El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

Post by twodave » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 4:56 AM UTC

olalonde wrote: post #366

twodave wrote: post #258

Didn’t we learn back in the 1500s that asset-backed currencies are unsustainable? Bitcoin will never, ever be able to take the place of a fiat currency because it carries with it many of the same problems as Spanish silver the conquistadors were traveling all the way to SOUTH AMERICA to mine half a millennium ago. It was essentially a very difficult proof of work. The only real advantage bitcoin has is that it’s easy…

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ might temper your enthusiasm towards modern fiat currency.

Post by chowchowchow » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 4:57 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #382

chowchowchow wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you call someone who bought a pizza with BTC last year? Paper hands? Shouldn’t they have hodled and not had pizza? How can this be a currency.

> Shouldn’t they have hodled and not had pizza? but then starved to death while hodling?

Post by Aloisius » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 4:58 AM UTC

TeaBrain wrote: post #385

shash wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Debased currency - a problem every large state eventually faced - is a consequence of deflation Inflation in the monetary supply, not deflation, leads to the debasement of a currency. An example is how the influx of gold from the conquistadors into 16th century Spain led to inflation, due to the increased supply of this means of exchange resulting in the debasement in value of a given unit of this means of exchange.…

Post by wruza » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 4:59 AM UTC

the_sleaze_ wrote: post #392

wruza wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is highly divisible though, there’s 2.1e15 satoshi and 2.3e14 cents in the world (re google). It can lose 90% of itself before being unable to replace cents. Also, the network can just agree to change the protocol to fix this issue, should it arise. Countries do redenominations all the time.

I think the fundamental appeal of Bitcoin is the lack of ability to change the protocol based on any external factors at all. Otherwise it's just fiat all over again

Post by shortrounddev2 » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 5:00 AM UTC

aboardRat4 wrote: post #432

dhosek wrote: post #383

Structurally, Bitcoin is a lousy idea for a currency as it is intrinsically deflationary (i.e., even without the speculative inflating of the cost of a Bitcoin, the structure of the coin is such that coins become increasingly scarce and expensive as time goes by). You do not want this in your currency. The ideal is a low-level of inflation which provides an incentive to spend sooner rather than later. With a deflatio…

>You do not want this in your currency. I really want this in my currency. Bitcoin might be a Ponzi scheme, but fiat currencies are even more so.