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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

#241

Post by mrguyorama »

Supermancho wrote: post #230
mrguyorama wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile pork and chicken are roughly the same as they've always been where I am, at least ignoring sale pricing. Hell, I got 3.5 pounds of steak tips for $20 about a month ago. My food costs have absolutely gone up, but it's MUCH closer to the "10 percent" figures quoted as inflation than anything close to what you have said. Where do you live and shop?

> I got 3.5 pounds of steak tips for $20 about a month ago. A lot of cattle was recently liquidated (made into meat products, this year) as grazing fields have been drying up and, due to climate change, meat pipelines have had to start making MAJOR changes.

I want to clarify this was a specific prepackaged product that likely needed to be clearance because it wasn't popular. General purpose steak tips are NOT $6 a pound at my local hannaford. However, they aren't much more expensive than they are historically, which is why I'm looking for more info from the parent poster, who claims essentially 100% increase in product prices, while my personal experience on a wide array of items is closer to 10% on a sporadic list of things. I think they are experiencing some rather extreme local price situations.

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

#242

Post by throw10920 »

undreren wrote: post #240
throw10920 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its only valid use cases were illicit transactions What makes this argument different than the "I don't have anything to hide" anti-privacy argument?

The “only valid use cases” of privacy is not to hide illegal or criminal activity. Crypto currency is a wasteful, destructive, expensive and innefficient technology that has few benefits except facilitating crimes like tax evasion, money laundering, financing terrorism and purchasing drugs.

> The “only valid use cases” of privacy is not to hide illegal or criminal activity.

What are the others, in the specific context of this conversation (which is privacy from the government, not from random other citizens)?

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

#243

Post by [deleted] »

dragontamer wrote: post #227
nightski wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation is basically the exact definition of the change in USD's value relative to goods & services. Unless you are arguing we currently don't have any inflation, which would be a tough sell :) Also this last CPI report oil & gas pulled inflation down whereas just about everything else pulled it up. Food is hot, but a lot of other things are as well including non-commodity service based industries.

> In fact, holding Cash/USD has been basically one of the best performing things in my entire portfolio this year (after oil/energy) This is what I'm arguing. Do you deny it? ------ In a bear market, you don't have to outrun the bear to get ahead. You only have to outrun your friends.

[deleted]

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

#244

Post by undreren »

throw10920 wrote: post #242
undreren wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “only valid use cases” of privacy is not to hide illegal or criminal activity. Crypto currency is a wasteful, destructive, expensive and innefficient technology that has few benefits except facilitating crimes like tax evasion, money laundering, financing terrorism and purchasing drugs.

> The “only valid use cases” of privacy is not to hide illegal or criminal activity. What are the others, in the specific context of this conversation (which is privacy from the government, not from random other citizens)?

Governments could easily use private data to blackmail or silence you, even if you’ve done nothing illegal.

This is perhaps the primary reason that the right of privacy even exists.

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

#245

Post by upsidesinclude »

n4r9 wrote: post #125
upsidesinclude wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my other comment. El S. is in a pretty strange place because they don't have their own currency. They have no control over their economy in that regard, so adopting a separate currency which frees them from singular dollar dependence is quite useful. Nullifies what claims exactly?

> Nullifies what claims exactly? Bitcoin seems to be intended as a decentralised payment system that bypasses any third party institutions. My gut feeling is that: in order for a state to provide legal recourse, bitcoin addresses need to be linked to a centralised personal/business identity that can be tracked down and sued or prosecuted if necessary. For Bitcoin to feel safe for the normal person, it would have to i…

You might be right.

The important thing is that the person must accept the responsibility of owning all aspects of their wealth.

No one can remove it from you, but you can make the mistake of giving it away. Then you bear the responsibility for losing it.

That's not a very big trade off for some people.

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

#246

Post by spiralx »

JauntTrooper wrote: post #102
afterburner wrote: post #79

Earlier 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.

When I saw the announcement of the release of the Bitcoin 0.3 client back on Slashdot in 2010, both the whitepaper and the comments (and who was making them) cemented my view as it being more of the "an-cap gold-buggery" that the site was rampant with. Basically the same people making the same arguments that they had over the Liberty Dollar a year previously following the arrest of its founders, and before that any time money came up as a topic i.e. fiat bad, gold good - which carried straight into fiat bad, gold good, Bitcoin best of all...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_dollar_(private_curren...

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

#247

Post by koonsolo »

the_gastropod wrote: post #226
koonsolo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you on the El Salvador part, but not on the investment part. > Investments are sound based on probability and risk beforehand. Investing in bitcoin had a limited downside (lose 100%), but a very high upside (reaches it's initial goals). For me, the potential gains outweighed the low probability. I consider myself very lucky that I made some money (wasn't crazy to put all my money in there). But for me, w…

Boy do I have the investment for you! Give me your life savings, and I'll give you 50% equity in my Evil Empire. I plan on taking over the planet by 2028. What an upside! Only risk is losing 100%—that's practically nothing in comparison! Or I guess you could buy lottery tickets. Probably a slightly less insane way to "invest" your money.

Both seems like a bad idea. Bitcoin on the other hand, made me a shitton of money :D

Have a nice day.

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

#248

Post by simonh »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #146
simonh wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn’t say any such thing and I don’t see how that’s relevant as remittances from the US are generally in Dollars, not local currency.

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

#249

Post by frankenst1 »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #231
frankenst1 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growth continued on second layers: Bitcoin's tx count on the Lightning Network has doubled over the last year. Forks of Bitcoin who attempted to scale by increasing the blocksize all failed and are practically dead (Bitcoin SV, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Cash, eCash, Bitcoin ABC, ...).

That's not growth, bitcoin's throughput is still less than a 56k modem from 25 years ago. Being able to send and receive from anyone is growth, lightning isn't on the bitcoin chain until it gets synchronized. If I give you a bitcoin address, you can't send anything to me with the lightning network. It's unnecessary nonsense because bitcoin is pointlessly crippled. Every other cryptocurrency has plenty of throughput a…

> lightning isn't on the bitcoin chain until it gets synchronized.

That is literally the purpose of building second layers. We don't need to keep on-chain records of every microtransaction and coffee purchase in an immutable, ever-growing blockchain synchronized across thousands of nodes across the globe.

> If I give you a bitcoin address, you can't send anything to me with the lightning network.

Sure I can. It is called a submarine swap.

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

#250

Post by CyberDildonics »

frankenst1 wrote: post #249
CyberDildonics wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not growth, bitcoin's throughput is still less than a 56k modem from 25 years ago. Being able to send and receive from anyone is growth, lightning isn't on the bitcoin chain until it gets synchronized. If I give you a bitcoin address, you can't send anything to me with the lightning network. It's unnecessary nonsense because bitcoin is pointlessly crippled. Every other cryptocurrency has plenty of throughput a…

> lightning isn't on the bitcoin chain until it gets synchronized. That is literally the purpose of building second layers. We don't need to keep on-chain records of every microtransaction and coffee purchase in an immutable, ever-growing blockchain synchronized across thousands of nodes across the globe. > If I give you a bitcoin address, you can't send anything to me with the lightning network. Sure I can. It is ca…

> Sure I can. It is called a submarine swap.

You can call it whatever you want, someone still has to sync with the main chain, where all the utility is. You can get together with your friend and give each other IOUs all day every day, it doesn't somehow change the fact that bitcoin's throughput is severely crippled to be the speed of a dialup modem.

Have you ever stopped to think that other cryptocurrencies don't have second layers because people don't want them and their chains don't need them? Why go through all this when there is no reason to have a crippled chain in the first place?

Using regular cryptocurrencies is incredibly simple and elegant. It's only when people started to believe propaganda about disk space and cpu time (that never made sense with the most basic examination) that somehow something that worked amazingly well is now a complete mess.

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