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One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

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Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#71

Post by cool_dude85 »

SkipperCat wrote: post #42
wikfwikf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the whole story. When Bitcoin started it was used more as a currency than it is now. Firstly by evangelists who tried to establish a BTC economy, and secondly in the illicit economy. Bitcoin miners and devs took the project in a specific direction a few years later, optimizing it for use as digital gold, while making it much harder and more expensive to use as a currency.

100% agree. The early days of Silk Road showed the true value of Bitcoin. It was a great untraceable currency. Perfect for buying drugs (no moral judgement, just saying what happened). Then, around 2016, CNBC “discovered” crypto and so much investor money and mania jumped in. Now it’s just a value store for dreamers. The fact that the word HODL exists kinda proves that point.

Personally, I like for my untraceable currency not to have a permanent, public ledger showing every transaction I make.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#72

Post by Chris2048 »

Kathula wrote: post #26
wikfwikf wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would have been much luckier if your worldview had allowed you to sell at $60k and buy back at $20k.

I had no conviction that 60k would be the top. But I have a conviction that it'll be surpassed eventually.

> it'll be surpassed eventually

money has a time-value, the opportunity loss of investing it in other instruments. The longer you wait for a peak, the more that peak has to be for it to be worth it. When the value you would have had you invested elsewhere reaches your expected peak, you can officially say your strategy failed.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#73

Post by UncleMeat »

donatj wrote: post #44
ceejayoz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now imagine you had half as much USD for your groceries, because you decided to put it in BTC a year ago instead.

Quite literally what happened. My groceries cost over twice as much.

I cannot think of a single individual item that I buy at the grocery store that has doubled, let alone more than doubled.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#74

Post by mtrycz2 »

croon wrote: post #11

It's not a failure because Bitcoin tanked (relatively), it's a failure because Bitcoin tanking was and will always be a significant risk. People who got rich from Bitcoin weren't savvy, they won the lottery. It's not a sound investment decision based on outcome. Investments are sound based on probability and risk beforehand. El Salvador gambled which is stupid. Whether they won or lost at the lottery is inconsequenti…

It is a failure because BTC has pivoted away from the Bitcoin whitepaper (p2p ecash), limited its blocksize and has taken the path of this strange "digital store of value" (lol). BTC's activity rose gradually up to 2017, and then topped off at 1MB and even dropped. [1]

If Bitcoin's momentum hadn't been dissolved, it wouldn't require people to be forced by State to accept it.

[1] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/size-btc-ema14.html#all...

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#75

Post by UncleMeat »

eimrine wrote: post #17
n4r9 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about the hash function being hacked, I'm talking about websites like Coinbase that provide wallet and exchange services being hacked. Banks of course are also vulnerable to social engineering etc but there is more regulation and consumer protection for when that happens. And by "scammed" I mean someone providing a fraudulent or faulty service or product. In the UK we have "Section 75" which protects…

> I'm not talking about the hash function being hacked, I'm talking about websites like Coinbase that provide wallet and exchange services being hacked. What part of Bitcoin whitepaper tells you have to rely on third-parties? I'm not a trader, I'm a hodler, I even do not have a Coinbase account. Of course if third-parties get lost you lose everything you have believed they will guard for you. upd after reading respon…

"Don't worry, you can manage your wallet completely yourself without any 3rd parties" is in absolutely stark opposition to "adoption will grow and grow." If the only people that use BTC are hobbyists who are willing to go through the trouble to find a way to safely manage their own wallet then BTC will never see widespread use.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#76

Post by hackerlight »

plebianRube wrote: post #57
hackerlight wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not a failure because Bitcoin tanked (relatively), it's a failure because Bitcoin tanking was and will always be a significant risk. A lot of the risk can be hedged by custodians, so I don't agree. The reason it should fail for transactions is because Bitcoin sucks for transactions. Few people will prefer slow, irreversible and expensive transactions.

Lightning is popular because few prefer slow transactions. El Salvador primarily uses lightning network, same network Strike uses for instant cross border payments.

Of course, I stand corrected about that.

So, aside from irreversibility of transactions, what is preventing adoption?

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#77

Post by smcl »

WHATDOESIT wrote: post #56
benj111 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On some level yes. If you're day trading. But you are actually buying a slice of a company and its future earnings. With bitcoin what are you actually buying?

What are you actually buying while Forex trading? (I'd really like to know. To me, BTC trading and Forex trading sound exactly the same.)

I mean on some level if you're doing this kind of trading then yeah BTC/ETH/etc trading is similar to trading real currencies. I think the difference is that the real currencies have a well-known utility at the moment - they're a means of exchange for goods and services. If you're selling EUR to someone, the chances are they're using that EUR to pay for these in the eurozone. If you're buying USD, you're also likely to need that to buy USD-denominated things.

If you're a forex trader, you're trying to make money from people's need to use these currencies.

If you're doing that for crypto, you're doing that but for people who are just also buying and selling crypto - not actual goods or services.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#78

Post by pjc50 »

donatj wrote: post #27
croon wrote: post #11

It's not a failure because Bitcoin tanked (relatively), it's a failure because Bitcoin tanking was and will always be a significant risk. People who got rich from Bitcoin weren't savvy, they won the lottery. It's not a sound investment decision based on outcome. Investments are sound based on probability and risk beforehand. El Salvador gambled which is stupid. Whether they won or lost at the lottery is inconsequenti…

Have you seen the dollar’s buying power recently? I went from living very comfortably to living paycheck-to-paycheck in about 6 months. Holding my value in USD has become a significant risk.

People are unable to distinguish "prices have gone up from money printing" from "prices have gone up due to the pandemic and the war between Russia and Ukraine". Neither bitcoin nor gold can hedge against the latter.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#79

Post by afterburner »

theplumber wrote: post #47
afterburner wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than a lottery for some. It rewarded incorrect thinking on how the financial industry works. Speculative spikes can happen for a lot of reasons, but that Bitcoin would replace all currencies (as early advocates would have had you believe) was not one of those reasons.

>> but that Bitcoin would replace all currencies (as early advocates would have had you believe) was not one of those reasons. Bitcoin was not bought because people believed it will replace all currencies. They bought bitcoin to get rich fast and cash out BEFORE the expected crash.

Yeah, that was happening too, but I was getting an earful of terrible economic viewpoints in the earlier days.

I guess they could have all been lying to puff up their investments, but then I guess I'm left with thinking those particular people were stupid and liars.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#80

Post by smcl »

scotty79 wrote: post #66
smcl wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admire your optimism, but I can't get on board. It would be naive to deny the growth of cryptocurrencies over the last few years, but it seems like the people who were meant to make money have since cashed out, that everything's peaked and turned a corner and the general public have turned against it (due in no small part to a few many shitcoins, rugpulls, scams, BAYC, and a couple of defunct exchanges). I'm sure c…

> it seems like the people who were meant to make money have since cashed out, that everything's peaked and turned a corner and the general public have turned against it Every 4 years it looks like that. And yet the next greed fueled ascension comes around like a clock. Each next one smaller than the last one. Next one will come around 2025 but this time it's going to be just few hundred percent.

Eh there might be another bump. But as long as it's a space for scammers, pump-and-dump schemes, shitcoins and bullshitters it's just not for me. A pretty ridiculous amount of money has been sunk into making cryptocurrencies look like a big thing, instead of actually solving the problems that prevented people from actually using them. That makes me think that deep down the cryptocurrency people aren't that serious about their projects becoming actual currencies, and that they simply see them as a way to get rich quick by selling something they know to be ultimately worthless. Quite a few people have gotten rich (hello, Do Kwon!) so there's a chance it could work for those founders. But as a potential end-user, nahh no thanks I've seen enough
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