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El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

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Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#361

Post by wordofx »

derektank wrote: post #329
culi wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very first IMF loan ever given was to France for reconstruction. One of the terms for the condition was to remove the only elected communist in their government from their position. IMF loans have ALWAYS been political

Arguably, both preconditions could have been simply intended to secure an eventual return on the loan. Having a communist in political leadership and allowing citizens to pay their taxes in Bitcoin both increase fiscal risk. I can understand the IMF wanting to reduce that risk as much as possible before providing a loan.

^ unsure why downvoting this as it’s 100% correct. IMF doesn’t hand out loans it doesn’t think will be paid back.

(This is where China swoops in and gives a loan at lower interest rates with shadow contracts to get the resources or assets)

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#362

Post by kylebenzle »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #319
Kindra wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

100% this. Food, medicine, transportation, education, and everything else at or near the bottom of Maslow's pyramid of needs still cannot be directly purchased with bitcoin. The other punchline to the Bitcoin joke is that it's finite. In 120 years it will begin to evaporate from existence as more and more wallets are simply lost to time.

Your being silly. Its an INTERNET currency for use on the INTERNET. I use it to pay for cloud storage, VPN and web hosting on the INTERNET.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#363

Post by pcthrowaway »

starspangled wrote: post #226
pcthrowaway wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is also against the conservative status quo thinking of how to deal with crime How are tough on crime policies "against the conservative status quo"?

The people who are seen to be the experts and authorities in social theory and practice in their ivory towers in the UN and academia cling to their outdated and falsified ideas of what works and what doesn't and refuse to change or accept new things. Firstly, they are adamant that "tough on crime" policies do not work, they were adamant that Buekele's reforms would not work. Now sure there are probably ways they may…

OK so you didn't need to say all that.

Saying you meant conservative in the sense that it's the opposite of radical, rather than conservative as in right-wing politics, would have sufficed.

Anyway, Bukele's treatment of the gang situation in El Salvadore can simultaneously be a flagrant violation of human rights while also being an effective measure to curtail untenable levels of gang violence.

I'm glad El Salvadore is safer. I don't love how Bukele handled things. And I don't know that I'd necessarily say he made the wrong call either; the net effect may be overwhelmingly positive for the vast majority of El Salvadorians.

Still, I don't think leaving people to rot in incredibly inhumane jails, without proper course for appeal, or the possibility of rehabilitation is humane. His handling of the situation has certainly made it more difficult if not impossible to determine innocence, or just sentencing for those who may have had very little criminal involvement prior to the emergency mobilization of El Salvador's police and military forces.

And it's certainly created more corruption in the "official" system with regards to respect for El Salvadorian and/or international laws, as is common with dictatorships. Corruption which cements his dictatorship with an iron fist while reigning un-checked.

I'm not convinced this iron fist move was the only answer either, but can at least accept the possibility that it was the only appropriate response to extreme level of gang violence they were facing.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#364

Post by aprilthird2021 »

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…

They gave it to them, with a contingency that they need to stop reckless financially dangerous policies, like allowing a wildly volatile cryptocurrency to be legal tender backed by the government at various levels of society.

IMF loans often come with the stipulation that you need to reign in wild and speculative financial policies

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#365

Post by heurist »

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.

There are early bitcoin holders who are now billionaires continuing to hold their highly liquid bitcoin.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#366

Post by olalonde »

twodave wrote: post #258

Didn’t we learn back in the 1500s that asset-backed currencies are unsustainable? Bitcoin will never, ever be able to take the place of a fiat currency because it carries with it many of the same problems as Spanish silver the conquistadors were traveling all the way to SOUTH AMERICA to mine half a millennium ago. It was essentially a very difficult proof of work. The only real advantage bitcoin has is that it’s easy…

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ might temper your enthusiasm towards modern fiat currency.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#367

Post by armada651 »

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?

I sleep better at night knowing my savings aren't part of a massive Ponzi scheme that's going to one day leave lots of working class people holding the bag as the savings they invested in bitcoin are transferred to the wealthy insiders.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#368

Post by FireBeyond »

sporkydistance wrote: post #336
georgeecollins wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bel…

So your one good use is... tax evasion. Huh.

It's not illegal to move money out of your investment accounts, it's just reported so that yes, you can have a tax liability.

I too, would like tax-free investments and funds.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#369

Post by hackernudes »

twodave wrote: post #258

Didn’t we learn back in the 1500s that asset-backed currencies are unsustainable? Bitcoin will never, ever be able to take the place of a fiat currency because it carries with it many of the same problems as Spanish silver the conquistadors were traveling all the way to SOUTH AMERICA to mine half a millennium ago. It was essentially a very difficult proof of work. The only real advantage bitcoin has is that it’s easy…

So the modern version of traversing the world for silver would be energy used to mine? Like hypothetically the US building tons of nuclear power plants to "win" at mining? Of course that wouldn't add to the supply of bitcoin (harder than silver), so I'm not convinced your analogy stands. I don't know much about 16th century history, so I'm not trying to be too snarky.

You might think about the long game where no more bitcoin is issued and only transaction fees are awarded to the miners. How much energy will bitcoin consume then? There will be an equilibrium somewhere between energy prices and transaction fees.

I'm not even saying we should abolish fiat currency, or that the USD has to be fully backed by a hard asset. Individuals will hold whatever asset/currency/whatever they think will be the best choice for them.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#370

Post by abduhl »

antihipocrat wrote: post #99
p_j_w wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Now the businesses are free to accept it or not instead of being required to accept it. That's all. Right, so it's no longer legal tender.

Legal tender does not have to be a mandatory means of exchange.

That is actually the defining characteristic of legal tender: “money that is legally valid for the payment of debts and that must be accepted for that purpose when offered”

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/legal%20tender

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