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El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

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Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#331

Post by 2030ai »

markasoftware wrote: post #297
skybrian wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that doesn't distinguish Bitcoin from other cryptocurrencies. The thing that distinguishes Bitcoin is fame, pure and simple. Everyone has heard of it.

Fame is part of it, but it's more that it's IMO probably the only truly decentralized cryptocurrency. Not just in terms of the nodes and miners being well spread out between organizations and parts of the world, but also in terms of its development and governance. Sure, there's a relatively small group of core contributors to Bitcoin, but they don't have much fame or personality cults around them like Ethereum's Vita…

Eth famously forked and reversed txns due to someone getting scammed.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#332

Post by thinkski »

chungy wrote: post #232
redundantly wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gestures at all of the billionaires

I dare you to come up with a single example of someone that has a billion dollars in liquid assets. They probably don't exist: "billionaries" are worth billions on paper, thanks to stocks, investments, real estate holdings, etc. All in all, billionaires are a bad example of holding legal tender, because that just doesn't happen.

Warren Buffett. Berkshire Hathaway has over $300B in cash reserves, Buffett owns 15% of Berkshire and directs investments — he chose to park all that value in cash reserves, roughly $50B of that is his share.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#333

Post by attila-lendvai »

georgeecollins wrote: post #92
josu wrote: post #37

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 the value of the dollar increased or stayed 100% stable we would be in a depression. In fact, the only time the dollar increased in value for long was the great depression. The point of legal tender is that it reduces in value slowly over time, so you don't just hoard it under your bed. If someone paid me in BTC, I wouldn't spend it, I would hang on to it. That's not how currency works. Currency is the thing you w…

hence the two words/concepts: currency and money.

and they both can share the same unit of account.

The Unadulterated Gold Standard articles have a more detailed discussion of this.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#334

Post by qingcharles »

Kindra wrote: post #268
kylebenzle wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeh, it failed so hard no one even uses it anymore.

Are you able to point to a single case where Bitcoin was used as legal tender in an every day business transaction? By this I mean, can you give an example where someone ordered a cup of coffee with Bitcoin directly and not through a proxy?

Is it even possible with BTC? I mean, how long does the transaction take to completely confirm? 30 mins? I guess if you paid way in advance; or loaded up a prepaid wallet.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#335

Post by 2030ai »

LAMike wrote: post #125
derriz wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it has none of the properties of gold as an asset. The value of bitcoin is highly correlated with equities and anti-correlated with gold. It’s the opposite of what you want to be holding as a hedge against a stock market crash.

It is more rare than gold and getting more rare every 4 years. What is the current supply of gold and what will it be in 2050?

It is getting less less rare every 4 years.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#336

Post by sporkydistance »

georgeecollins wrote: post #129
ks2048 wrote: post #33

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.

It doesn't have to be "magic" that causes it to go up forever. People need a way to put large amounts of money in places that are difficult for governments to get to and /or easy to move across jurisdictional borders. Think: money launderers, people that are worried their corrupt government will seize their assets, people hiding money from someone they owe like a spouse in a divorce. These all seem to me to be reason…

Here's one good use: I looked into leaving the US to become a citizen elsewhere. I have about $15MM in my retirement. I would have to pay a penalty on my taxes for early withdrawal, and be taxed when I renounce my citizenship. In theory I could cash everything out, buy a huge amount of BTC, move to another country (within a week, or quickly!!), and then cash it out in their currency. Of course, all sorts of alarm bells would go off if a normal schmoe like me tried to move that much money out of my investment account, because I'm not rich enough to break finance laws like people worth 10x, 100x or 1,000x more than me can do without going to jail. And I'd be terrified that the other country would OOPS my deposit like in the film Blow with Johnny Depp.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#337

Post by fsckboy »

ToValueFunfetti wrote: post #203
awnird wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If the USD was such a good currency, why does the US operate at a deficit?

>why does the US operate at a deficit?

are you talking about a trade deficit (the US operated at a trade deficit virtually the entire time it grew from 13 former colonies to the post WWII economic colossus. Lending money to a growing economy so it can turn around and purchase the equipment you are selling which it will use to be more productive is the secret sauce of a growing economy)

or are you talking about a budget deficit? many countries around the world operate with budget deficits; "socialist" governments generally have higher deficits as they spend to maintain living standards whether the economy justifies it or not. The size of the deficit (they will grow all the time) does not matter, what matters is "as a %age of GDP".

none of this, btw, has much to do with monetary policy, the maintenance of the currency.

"strong" or "weak" currency really makes no difference. The strength/weakness of the currency how the books are balanced after the fact of what has happened in the actual economy. A country with a strong currency will find imports inexpensive, and will have trouble selling its goods, and citizens will be incented to buy imports. A country with a weak currency will have difficulty importing goods, but will have less trouble exporting. It's the currency that balances these books.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#338

Post by wnc3141 »

mlcrypto wrote: post #216
stephen_g wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Massive success actually for anyone holding. Did you forget the price is $100k?

Thats deflation, which makes for a poor tender, albeit attractive asset (less of volatility)

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#339

Post by ralusek »

ethbr1 wrote: post #299
tonyhart7 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I dare you to come up with a single example of someone that has a billion dollars in liquid assets." royal family kingdom of saudi arabia

Yeah, but they accumulate dollars for a lot of very specific reasons.

I think they were making a joke about "liquid" assets, i.e. oil is liquid.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#340

Post by chowchowchow »

liontwist wrote: post #291
bangaladore wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better way to put it is that a deflationary currency is, counterintuitively, not a particularly good currency. The reality is, Bitcoin and similar, are not being used to actually purchase things. Not at any notable percentage. You're "best bet" is to horde it, and that doesn't make a good currency.

I come to these threads expecting criticism about bitcoin being funny internet money run by a small group of shady characters. But most of the comments are about how stable currency and stores of wealth are actually bad! It kind of sounds like we think bitcoin is working. If USD is inflating and Gold is staying still, is gold “deflating”?

What do you call someone who bought a pizza with BTC last year? Paper hands? Shouldn’t they have hodled and not had pizza? How can this be a currency.
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