World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help • Hacker News Board

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#71

Post by desine » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:26 AM UTC

astrange wrote: post #56

cassepipe wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be but what is your litmus test about? Can you elaborate on it?

Conspiracy theory about moving off the petrodollar, presumably.

It's not a conspiracy theory that he wanted to create a gold backed Pan-African currency. He openly promoted it. It's not a conspiracy theory that this would have very possibly undermined the petrodollar and all Western currencies. It's not a conspiracy theory that the United States and its allies have supported coups, rebellions, and the like to maintain their power in the past.

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#72

Post by anticodon » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:26 AM UTC

cassepipe wrote: post #35

desine wrote: post #19

They cite environmental and transparency concerns, but somehow I believe it's more about control and ensuring the continuation of the debt based fiat systems. I have a litmus test I use when discussing global financial politics with friends - "What were the main factors you think lead to Ghaddafi's killing?"

It may be but what is your litmus test about? Can you elaborate on it?

Ghaddafi planned to stop selling oil for dollars and sell it for gold.

It would be a disaster for US, because US enjoys benefits of printing as much money as it needs to purchase anything from abroad exchanging zeros and ones that cost nothing for real natural resources and goods from other countries.

Just about any country leader that announced plans to stop using USD for trade, was killed in some way.

Or, if USA isn't brave enough to openly attack the country, they declare it "hostile" and try to suffocate using sanctions (e.g. Iran).

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#73

Post by taylorfinley » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:26 AM UTC

I feel like a lot of people posting in this thread would benefit from reading Dang's post [0] from a few days ago about how shallow cryptocurrency discussions tend to be on HN and how we should all aim for a better level of discourse.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27497207

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#74

Post by vermilingua » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:26 AM UTC

throwaway4good wrote: post #34

Countries that use the USD for their official currency, and are not a part of the US, have a broken financial system. They need to fix that to a point where they can implement their own sovereign currency.

Countries that use the Euro for their official currency, and are not the European Union, have a broken financial system. They need to fix that to a point where they can implement their own sovereign currency.

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#75

Post by bawolff » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:27 AM UTC

chroem- wrote: post #52

sub7 wrote: post #33

We keep talking about how tech should be used to make a net positive change yet we allow this glorified linked list that has 0 real world benefits after a decade to get a pass because some man children run around promising it's the future.

That "glorified linked list" solves a lot of problems in peer to peer computing. In fact, blockchains are arguably the biggest breakthrough that subfield of computer science has ever seen.

Meh, bitcoin is an interesting solution to a difficult to solve problem, but "biggest breakthrough" is rediculously hyperbolic. The applications beyond decentralized trustless tradeable tokens have mostly been toy examples.

Examples of bigger breakthroughs in the field of p2p communication: the internet. Distributed hash tables.

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#76

Post by senectus1 » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:27 AM UTC

remarkEon wrote: post #60

A lot of these Bitcoin threads get old. The detractors, the pumpers, the bag hodlers ... it's all so tiresome. Here's something I want answered (all three parties are invited to respond): Is there a dependency on mature internet infrastructure that exists for a country to adopt BTC as its currency? Seems like there is to me, but maybe I'm not fully appreciating how this works or am overestimating the connectivity req…

not really. Just an internet connection.

of course the more people that adopt it means the more people needs a reliable internet connection. so if you go from 35% of the population with reliable internet to 80% of the population wanting to/being forced to use BTC then you may have a maturity issue...

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#77

Post by lugged » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:29 AM UTC

remarkEon wrote: post #60

A lot of these Bitcoin threads get old. The detractors, the pumpers, the bag hodlers ... it's all so tiresome. Here's something I want answered (all three parties are invited to respond): Is there a dependency on mature internet infrastructure that exists for a country to adopt BTC as its currency? Seems like there is to me, but maybe I'm not fully appreciating how this works or am overestimating the connectivity req…

There is, along with all other modern forms of commerce, jit, logistics, and delivery systems.

If your argument is btc doesn't work without the internet, you should keep in mind that nothing else does either.

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#78

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:30 AM UTC

remarkEon wrote: post #60

A lot of these Bitcoin threads get old. The detractors, the pumpers, the bag hodlers ... it's all so tiresome. Here's something I want answered (all three parties are invited to respond): Is there a dependency on mature internet infrastructure that exists for a country to adopt BTC as its currency? Seems like there is to me, but maybe I'm not fully appreciating how this works or am overestimating the connectivity req…

[deleted]

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#79

Post by anticodon » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:30 AM UTC

jollybean wrote: post #61

cassepipe wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be but what is your litmus test about? Can you elaborate on it?

The public justification for killing Gaddafi is 'stopping the imminent genocide', which by the way, he literally declared he was about to commit. But the real smart people who have the special knowledge know that it was obviously >. The thing is, geopolitics is messy and there are quite a number of 'factors' many of them true to some extent. The Gulf tribal leaders absolutely hated him and they (i.e. Qatar) lent thei…

The public justification for killing Gaddafi is 'stopping the imminent genocide', which by the way, he literally declared he was about to commit.

If a country that doesn't have vast amounts of oil "declares imminent genocide", would US or EU intervene? Of course, no.

Also we all know that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction".

Re: World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

#80

Post by bawolff » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:30 AM UTC

ddtaylor wrote: post #51

sub7 wrote: post #33

We keep talking about how tech should be used to make a net positive change yet we allow this glorified linked list that has 0 real world benefits after a decade to get a pass because some man children run around promising it's the future.

I think it's censorship resistant and permissionless properties make it pretty impressive.

I don't think its cencorship resistence is that impressive. The amount of data you can publish is pretty limited, which is a key property of cencorship resistence.