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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

#21

Post by wikfwikf »

n4r9 wrote: post #6
can16358p wrote: post #2

Many people buy Bitcoin to "hodl", not to use, giving it some gold-like characteristic. If there was some crypto without any incentives of hodling long term, I'm sure the adoption would be higher. People don't spend Bitcoin the same way they don't spend gold in daily life: to own it as a long-term value reserve.

My best guess at why the average person is hesitant to use bitcoin as a primary currency is: where do I go when it goes wrong? If the system holding my money is hacked, or I get scammed in some way, where is my legal recourse? Legal recourse is typically something provided by a state. But state regulation nullifies a lot of what bitcoin advocates claim is the advantage of cryptocurrency. I'm not up to scratch on the…

That's not the whole story. When Bitcoin started it was used more as a currency than it is now. Firstly by evangelists who tried to establish a BTC economy, and secondly in the illicit economy.

Bitcoin miners and devs took the project in a specific direction a few years later, optimizing it for use as digital gold, while making it much harder and more expensive to use as a currency.

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

#22

Post by wikfwikf »

Kathula wrote: post #19
croon wrote: post #11

It's not a failure because Bitcoin tanked (relatively), it's a failure because Bitcoin tanking was and will always be a significant risk. People who got rich from Bitcoin weren't savvy, they won the lottery. It's not a sound investment decision based on outcome. Investments are sound based on probability and risk beforehand. El Salvador gambled which is stupid. Whether they won or lost at the lottery is inconsequenti…

It isn't lucky to hold through multiple multi-year 80% drawdowns, it's called doing research and having a conviction. I didn't sell at 60k, I'm not selling now, because I have a strong conviction. You call this lucky, but it isn't. If you have a conviction and a span longer than four years you could get "lucky" too.

You would have been much luckier if your worldview had allowed you to sell at $60k and buy back at $20k.

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

#23

Post by saberience »

eimrine wrote: post #10
n4r9 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My best guess at why the average person is hesitant to use bitcoin as a primary currency is: where do I go when it goes wrong? If the system holding my money is hacked, or I get scammed in some way, where is my legal recourse? Legal recourse is typically something provided by a state. But state regulation nullifies a lot of what bitcoin advocates claim is the advantage of cryptocurrency. I'm not up to scratch on the…

> If the system holding my money is hacked We the hodlers believe that Bitcoin can be hacked only by hacking cryptografic hash-functions, which will lead to collapse all the banks, all passwords on all websites, maybe some data structures like hash-maps. > or I get scammed in some way, where is my legal recourse? How will you get scammed if you have a backup which you promise to yourself to not even introduce to comp…

This borderline snarky and condescending comment isn't helpful and isn't what is encouraged on HackerNews.

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

#24

Post by gjulianm »

eimrine wrote: post #10
n4r9 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My best guess at why the average person is hesitant to use bitcoin as a primary currency is: where do I go when it goes wrong? If the system holding my money is hacked, or I get scammed in some way, where is my legal recourse? Legal recourse is typically something provided by a state. But state regulation nullifies a lot of what bitcoin advocates claim is the advantage of cryptocurrency. I'm not up to scratch on the…

> If the system holding my money is hacked We the hodlers believe that Bitcoin can be hacked only by hacking cryptografic hash-functions, which will lead to collapse all the banks, all passwords on all websites, maybe some data structures like hash-maps. > or I get scammed in some way, where is my legal recourse? How will you get scammed if you have a backup which you promise to yourself to not even introduce to comp…

I mean, if being secure requires an average person having an airgapped computer holding the wallet keys, it's not going to see much adoption. Also you can't really use it as a currency if you do that.

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

#25

Post by hackerlight »

croon wrote: post #11

It's not a failure because Bitcoin tanked (relatively), it's a failure because Bitcoin tanking was and will always be a significant risk. People who got rich from Bitcoin weren't savvy, they won the lottery. It's not a sound investment decision based on outcome. Investments are sound based on probability and risk beforehand. El Salvador gambled which is stupid. Whether they won or lost at the lottery is inconsequenti…

> It's not a failure because Bitcoin tanked (relatively), it's a failure because Bitcoin tanking was and will always be a significant risk.

A lot of the risk can be hedged by custodians, so I don't agree.

The reason it should fail for transactions is because Bitcoin sucks for transactions. Few people will prefer slow, irreversible and expensive transactions.

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

#26

Post by Kathula »

wikfwikf wrote: post #22
Kathula wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't lucky to hold through multiple multi-year 80% drawdowns, it's called doing research and having a conviction. I didn't sell at 60k, I'm not selling now, because I have a strong conviction. You call this lucky, but it isn't. If you have a conviction and a span longer than four years you could get "lucky" too.

You would have been much luckier if your worldview had allowed you to sell at $60k and buy back at $20k.

I had no conviction that 60k would be the top. But I have a conviction that it'll be surpassed eventually.

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

#27

Post by donatj »

croon wrote: post #11

It's not a failure because Bitcoin tanked (relatively), it's a failure because Bitcoin tanking was and will always be a significant risk. People who got rich from Bitcoin weren't savvy, they won the lottery. It's not a sound investment decision based on outcome. Investments are sound based on probability and risk beforehand. El Salvador gambled which is stupid. Whether they won or lost at the lottery is inconsequenti…

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.

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

#28

Post by rawoke083600 »

Ja that is crazy... one wonder if they pick a different time (read long term market-regime) if the results would be any different for better or worse.

The best alternative payment system I have seen myself is M-Pesa in Kenya [0]

It's THE payment system in Kenya everything runs of it in terms of commence for the "ordinary man". It has a somewhat unique starting point, since Kenya (Africa) (I'm from there myself), was not "modern enough" for the everyday man to make use of traditional banking services. But even the "low tech man" had a cellphone.

I hope to see more examples like this in the future, and I'm sure many a BigCorp is doing just that, I do wish the next-gen version of these services will be more community-driven and less bigcorp. Oh gosh I almost described the original vision of bitcoin :)

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa

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

#29

Post by jollybean »

can16358p wrote: post #2

Many people buy Bitcoin to "hodl", not to use, giving it some gold-like characteristic. If there was some crypto without any incentives of hodling long term, I'm sure the adoption would be higher. People don't spend Bitcoin the same way they don't spend gold in daily life: to own it as a long-term value reserve.

"If there was some crypto without any incentives of hodling long term, "

The opposite.

Cryptos that are anchored to USD have no appeal. They're less useful than USD, and, there's no 'get rich quick' aspect. So what's the point.

The Ponzi Mania is what drives people into BTC and to talk about it incessantly on the Internet etc.. Without the mania, it's not going to spread.

An institutionalized crypto, like one by the government, and which had some kind of stability (i.e. central banked) would probably get critical mass and therefore have some utility.

El Salvador leader is basically criminally derelict, he should be jailed.

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

#30

Post by jollybean »

croon wrote: post #11

It's not a failure because Bitcoin tanked (relatively), it's a failure because Bitcoin tanking was and will always be a significant risk. People who got rich from Bitcoin weren't savvy, they won the lottery. It's not a sound investment decision based on outcome. Investments are sound based on probability and risk beforehand. El Salvador gambled which is stupid. Whether they won or lost at the lottery is inconsequenti…

It should not have been any kind of 'investment' in the first place.
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