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Bitcoin becomes Legal Tender in El Salvador

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Re: Bitcoin becomes Legal Tender in El Salvador

#111
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a thought experiment. Imagine you're trying to prove the relationship between your personal savings rate, and the date at which you can retire. - If I save 100% of my money now, I can retire now (because clearly I don't need money to live). - If I save 0% of my money now, I will never be able to retire (because I'll have none when I forfeit my income).

Again, I think this is a rather theorerical argument. Retirement is not solely coupled to the amount of money you have. I personally have aspirations and enough money to not having to work for a few years. And still I work lots of hours to achieve certain goals that have nothing to do with increasing my money.

Perhaps financial independence is a better term. Retirement depends on FI, but FI doesn't necessarily mean retirement.

FI is solely determined by the amount of valuable assets you have

Re: Bitcoin becomes Legal Tender in El Salvador

#112

Sigh. Bitcoin BTC, at 3 transactions per second, doesn't have the capacity to support El Salvador's economy. Even if Lightning worked (it doesn't), BTC doesn't have enough capacity to open channels for users at a reasonable cost. Salvadorians will end up forced to use proprietary payment networks denominated in BTC. BTC is not cash anymore, it won't work as such. There are other cryptos that could work, we'll have to…

> Even if Lightning worked (it doesn't) What doesn’t work? I’ve only skimmed some LN search results, and it looks like there are a bunch of services using it, including strike [0] which was mentioned in a comment of the big thread here [1]. This would have the same problem (proprietary network) you mentioned, but it seems to be working still? [0]: https://strike.me/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27408978

Sure, give it a try. Let me know how it goes.

Re: Bitcoin becomes Legal Tender in El Salvador

#113
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can do that with gold. Gold is less volatile, and the value of the volume of a €2 coin in gold is 9 months of El Salvador nominal GDP per capita. Or the gold could be stored elsewhere and accessed via an app, with exactly the sort of database every bank already uses. Either way, BTC adds nothing. Apps might, depending on the banking infrastructure, but BTC itself? Nada.

This is a new unit of measure! Now I need to know my monthly salary in eurocent volume of gold.

€0.01 coins have a volume of ~0.346ml, gold has a density of 19.3g/ml and a current price of 60.89 USD/g, so a eurocent-sized gold coin would be worth 407.02 USD :)

Re: Bitcoin becomes Legal Tender in El Salvador

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if Lightning worked (it doesn't) What doesn’t work? I’ve only skimmed some LN search results, and it looks like there are a bunch of services using it, including strike [0] which was mentioned in a comment of the big thread here [1]. This would have the same problem (proprietary network) you mentioned, but it seems to be working still? [0]: https://strike.me/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27408978

Sure, give it a try. Let me know how it goes.

I've been using Lightning on sites like coinpayments and others for months. It works perfectly every time.

Again, I'd like to ask you, what doesn't work?

Re: Bitcoin becomes Legal Tender in El Salvador

#115
post #60
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how all money-esque things work. First mover advantage is pretty extreme in anything money related. > I’m very curious to see an elite class whose core virtue is based on being an early adopter. How do you think the elite class became elite? How do queens and kings get their power? By having some ancestor in the right place at the right time take advantage of an opportunity before other people tried.

>How do you think the elite class became elite They fought and murdered the competition. Their offsprings continue doing that until they no longer had the intelligence or power and got exterminated and their wealth redistributed. This is very, very different than stumbling upon something.

Stumbling upon the right person to murder is still stumbling upon something. Lots of people fought and murdered, only a few became the rich and powerful.

Re: Bitcoin becomes Legal Tender in El Salvador

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if Lightning worked (it doesn't) What doesn’t work? I’ve only skimmed some LN search results, and it looks like there are a bunch of services using it, including strike [0] which was mentioned in a comment of the big thread here [1]. This would have the same problem (proprietary network) you mentioned, but it seems to be working still? [0]: https://strike.me/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27408978

This is some shit poster that wouldn shill some currency like nano or Bitcoin cash I guess. Lightning works fine. I've been using it for past year with zero problems. Check blue wallet, phoenix wallet, bottle pay, strike, opennode, lnmarkets, kollider, sphinx chat

If you're highly motivated and technically expert, you might be able to get non custodial payments to work on lightning. Even then, your experience may be something like this - https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1376286470256873475.html

Re: Bitcoin becomes Legal Tender in El Salvador

#117
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, give it a try. Let me know how it goes.

I've been using Lightning on sites like coinpayments and others for months. It works perfectly every time. Again, I'd like to ask you, what doesn't work?

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1376286470256873475.html

Re: Bitcoin becomes Legal Tender in El Salvador

#119
Perhaps El Salvador has a different definition of legal tender, but if not, this is sucky. Legal Tender is generally a means you cannot refuse for debt repayment. For buying etc. you can accept or refuse just about anything, in most/many places, but for settling debt, legal tender cannot be refused.

So I'm just some guy. Someone owes me money and says, nah I'll repay it with Bitcoin. Not only is that mega-volatile, most people have no idea how to use it. Also it's easy to fall for a scam if you don't know how it works.

And further, you can typically accept anything as debt repayment if you so like. Cash, art, pretty shells, or indeed, Bitcoin. Making it legal tender actually funnels people into having to accept Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin becomes Legal Tender in El Salvador

#120
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Lightning on sites like coinpayments and others for months. It works perfectly every time. Again, I'd like to ask you, what doesn't work?

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1376286470256873475.html

This does not show that the lightning network doesn't work. It shows that lightning has less locked value than Ethereum's layer 2. Incentivize yield farming is likely the cause.

In terms of lightning being usable now, I've been using it for years with no real problems, both as a merchant and as a consumer.

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