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One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

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Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#141

Post by Yizahi »

lake_vincent wrote: post #121
moomoo11 wrote: post #108

I want to wake up one day and cryptocurrency and anything related to it just doesn’t exist. Man that’d be a great day. Remove grifters, acquire actual progress.

What is more likely is that you would wake up in a world where Bitcoin may not exist, but is completely dominated by crypto nonetheless. Within a generation or two, I predict that all asset ownership will be crypto-backed. Property. Automobiles. Artwork. Securities. And of course, currency. Fiat itself will become a cryptocurrency once more millennials are in charge. I reserve judgement as to whether or not this will…

Could you please describe in your own words how an asset can be "crypto backed", and exactly what operations/interactions are improved by this?

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#142

Post by dragontamer »

Auracle wrote: post #132
dragontamer wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you seen the dollar’s buying power recently? Yeah, its up like 100% over Bitcoin and like +30% over Euro, Yen, and GBP? In fact, holding Cash/USD has been basically one of the best performing things in my entire portfolio this year (after oil/energy) Have _you_ seen BTC's buying power recently?

That all depends on the timeframe you’re looking at. The Bitcoin I bought (not nearly enough of) at under $80 is doing a lot better than any cash I still have from around then. A year or two from now Bitcoin very well might be back above it’s all time high.

When people are complaining about the declining purchasing power of USD, they are mostly talking about since November 2021, because that's when inflation started to really kick in.

Its ironically, also when BTC really began to collapse from its $60,000 high. So it really demonstrates how much the BTC was benefiting from low-interest rate / inflationary policies.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#143

Post by WHATDOESIT »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #140
WHATDOESIT wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're buying into trust of that government. With BTC you're buying into trust of the technology and other network participants. Is it really so different? I don't trust governments so much - my local currency is currently facing 25% YoY inflation. I bought Bitcoin.

It's much simpler. People want $ for £ for education tourism etc. Successful forex traders are just middlemen for these txns. The make sure that you can always sell $ even if there is no one to buy them at that exact moment.

Well, and isn't it the same for BTC then? In the city where I live, there's tons of Bitcoin ATMs everywhere - and people using them, pretty clearly to go around their everyday business, as if it was a bank ATM.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#144

Post by karaterobot »

I asked a group of visiting college students from El Salvador about the situation with the Chivo wallet. They all uniformly believed the U.S. had put sanctions against the country's official exchange, making it hard to send money between the two countries. I could not find any evidence that such sanctions had actually occurred, but they all believed it was true. I wonder how they got this idea, how common it is, and whether it's had any effect.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#145

Post by simonh »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #139
hailwren wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even so, this scheme only makes a little sense. A better approach might have been for the government to have set up a USD-based remittance program of its own. This is just not true. Crypto as foreign remittance has been proven and is working quite well in Argentina. What you really don't want as a layperson in Latin America, is for really any third party -- but especially government third parties, to have control o…

you also, however, don't want your government to utterly collapse

True, but that’s a completely separate concern. Frankly that’s likely going to happen anyway. El Salvadorians suddenly trusting the government with large amounts of their cash isn’t going to make that government any more fiscally competent. Better not to go down with them.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#146

Post by spywaregorilla »

simonh wrote: post #145
spywaregorilla wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you also, however, don't want your government to utterly collapse

True, but that’s a completely separate concern. Frankly that’s likely going to happen anyway. El Salvadorians suddenly trusting the government with large amounts of their cash isn’t going to make that government any more fiscally competent. Better not to go down with them.

It's not a separate concern if you're arguing the government should not be able to print its own currency.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#147

Post by pjkundert »

moomoo11 wrote: post #108

I want to wake up one day and cryptocurrency and anything related to it just doesn’t exist. Man that’d be a great day. Remove grifters, acquire actual progress.

Ya, back to where globalist bankster elites control every aspect of our lives. Ah, the good old days... ;)

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#148

Post by georgeecollins »

hailwren wrote: post #133
yuan43 wrote: post #120

The policy only ever made a little sense. What El Salvador desperately wants is a currency it can inflate to pay for the stuff it can not afford. In this regard, it is no different than any other country. What it had was a currency it does not print (US dollar) and for which there is an ongoing international shortage. What El Salvador got with Bitcoin was yet another currency it does not print and for which there is…

> Even so, this scheme only makes a little sense. A better approach might have been for the government to have set up a USD-based remittance program of its own. This is just not true. Crypto as foreign remittance has been proven and is working quite well in Argentina. What you really don't want as a layperson in Latin America, is for really any third party -- but especially government third parties, to have control o…

That's a depressing statement about Argentina and Bitcoin. I would be much more interested if Bitcoin were useful for legal transactions in countries with stable currencies and banking.

Bitcoin enthusiasts can be so anti-government that they seem to think ever government will turn into a basket case like Argentina. Perhaps every government gets into trouble eventually. But you could wait a couple lifetimes for it in some countries.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#149

Post by psychlops »

pjc50 wrote: post #78
donatj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the dollar’s buying power recently? I went from living very comfortably to living paycheck-to-paycheck in about 6 months. Holding my value in USD has become a significant risk.

People are unable to distinguish "prices have gone up from money printing" from "prices have gone up due to the pandemic and the war between Russia and Ukraine". Neither bitcoin nor gold can hedge against the latter.

I guess you'll have to put me in the camp of unable to distinguish. There is always an "emergency" reason to print money.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#150

Post by cuteboy19 »

WHATDOESIT wrote: post #143
cuteboy19 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much simpler. People want $ for £ for education tourism etc. Successful forex traders are just middlemen for these txns. The make sure that you can always sell $ even if there is no one to buy them at that exact moment.

Well, and isn't it the same for BTC then? In the city where I live, there's tons of Bitcoin ATMs everywhere - and people using them, pretty clearly to go around their everyday business, as if it was a bank ATM.

Differences:

1. No one needs btc for education tourism etc. So there is no underlying demand that the general btc holder can middleman onto

2. You aren't supposed to hodl any kind of forex pair hoping it goes up forever.

Also I forgot to stress that forex is trading and not investment

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