World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help • Hacker News Board

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#101

Post by bawolff » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:42 AM UTC

desine wrote: post #84

jollybean wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public justification for killing Gaddafi is 'stopping the imminent genocide', which by the way, he literally declared he was about to commit. But the real smart people who have the special knowledge know that it was obviously >. The thing is, geopolitics is messy and there are quite a number of 'factors' many of them true to some extent. The Gulf tribal leaders absolutely hated him and they (i.e. Qatar) lent thei…

>The public justification for killing Gaddafi is 'stopping the imminent genocide', which by the way, he literally declared he was about to commit. >The thing is, geopolitics is messy and there are quite a number of 'factors' many of them true to some extent. Yes, exactly. It's not that I know I am right, or that there's one answer. But it is interesting only one of the discussions is allowed, and one very plausible e…

> But it is interesting only one of the discussions is allowed

Is someone stopping you?

Having people not be convinced is not the same as preventing discussion.

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#102

Post by throwaway4good » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:44 AM UTC

zakember wrote: post #95

joosters wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's not as simple as you think? These countries generally chose to use USD, do you really believe that they all just made a stupid decision with no upsides?

You are right. It isn't easy. But no one ever said running a country would be easy. If you are choosing to use another country's currency for your economy, you carry all the risks associated to that currency

In general the USD or the euro emerges as defacto form of legal tender on the other side of some sort for societal collapse. It can be a temporary thing, but it is not a healthy thing.

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#103

Post by rntksi » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:45 AM UTC

zakember wrote: post #28

gman83 wrote: post #22

I'm very ignorant about Bitcoin, but given El Salvador's big problem with crime, doesn't adopting Bitcoin give the cartels an extremely easy way to launder their money?

Depends on how tech savvy they are. Bitcoin has a public ledger, so once you know who the owner is of a particular address, you can view all of their past transactions and all the addresses of those transactions, potentially exposing a lot of metadata of their activities

There was an article a while back on Hacker News top list where the blog author explained, in actually very simple steps, how to launder it through services such as Tornado, to disjoin the trail of money. Pretty intelligent piece of work.

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#104

Post by exporectomy » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:47 AM UTC

sub7 wrote: post #33

We keep talking about how tech should be used to make a net positive change yet we allow this glorified linked list that has 0 real world benefits after a decade to get a pass because some man children run around promising it's the future.

Can you identify someone expressed both of those beleifs? Maybe they're separate people, who are obviously entitled to have conflicting opinions.

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#105

Post by desine » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:48 AM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #101

desine wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The public justification for killing Gaddafi is 'stopping the imminent genocide', which by the way, he literally declared he was about to commit. >The thing is, geopolitics is messy and there are quite a number of 'factors' many of them true to some extent. Yes, exactly. It's not that I know I am right, or that there's one answer. But it is interesting only one of the discussions is allowed, and one very plausible e…

> But it is interesting only one of the discussions is allowed Is someone stopping you? Having people not be convinced is not the same as preventing discussion.

The rhetoric used stops me from bringing it up, in certain circles. I really only can bring it up with close friends/family, or anonymously on the web. I've been called anti-semitic, racist, alt-right, my intelligence insulted. Again, related to another comment in this thread, it's seen as a "conspiracy theory". The mainstream news media didn't cover it, but certain less tasteful websites did.

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#106

Post by erulabs » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:49 AM UTC

remarkEon wrote: post #60

A lot of these Bitcoin threads get old. The detractors, the pumpers, the bag hodlers ... it's all so tiresome. Here's something I want answered (all three parties are invited to respond): Is there a dependency on mature internet infrastructure that exists for a country to adopt BTC as its currency? Seems like there is to me, but maybe I'm not fully appreciating how this works or am overestimating the connectivity req…

I agree strongly with the tiresome comment, and I am a bag holder and have been interested in monetary policy and economics my entire life - but not enough to read the same 10 comments over and over every day.

In answer to your question, technically no, but realistically yes.

Technically, BTC “transactions” can happen "on paper", the keys can be physically handed off to each other, etc (there are plenty of possible answers here that are all fairly vague and hand-wavey). There are many problems with this that make it wildly impractical though (see replies to this comment).

In reality, El Salvador (if I've understood correctly) was going to use a lightning "side-chain" for dramatically faster and cheaper transactions - this would require connecting to a known (and centralized) main service. I would guess though that this isn't exactly intended to replace their currency as a day-to-day usage, but rather for large transactions (like the down payment on real-estate) which is already an "internet-strictly-required" transaction, even in developing nations.

I hope that answers the question - if BTC was meant as a replacement for buying a can of coke, you'd be 100% correct that the internet infrastructure is nowhere near sufficient - but despite what the "I hate bitcoin so much my mouth is foaming" and the "my entire life depends on the price going up" crowds say, BTC is not being suggested as the only currency for El Salvador, just as "legal tender" as an alternative option for its citizens to store their wealth in a system that is not controlled by banks that are outside of El Salvador. Personally, I think it's quite nice that developing nations now have a lever they can use against, for example, the World Bank.

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#107

Post by chroem- » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:52 AM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #94

chroem- wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "glorified linked list" solves a lot of problems in peer to peer computing. In fact, blockchains are arguably the biggest breakthrough that subfield of computer science has ever seen.

> solves a lot of problems in peer to peer computing. Can you list ten of these problems if there are a lot of them?

Sure:

- consensus

- distributed computation

- statefulness

- peer to peer identity

- peer to peer reputation of nodes

- resistance against many classic failure modes (e.g. Sybil attacks)

- peer to peer source of truth (e.g. Namecoin/DNScoin)

- verifiable code execution (smart contracts)

- immutability/ tamper proof

- and (obviously) peer to peer payments

Granted, some of these overlap with each other, but the point still stands. The pearl clutching over cryptocurrency seems extremely inauthentic when you consider the vast sums of energy tech giants expend to target us with ads.

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#108

Post by adrianN » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:52 AM UTC

delaaxe wrote: post #53

adrianN wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty much the opposite of a bitcoin fan, but I think if you replaced "bitcoin" with "dollars" in your comment you would see that it sounds a bit weird. I bet most dollars have been involved in shady business at some point during their life. With bitcoin you have a better chance at figuring this fact out I guess. Regarding quantum computers: Quantum computers are not known to be exponentially faster at hashing t…

Quantum issue is not with hashing but with private key derivation

Oh I didn't know that! Thanks for pointing it out.

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#109

Post by Vinceo » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:53 AM UTC

mmaunder wrote: post #15

elevenoh wrote: post #6

>"While the government did approach us for assistance on Bitcoin, this is not something the World Bank can support given the environmental and transparency shortcomings," they added. Environmental as the #1 concern? Bitcoin's enegery:market-cap ratio - a proxy for energy vs. value to humans - is >300x better than an airline & 60x better than JP Morgan & 20x better than google's. https://twitter.com/Okcoin/status/1403…

The absolute figures are bitcoin uses about the equivalent of Sweden’s energy consumption every year. Renewable energy isn’t free and should be replacing legacy sources, not being used to do pretend work. Environmental is a huge factor.

Why should renewable energy be replacing legacy sources rather than bitcoins sources?

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#110

Post by qiqitori » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:54 AM UTC

senectus1 wrote: post #90

qiqitori wrote: post #25

Other random bitcoin concerns (apart from the environmental ones): - How about people stop accepting laundered bitcoins first and foremost? - Any bitcoins that have provably been involved in illegal stuff - Any monero/whathaveyou that come from exchanges that accept bitcoin that have received Bitcoins that were involved in illegal stuff - Will bitcoin still have value when quantum computers are around?

>- How about people stop accepting laundered bitcoins first and foremost? How do people know its laundered? If they know, its likely they're complicit so unlikely to stop if being asked to... > - Any bitcoins that have provably been involved in illegal stuff See above > - Any monero/whathaveyou that come from exchanges that accept bitcoin that have received Bitcoins that were involved in illegal stuff See above also…

Easy in the case of ransomware or any other cases where a victim has to pay Bitcoins. The entity who pays the ransom/whatever sends the money to a Bitcoin address. This money is immediately marked as "confiscated" in cooperating jurisdictions. That money will be mixed in a tumbler (operating in a non-cooperating jurisdiction) with other Bitcoins, which get the same treatment. Or exchanged for a different cryptocurrency in an exchange that facilitates money laundering, and all cryptocurrency that is traceable that goes through that exchange is immediately marked as "confiscated".

You can keep using Bitcoins in non-cooperating jurisdictions, sure. But they'll automatically be less valuable or worthless because you can't use them in many countries.

People with development experience in Bitcoin could implement this in a jiffy. Doesn't even take a government really, you could probably build a startup whose main thing is to provide this information. Then people/exchanges/etc. could decide on their own if these Bitcoins have value or not.