal sustainability” and mitigate the “risks associated with Bitcoin,” as it was described. —- I dislike cryptocur…

Despite that interference, from everything I’ve read though it’s hard to describe the bitcoin experiment as anything else than a massive failure…
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