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El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

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Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#41

“Bitcoin success in El Salvador nets country $600million as bitcoin gains value.” https://apnews.com/article/bitcoin-elsalvador-bukele-musk-tr... It even seems that the above is a very minor change that in no way changes the outcome here. El Salvador did well and looks to continue to do well with its bitcoin policies.

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Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#42

All for a mere $1.4B in international loans from the (supposedly evil and corrupt) IMF… Wasn’t El Salvador supposed to be Balaji’s first “Network State”? What happened to strike wallet and that whole crypto grifter crew?

Do you mean Chivo wallet? It will probably shut down. Strike is still operating (in many countries including the US and El Salvador) and has a physical office in El Salvador.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#43
post #21

Nobody wants to spend it anyway, just hoard or sell it to the next sucker willing to shell more $. Among all the crypto shills I know I'm probably the only one who has used it for trade (0.25ish Bitcoins for a computer on caseking.de in late 2017 and few goodies on local bitcoin in the same year).

Mostly because transferring BTC is very expensive. Every time I’ve done it I’m shocked at the fees that sites like Bitbuy requires. So if you’re going to do it then it has to be for a good reason.

This is fascinating to me because we were told 15 years ago (ish) that one of the main things that made crypto special (besides it being guaranteed finite unlike fiat) was that unlike say, Visa, it would be economic to use, even for small transactions, because The Big Banks wouldn't take their ~3% cut of every transaction. We all assumed that cut was determined by greed, but if Bitcoin is expensive to transact in now, it could be that in free market terms, that there is actually a certain value people place on the ability to move funds around, and if Bitcoin were much cheaper, that there is room for middlemen to take margin and push the effective cost of using crypto closer to the fees we hate being charged by banks to use the card networks.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#45
I don't particularly like BTC (as it senselessly burns huge amounts of energy, thereby actively contributing to the destruction of our biosphere), but this news post is intentionally misleading. As reported by many other outlets (e.g. [1,2]), El Salvador abandons BTC to qualify for an IMF loan - so the IMF is pressuring them towards this move (presumably for political reasons).

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/el-salvador-changes-bitcoin-r... [2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/financial-regulation/el-salv...

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#46
post #37

Here is the retained purchasing power of each of the coins since the law was passed in September 2021: Legal tender 1: -15% Legal tender 2: +115% Guess which one has been deemed a "Failed experiment".

I would guess "Legal tender 2" was deemed a failed experiment, since rapid deflation is extremely undesirable in a currency.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#48
post #33

Do pro-bitcoin people still talk about goals of bitcoin being a currency that people use daily? I don't follow it closely, but that idea seems to have faded and now it's just an asset to buy and hold while it magically goes up forever.

For daily usage, Bitcoin is simply inferior to Ethereum and other blockchains.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#49
post #33

Do pro-bitcoin people still talk about goals of bitcoin being a currency that people use daily? I don't follow it closely, but that idea seems to have faded and now it's just an asset to buy and hold while it magically goes up forever.

Those who continue to invest in and use the Lightning (layer 2) network think it will be used as currency but most see it as a long term storage of value, at least until infrastructure supporting layers 2 and 3 mature.

As for “magically,” there’s nothing magic about its increase in value as it replaces legacy technology, chiefly gold as a store of value.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#50
post #35

In the 15 years since Bitcoin went viral, has someone proposed a reasonable social, legal and financial protocol for how a society can adopt a novel cryptocurrency without getting stuck in the phase where the cryptocurrency becomes a speculative asset rather than a common medium of exchange? By novel, I mean not using an existing cryptocurrency that is already stuck in the speculative asset phase. Surely, if a govern…

Customers use currencies if it lets them buy stuff. Shops accept currencies if people come and want to buy stuff with that currency. In touristy places, it's common to see people list their prices using currencies from common originating countries, regardless of the legal currency in that country. Any new thing needs to be better than the current thing at least in one domain, if it wants to grow users. Fiat currencie…

> Any new thing needs to be better than the current thing at least in one domain

For instance, my native country, in an effort to digitize the economy has passed a law that if you pay digitally or with a card at a restaurant you pay only 5% sales tax instead of 16% if you pay via cash. Some government wanting to encourage the adoption of a cryptocurrency can take similar measures. Governments have options that Vitalik Buterin does not.

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