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El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

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Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#611

Post by rvba »

warkdarrior wrote: post #558
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IMF are an arm of the US "diplomatic" apparatus. The charitable interpretation of how they operate looks like this: 1) A country is doing something the US doesn't like. 2) The country is in some trouble of their own making. 3) The IMF will come and bail them out if they would be inclined to start doing the things the US likes instead of the things it doesn't like. The uncharitable interpretation of "2)" is "the c…

So your claim is that US administration through the IMF is forcing El Salvador to drop Bitcoin as a national currency. The same US administration that proposed creating a "national digital asset stockpile"??!? (per https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/23/trump-signs-executive-order-... )

USA's own stockpile talk is to pump Doge and help the oligarchs get richer.

El Salvador's cryptocurrency was helping other people (not sure if actual citizens), so it had to go.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#612

Post by jeffhuys »

distortionfield wrote: post #473
TeaBrain wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Bitcoin has only failed so far as a replacement for Visa and Mastercard. So no, nobody's using it to buy coffee. It not being "used" in this context is referring to it not being used as legal tender. The law that was walked back was one which had made bitcoin legal tender throughout the country. As others have mentioned, it seems to have largely failed in being adopted as such, as surveys seem to indicate that less…

Trying to use bitcoin like this is like trying to use certificates of deposit to buy coffee. Bitcoin is a store of value, it’s nonsense to try and use it like this. Look at Ethereum if you want a medium of exchange fit for the digital age.

More like Solana… Eth fees are also way too high.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#613

Post by Turskarama »

cylemons wrote: post #547
Turskarama wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's false safety. If the government can't get their drop of blood by diluting their fiat, they will simply do it another, more direct way. At best it will work as long as few enough people are doing it that the government doesn't care.

Sure they can criminalize bitcoin possession or use their police force and state apparatus to serveil and track all bitcoin usage. But that is way more effort than simply turning on the money printer.

It's much simpler than that, they simply make selling bitcoin a capital gain event (which it is) and tax it. They could even make a separate special rate for cryptocurrency pretty easily. Now maybe you think this is easy to avoid, in which case I would ask why you aren't already committing tax fraud.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#614

Post by vanjajaja1 »

refulgentis wrote: post #537
pajko wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The loan was not to mitigate the risk of the Bitcoin. They needed the loan for reasons. The IMF deemed the high involvement in Bitcoin risky for the loan. The IMF text has a "meanwhile": https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2024/12/18/pr-24485-el-...

[flagged]

because they started the experiment 20b in debt and have also managed to do a massive crime clean up + survive covid in that time. bitcoin is an overall benefit, but they are burdened but what has been

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#615

Post by [deleted] »

Unearned5161 wrote: post #596
toenail wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since rapid deflation is extremely undesirable in a currency What do you mean, why should my money NOT go up in value?

if you genuinely are interested in an answer to your question, I recommend this blog post by Matt Ranger: https://singlelunch.com/2020/10/21/badeconomics-putting-400m...

[deleted]

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#616

Post by toenail »

Unearned5161 wrote: post #610
toenail wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a long post that seems to tell me it's bad for the economy. It's not my job to help the economy. Again, why should I use a money that loses value?

That's an odd take. What's bad for the economy is, for the most part, bad for you. But to answer your question more directly, you should use a money that loses value because its purpose is as a medium of exchange and not a store of value. You need to have something in your life that you can reliably use to acquire things you need and exchange them for things you have (new laptop for hours worked). You want a hot pota…

> But to answer your question more directly, you should use a money that loses value because its purpose is as a medium of exchange and not a store of value

That's an odd definition of money. The ancient Greeks already thought that money is medium of exchange AND a store of value, and throughout history people have preferred money that held its value. It's also circular reasoning. A medium of exchange should lose value, so you should use money that loses value.

> you can instead "buy" a savings, or "buy" an index fund

So money that loses value creates inefficiencies in the economy, because people have to waste time worrying about preserving their wealth, investing, etc.

> You struggle with letting go with your currency

I still need to eat, to live somewhere, I want to experience things, a money that increases in value does not destroy my desire to consume.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#618

Post by jcgl »

olalonde wrote: post #425
next_xibalba wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a lot of words for “it cannot be used in everyday financial transactions”.

It's not convenient to use "Bitcoin the payment network" for everyday financial transactions, just as it's not convenient to use the "USD the payment network" (e.g. the Federal Reserve ledger) for everyday financial transactions (in fact, it's impossible). However, “Bitcoin the currency” and “USD the currency” work perfectly for daily use if you route them through trusted intermediaries (Strike, Cash App, PayPal, etc…

But Bitcoin qua payment network is/was a major part of the Bitcoin value proposition—what a Bitcoin _is_ is an entry in a distributed ledger.

Whereas USD is ultimately bearer tokens. Yes, those tokens can be optimized away as entries on a balance sheet when held by a large entity. But USD is a token system, not a payment network. Bitcoin is the opposite.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#619

Post by int_19h »

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…

A bit more detail on the subject of historical coinage and the place of gold in it:

https://acoup.blog/2025/01/03/collections-coinage-and-the-ty...

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#620

Post by nunobrito »

ornornor wrote: post #549
computerdork wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, i really dislike bitcoin, but have to admit, it has been a very profitable investment for a lot of people (and still hasn't completely crashed like expected)... ... although as a form of currency (as opposed to an investment) for El Salvador, it looks like it's a failure

It’s around 100k USD apiece, +875% in the last 5y, +340% over last 2y, +130% over last 1y… I’d also qualify this as “not quite crashed yet” I dont know what the future hodls but it’s looking pretty good for bitcoin so far

That is not a currency in the same manner that gold isn't a currency or barrels of oil isn't either. Or in other words, you don't use for buying a coffee or grocery.

Sure that you can always point some exotic and rare exceptions to prove differently but even yourself don't use it on normal daily financial operations, and no, Lightning isn't even bitcoin so please don't argue with that.

There are more things backing up the value rise for that old tech. Just please diversify into other areas so you don't come out empty handed in some years from now.

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