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El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

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Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#371

Post by jpcom »

shash wrote: post #357
GamerUncle wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The other punchline to the Gold joke is that it's finite. In 120 years it will begin to evaporate from existence as more and more gold chests are simply lost to time. This is how insane that sounds

That's because it's actually quite sane; relying on commodity backed currencies - especially those which are _finite_ leads to deflation. You see that with BTC, where the value keeps rising and you need more and more fractional denominations to make sense. With gold (and historically, more so silver), it was _very rarely_ used for actual trade because it ended up being like five gold coins == someone's entire life sa…

Interesting take. Therefore they needed a bridge between the deflationary BTC and a low-inflationary day-to-day note. Is there an obvious fix, my liege?

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#372

Post by [deleted] »

thinkski wrote: post #354
brokenmachine wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I understand it, billionaires would hold it if they could, but then they'd actually have to pay tax when they spent it. This way, they get to control unlimited assets without paying any tax. Personally, I don't think that's so great "for the economy", because I actually don't care about the economy... I care about people, and having 500 billionaires owning everything and charging everyone to use it is not the…

Why not work to become a billionaire, then donate your wealth? Or begin donating your earnings today? I would guess most people on Hacker News are in the upper decile of wealth globally — there are still billions of people living poverty. Feels like a fairer way to help people than trying to do it with other people’s wealth — the latter feels like hypocrisy.

[deleted]

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#373

Post by postalrat »

kragen wrote: post #303
postalrat wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And eventually the math will be solved and every bitcoin will be worth zero.

While that's conceivable, Merkle-graph systems like Bitcoin are surprisingly resilient. It's been almost 20 years since MD5 was thoroughly broken, but still nobody has published a second preimage attack. For SHA2 and SHA3 nobody has even published a collision attack. And SHA-256 (what Bitcoin uses) is post-quantum-safe (Grover's algorithm still needs 2¹²⁸ time) though AFAIK there isn't yet a post-quantum cryptosystem…

To me its inevitable. And just a matter of time. Any year there could be a breakthrough that quickly leads to missing math.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#374

Post by Gud »

karlgkk wrote: post #247
kylebenzle wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeh, it failed so hard no one even uses it anymore.

It’s being “used” as a speculative asset. That’s not a firm foundation to run a governmental monetary system on. Maybe there are other cryptocurrencies better suited to the task, but BTC isn’t

Don’t forget buying drugs online! Which is mostly what I use it for…

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#375

Post by sporkydistance »

FireBeyond wrote: post #368
sporkydistance wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one good use: I looked into leaving the US to become a citizen elsewhere. I have about $15MM in my retirement. I would have to pay a penalty on my taxes for early withdrawal, and be taxed when I renounce my citizenship. In theory I could cash everything out, buy a huge amount of BTC, move to another country (within a week, or quickly!!), and then cash it out in their currency. Of course, all sorts of alarm bel…

So your one good use is... tax evasion. Huh. It's not illegal to move money out of your investment accounts, it's just reported so that yes, you can have a tax liability. I too, would like tax-free investments and funds.

Yes! That's my one good use! :)

Seriously, that's all I got.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#376

Post by aydyn »

acdha wrote: post #317
aydyn wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but the USD has two order of magnitude more total value, and probably more than that in day to day usage. So there's an implicit question there which apparently you and everyone else missed.

Why do you think the USD has so many orders of magnitude usage? Nobody missed the question, that was the point: for currencies, stability is what makes them useful. You don’t have an incentive to hoard dollars hoping they’ll go up in value, so you spend them and boost the economy. Other countries use dollars because they have the same benefit: I can write a contract with you saying what we’ll pay over the next year a…

> Why do you think the USD has so many orders of magnitude usage? Nobody missed the question, that was the point: for currencies, stability is what makes them useful.

Hint: cause and effect. You did miss the point and still do probably.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#377

Post by csomar »

archagon wrote: post #143
starspangled wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "bitcoin" is progressive, bitcoin is a technology. I think the idea of trying a decentralized electronic currency is progressive. Whether they implemented it well or should have seen the problems with using it as a currency is one thing, but in the idea of trying something new sure I think it was good. I don't think it caused grave harm to try. And I certainly can claim that their policies on crime are…

That’s all well and good until innocent people get caught in the net. How many thousands of young people are worth incarcerating indefinitely and without legal recourse for the benefit of society at large? Would you throw your own child into the pit if it meant that the happiness and safety of your town was ensured? In the extreme, why not just make every crime carry a death penalty? Would that society be perfect by…

> How many thousands of young people are worth incarcerating indefinitely and without legal recourse for the benefit of society at large?

You can actually do the math for that. If the number of innocent people harmed by the gangs is more than the number of innocent people caught in the legal cross-fire then it is worth it.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#378

Post by roenxi »

stephen_g wrote: post #200
portaouflop wrote: post #188

IMF gave them 1.4 billion to abandon the “experiment”: > The IMF made this a condition for a loan of 1.4 billion US dollars (1.35 billion euros). In December of last year, the IMF reached an agreement with President Nayib Bukele’s government on the loan of the stated amount to strengthen the country’s “fiscal sustainability” and mitigate the “risks associated with Bitcoin,” as it was described. —- I dislike cryptocur…

Despite that interference, from everything I’ve read though it’s hard to describe the bitcoin experiment as anything else than a massive failure…

If I could convince someone to give me 1.x billion to change my behaviour, I would consider that behaviour a massive success without much further thought. It isn't a huge amount of money at the scale of a national economy but >$1 billion for nothing is a win.

Although of course it is unknowable how much of that money was bribe and how much El Salvador would have gotten without additional leverage.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#379

Post by chii »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #277
kylebenzle wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeh, it failed so hard no one even uses it anymore.

The article says "92% of Salvadorans did not use bitcoin in their transactions in 2024". Which means that 8% did use it in their transactions.

it is probably the same with gold - in fact, i say gold is used even less in transactions. Yet, nobody would deny that gold cannot form a good monetary foundation . Of course, it's not the best - fiat is still, imho, better - but it doesn't mean it can't work.

So why is the IMF so against bitcoins that they'd rather pay to eliminate it? Or are the IMF scared that bitcoin can actually succeed, in a way which prevents IMF members from asserting monetary pressure in ways that benefits them?

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#380

Post by heartbreak »

EA-3167 wrote: post #86
starspangled wrote: post #73

It's interesting and nice to see how progressive and creative El Salvador has been. Some failures are perfectly understandable when one is willing to try new things. Their approach to crime is another thing that comes to mind that was lambasted and ridiculed by the "international community" and "experts". Yet in the space of a single decade they went from murder capital of the world to safer than New Zealand (in term…

This is... a strange and jarring thing to read. My kneejerk response was that yes, they are innovating and experimenting with oppressive and corrupt governance, but that is ultimately uncharitable. A more balanced response is that while you may personally think of Bitcoin as progressive (I can't imagine why) you certainly can't claim that Bukele's El Salvador is progressive. You may like the gang crackdown, you may a…

CNN says Secretary Rubio just struck a deal with Bukele to accept deportees from the United States regardless of nationality, including US citizens, as long as we pay to house them in his prison.
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