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El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

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Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#451

Post by chowchowchow »

liontwist wrote: post #447
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.

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

The problem is a currency which is also considered a precious good. It’s like using diamonds as the medium of exchange. Gold is far from the most valuable commodity, and silver even less so. So I think it means we should use some other crypto than BTC if we want to have it be a currency.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#452

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.

The utility of the money is in how you spend it. Your same question could be asked about the S&P.

Why would anyone sell? Well at some point in your life you want to use the money to accomplish your life goals

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#453

Post by r00fus »

Terr_ wrote: post #75
ggm wrote: post #4

Speculative asset class fails as non-speculative legal tender class. If king for the day with a sovereign wealth fund I wouldn't forbid investment choices like this on risk grounds, I mean you need risk assets as well as boring ones, right? But I have problems with the moral quality: it's like state investing in the casino business. Monaco? works fine. Anywhere else? It's got problems. Like a lot of people, I probabl…

> sovereign wealth fund That reminds me of Hong Kong, where I used to live and which maintains a large sovereign wealth fund to ensure its currency is pegged to the US dollar. While various US think tanks ranked it well on their checklists of "economic freedom", they tended to gloss over the rest of the recipe that made it work. Not just the huge sovereign wealth fund, but also how half the housing is government-run…

This is such a huge thing. One of my relatives worked in the housing authority of the HK government - he said that at any given time at least 50% of the housing was publicly owned and rented directly to tenants for like 2k HKD (~300 USD)/mo.

That's why anyone can afford to live there. Actual property leases are incredibly expensive - in the 10s of millions of HKD.

Hong Kong functions as a free-trade market by socializing large parts of its basic economy.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#454

Post by Hamuko »

the_sleaze_ wrote: post #394
acdha wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it was $92k just less than 24 hours ago. That’s why it’s bad for currencies because people can’t make meaningful plans more than a few hours out, and it’s terrible for the economy if you incentivize everyone to reduce spending in the hopes that speculators will make you rich later. Real currencies circulate so the same dollar is spent by many people, benefiting each of them while you’re still holding onto your Bi…

But gold fluctuates rapidly at times at well. Not the same volatility but it does fall

Which is why I prefer to buy my milk with euros instead.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#455

Post by The_Colonel »

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.

IMF is the lender of last resort, their loans pretty much always come with strings attached which provide some assurance that the loan will be repaid.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#457

Post by r00fus »

stephen_g wrote: post #219
nyokodo wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not in my lifetime Were you alive in the mid to late 90s? A string of balanced budgets and surpluses. There are new problems and no dot com bubble right now but most Americans were alive the last time we had balanced budgets. It is quite possible.

Yes, it does happen from time to time coincidentally usually in the lead-up to financial crises…

Yes, Democrats balance the budget, then Republicans sneak in and break the bank with wars, or deficit spending.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#458

Post by lmm »

markasoftware wrote: post #348
ekianjo wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTC cash has lower fees I believe, I wonder if it could actually work as a currency for day to day payments.

It can work as a day-to-day currency, but it compromises the decentralization that is key to Bitcoin's usefulness as a store of value: + By allowing 8x larger blocks (unless it's even larger now?), if in widespread use with full blocks, the blockchain would be 8x larger. Bitcoin's blockchain is already the better part of 1TB, though you can still fit that on a cheap SSD. Imagine if it were 8 and growing fast. + Becau…

> By allowing 8x larger blocks (unless it's even larger now?), if in widespread use with full blocks, the blockchain would be 8x larger. Bitcoin's blockchain is already the better part of 1TB, though you can still fit that on a cheap SSD. Imagine if it were 8 and growing fast.

This has always felt like a completely weaksauce argument to me. Even with Bitcoin, very few people other than dedicated miners download a full blockchain (like it or not). 1TB is already too large to keep on your phone or laptop, but 8TB is at most a minor inconvenience on a server or dedicated mining rig. What's the demographic where a measly factor of 8 makes a difference?

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#459

Post by chowchowchow »

liontwist wrote: post #452
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.

The utility of the money is in how you spend it. Your same question could be asked about the S&P. Why would anyone sell? Well at some point in your life you want to use the money to accomplish your life goals

You should not sell your shares in the S&P 500 to buy pizza unless your financial situation changes drastically for the worse or I guess maybe you are near death. As I said in the other thread, the problem is that btc is too desirable in the market to be a functioning currency and using it for pizza or impulsive daily purchases is a nonstarter in reality.
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