Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

ticotimes.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 930 posts

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#441

Post by noirbot »

aydyn wrote: post #376
acdha wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gotta love crypto people putting "looking smarter than you" over actually explaining what it is they mean. If you've got a point to make, don't just hint at it, say something and then we can have a discussion. This just makes you look petty and like you're only in it to stroke your own ego.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#442

Post by tw04 »

roenxi wrote: post #423
dragonwriter wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I could convince someone to give me 1.x billion to change my behaviour I think you need to refresh your understanding of the difference between a loan and a gift; it wasn't an incentive to change the behavior, it was a loan to deal with the problems caused by the behavior.

There are loans and there are "loans". This isn't El Salvador issuing bonds on the market, it is politics that comes with political conditions. That means they negotiated it and that means they got something in exchange for any leverage they could find.

The thing they have in exchange is millions of citizens that the entire globe doesn’t want to see starve to death and the US in particular doesn’t want to deal with mass amounts of illegal migrants when their economy collapses.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#443

Post by eagerpace »

wruza wrote: post #355
1970-01-01 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this. Food, medicine, transportation, education, and everything else at or near the bottom of Maslow's pyramid of needs still cannot be directly purchased with bitcoin. The other punchline to the Bitcoin joke is that it's finite. In 120 years it will begin to evaporate from existence as more and more wallets are simply lost to time.

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.

How can anything ever be changed once 51% is abandoned?

I also think there will be a gold rush of hacking old wallets one day when the encryption is broken. Not sure if that will happen before or after btc failure though. You can’t upgrade security on lost wallets.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#444

Post by pajko »

roenxi wrote: post #423
dragonwriter wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I could convince someone to give me 1.x billion to change my behaviour I think you need to refresh your understanding of the difference between a loan and a gift; it wasn't an incentive to change the behavior, it was a loan to deal with the problems caused by the behavior.

There are loans and there are "loans". This isn't El Salvador issuing bonds on the market, it is politics that comes with political conditions. That means they negotiated it and that means they got something in exchange for any leverage they could find.

The IMF are tough guys, countries do not want to owe them, but usually don't have better options. They don't give "loans" and impose rather strict policies on everything. https://actionaid.org/publications/2023/fifty-years-failure-...

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#445

Post by kjs3 »

olalonde wrote: post #306
Analemma_ wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Bitcoin experiment had been a success, they wouldn't be needing an IMF loan.

They also use USD as legal tender. Is their USD experiment a failure too?

It's a failed economy with both BTC and USD, so...yes? I'm sure they would accept a BTC denominated bailout. Problem solved, right?

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#446

Post by [deleted] »

lmm wrote: post #414
TeaBrain wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.…

> Inflation, 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. No, that's not debasement - in fact it was the opposite, the huge supply of silver (not so much gold) meant those Spa…

[deleted]

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#447

Post by liontwist »

chowchowchow wrote: post #340
liontwist wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I come to these threads expecting criticism about bitcoin being funny internet money run by a small group of shady characters. But most of the comments are about how stable currency and stores of wealth are actually bad! It kind of sounds like we think bitcoin is working. If USD is inflating and Gold is staying still, is gold “deflating”?

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.

I don’t own any btc. But I’m wondering why there is so much FUD about currency that doesn’t inflate.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#448

Post by liontwist »

bangaladore wrote: post #353
liontwist wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I come to these threads expecting criticism about bitcoin being funny internet money run by a small group of shady characters. But most of the comments are about how stable currency and stores of wealth are actually bad! It kind of sounds like we think bitcoin is working. If USD is inflating and Gold is staying still, is gold “deflating”?

> stable currency You lost me at stable currency. BTC is a speculative asset. Gold is a speculative asset. Neither are stable currencies. If you'd like to speculate and INVEST in BTC, go ahead. But I'm quite frankly tired of people claiming it to be a currency.

Ok. But my point is many of the comments are attacking the idea of a stable currency - not btc.
Post reply on HN