71–80 of 103 posts
Unfortunate wording in the title. The price of Bitcoin "crashed" as in plummeted, and the Chivo wallet system they're trying to use in El Salvador "crashed" as in went offline. The Bitcoin network, of course, chugged merrily along, at its usual 4 or so txns/second.
Is it still 4 txns/second even with the Lightning network?
Nobody uses side-chains, so I don't think their capacity is the interesting number.
When the majority of the country doesn't have internet access, a "currency" that you can only transact in via the internet seems like a poor choice. It makes it a lot easier for the government to track people though given that they are getting their citizens to download the government-sponsored wallet, which I'm sure is convenient for them. My guess is that most people in El Salvador will download the wallet, get the…
The Chivo application works for free over cellular data without the need for a data plan. WiFi public hotspots aren't hard to come by either, especially in stores. If anything, getting more people online would be a good thing.
> It makes it a lot easier for the government to track people though given that they are getting their citizens to download the government-sponsored wallet
It should be noted that you don't have to use the government-sponsored wallet, but that is how they're distributing the $30 drop. For all intents and purposes, you could get the drop and delete the application.
It's normal BTC behavior, BTC spikes up and goes down all the time. 10-15% per day moves happen regularly. Open the price chart and look at it.
At this stage its a clickbait/propaganda article. Price went down few thousands, that's like ever other Tuesday in BTC world.
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Wait, is BTC really only doing 4 transactions a second? I knew it was bad, but I didn't realize this bad. Bitcoin is like a 1960s mainframe computer in an old bank headquarters that runs everything but is an archaic relic.
Yes. There was a big argument several years back about increasing transaction counts and the "more transactions please" advocates lost. BTC, by design, targets roughly this number of transactions per second regardless of how much energy is spent to mine.
This is the finest example of propaganda. Just look at the photo of a dude with a fire in the backdrop. 1. For most people in El Salvador Bitcoin does not matter and will not matter for quite some time. 2. "Bitcoin crashes" to a value a week or so ago. This is usually called a "correction". Even when it was crashing 80%, it was from some very short-living speculative highs and it's now trading close to all-time-high…
Correction relative to what fundamental value? And what’s the difference between a speculative high and the normal price?
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So by your strange definition unstable currencies are not currencies. Is Bolivar not a currency then?
> Is Bolivar not a currency then? It doesn't meet the requirements of a good currency. There is hyper inflation and they have redenominated it a few times now and are planning on doing it again. Is a boat with a huge hole in its hull a good boat? Technically it is probably a boat, but it isn't what one would consider a good and desirable boat and it doesn't allow one to do what one can usually do with boats. This is…
Aaand you just moved the goal posts. Notice how you switched your argument from "currency" to "good currency". So dishonest.
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But if your rent is X BTC/mo how does the BTC relation to USD change your rent or make you go hungry? A 0.0001BTC sandwitch will be 0.0001BTC tomorrow as well. What we have here is people using bitcoin as proxy for other currencies.
I find it very funny that BTC advocates bring this up all the time, yet inflation of USD is considered to be an enormous threat. Surely both of these things cannot be true.
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Yes. There was a big argument several years back about increasing transaction counts and the "more transactions please" advocates lost. BTC, by design, targets roughly this number of transactions per second regardless of how much energy is spent to mine.
Isn't this the reason for the Lightning network layer?
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Would pricing in another unit cause more issues or solve issues? If customers paid a conversion to some unit each time, and conversion is determined at point of sale. One customer may pay 100pBTC for a loaf of bread, and another may pay 101pBTC. Does that help, or make things worse?
You want stability. There are many ways to achieve that. Your example above shows a 1% swing -- which is nothing. Yesterday BTC dropped by 14-18% depending on how you define it. Imaging buying a Tesla and you budgeted for $40K but today it jumped $45K. That would throw off your plans and you wouldn't probably buy it, hoping for things to change. This means that the thing you are using for the transaction is actually…
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> Is Bolivar not a currency then? It doesn't meet the requirements of a good currency. There is hyper inflation and they have redenominated it a few times now and are planning on doing it again. Is a boat with a huge hole in its hull a good boat? Technically it is probably a boat, but it isn't what one would consider a good and desirable boat and it doesn't allow one to do what one can usually do with boats. This is…
> It doesn't meet the requirements of a good currency Aaand you just moved the goal posts. Notice how you switched your argument from "currency" to "good currency". So dishonest.
I think you want a binary world where things are either A or B and not somewhere in between. BTC is being used as a currency in El Salvador and it is government mandated as a currency. Thus it is a currency by that definition. But my argument is that it isn't a good currency based on its properties (which I listed some and also linked to an article on desirable principles of a currency), rather it has the qualities of an asset.
I think I haven't changed what I am arguing, but I think you misunderstood my argument as something much more simplistic than what I was actually saying.