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One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure
161–170 of 299 posts
Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure
#162The 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…
Not really. Argentina is explicitly all about using crypto to get access to US Dollars. And they're all going through intermediaries, some who don't even control their own wallets and are just using available crypto exchanges. So that's a lot of 3rd parties, just not the Argentinian government.
https://www.freethink.com/technology/crypto-argentina-black-...
Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure
#163I 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.
The rats flee a burning building and move into the next rat's nest. Its nice to know what the current grift is. Although, it would be refreshing to see dumb money and hype thrown in a new direction.
Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, that was happening too, but I was getting an earful of terrible economic viewpoints in the earlier days. I guess they could have all been lying to puff up their investments, but then I guess I'm left with thinking those particular people were stupid and liars.
I remember hearing similar economic arguments in 2006 - 2012 about gold and silver. I often wonder if those same people moved into Bitcoin.
Yes, they did.
Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure
#165The 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…
Is sending Bitcoin really any cheaper than using something like Western Union? More convenient maybe.. but also more dangerous
Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quite literally what happened. My groceries cost over twice as much.
Ignoring the fact that you’re implying a 100% USD inflation over the past year, you’d only have 25% of the purchasing power if you “invested” in BTC per the GPs example.
"Inflation" is an average of several things. Actual inflation doesn't have to be even across all items. Groceries went up more than other things.
Edit: some examples https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-price-outlook/su... Retail egg prices went up 38% from July 2021 to July 2022.
Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lightning is popular because few prefer slow transactions. El Salvador primarily uses lightning network, same network Strike uses for instant cross border payments.
Of course, I stand corrected about that. So, aside from irreversibility of transactions, what is preventing adoption?
Setting up lightning channels are still slow, expensive, and worse require hot, online wallets.
Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I want to wake up one day and internet and anything related to it just doesn’t exist. Man that’d be a great day. Remove grifters, acquire actual progress. I wonder if there were people in the 80s that said that.
Not really. There are (and always will be) people who see no good in the Internet. I played a small part in its growth in the early 90s and even I have pangs of regret over what it has become. AND there was a lot of grift and lawlessness in the early Internet -- that is what paid the bills at first. However, at the time I was able to articulate all the ways moving X, Y and Z to the Internet would make things better -…
> However, at the time I was able to articulate all the ways moving X, Y and Z to the Internet would make things better -- for hours on end -- and I would 'win' those arguments. OTOH, all my crypto crazed associates have trouble doing that same thing today.
I find that most crypto-crazed enthusiasts don't have the foggiest idea about how it works, beyond some broad vague ideas. People who can articulate its benefits exist, but they tend to get drowned out. Many of them are building companies instead of bothering to prosthelytize or argue on forums.
Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> So it really demonstrates how much the BTC was benefiting from low-interest rate / inflationary policies.
It's almost like it's not a hedge at all and just another part of the exact same game as the rest of the market.
Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, that was happening too, but I was getting an earful of terrible economic viewpoints in the earlier days. I guess they could have all been lying to puff up their investments, but then I guess I'm left with thinking those particular people were stupid and liars.
I remember hearing similar economic arguments in 2006 - 2012 about gold and silver. I often wonder if those same people moved into Bitcoin.
those people (where I was) also loudly predicted (and lost real-money bets) on the trading floor that Obama was definitely coming for our guns and that mass shootings were all false flag operations to justify seizure of personal firearms. The Venn diagram of gun nuts and gold bug - hard money types at many places I frequent was basically a circle.