Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

ticotimes.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 930 posts

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#731

Post by another2another »

hshshshshsh wrote: post #629
karlgkk wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s being “used” as a speculative asset. That’s not a firm foundation to run a governmental monetary system on. Maybe there are other cryptocurrencies better suited to the task, but BTC isn’t

Everything is a speculative asset. Your marriage is a speculative asset that your wife doesn't cheat on you in future and actually loves you. S&P is a speculative asset that it will perform like it has been performing in last 30 years. USD is a speculative asset on US not going bankrupt. Your career is speculative asset that you don't get fired tomorrow and you can find another job if you do get fired. Bitcoin is a s…

>Everything is a speculative asset. >Your marriage is a speculative asset that your wife doesn't cheat on you in future and actually loves you.

Spouses are not very fungible though, not that I've ever tried ! ...

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#732

Post by markasoftware »

lmm wrote: post #458
markasoftware wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ful…

> very few people other than dedicated miners download a full blockchain

I'm gonna have to ask for evidence on this one, I strongly believe most full nodes are not mining pools. http://bitdash.io/ says there are ~10,000 running full nodes, yet there are only ~100 mining pools that have produced a block in recent history: https://miningpoolstats.stream/bitcoin

> 1TB is already too large to keep on your phone or laptop

On your phone, sure. But my desktop already has a few TB of storage. But not 8. And Bitcoin Cash supporters usually seem to indicate that they'd increase it beyond 8 if the 8mb blocks filled up.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#733

Post by wqaatwt »

wruza wrote: post #647
wqaatwt wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the people who are getting richer and richer by hoarding btc and not engaging in anything productive ever agree to that? > Countries do redenominations all the time That’s not really the same, in several fundamental ways.

I mean, what I'm about is really the same, just the other way round. Countries usually erase zeroes after hyperinflation adds them, cryptocoins can just add extra zeroes due to deflation. No change in value, just higher granularity. The rest left me puzzled, can you elaborate? Why should the money holder do anything productive? Why getting richer and richer becomes something bad when we go crypto?

> Why getting richer and richer becomes something bad when we go crypto?

Is that sarcasm? It discourages any type of economic activity.

Why would someone invest into or try to start a business when you can become richer by just sitting on your money pile with no risk.

Artificially constricting the supply of money in a non static economy is a bad idea. Like the gold standard just much worse.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#734

Post by troupo »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #669
hagbarth wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was just an analogy. The incentives are to defer purchases, if possible, which lower economic activity overall.

Sure, my point was that there are many reasons someone might spend money today that might be better off saved for the future, however much it may increase in value.

> there are many reasons someone might spend money today

Yes, because that's the value of money. Bitcoin isn't money. It's a speculative asset precisely because people are hoping its value will only go up.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#735

Post by wqaatwt »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #553
wqaatwt wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the people who are getting richer and richer by hoarding btc and not engaging in anything productive ever agree to that? > Countries do redenominations all the time That’s not really the same, in several fundamental ways.

They don't need to increase the supply of bitcoin, the nodes can simply be updated to recognize that a satoshi is also divisible by a billion.

That would be terrible for the economy and everyone not sitting on piles of bitcoin.

It’s hard to imagine a financial instrument that’s less suited to be used as an actual currency than bitcoin. Even going back to the gold standard would be a better idea.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#736

Post by hshshshshsh »

another2another wrote: post #731
hshshshshsh wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is a speculative asset. Your marriage is a speculative asset that your wife doesn't cheat on you in future and actually loves you. S&P is a speculative asset that it will perform like it has been performing in last 30 years. USD is a speculative asset on US not going bankrupt. Your career is speculative asset that you don't get fired tomorrow and you can find another job if you do get fired. Bitcoin is a s…

>Everything is a speculative asset. >Your marriage is a speculative asset that your wife doesn't cheat on you in future and actually loves you. Spouses are not very fungible though, not that I've ever tried ! ...

Spouse is an idea in your head though. Very hard to measure. Because she used not to be a spouse before getting married right. One day she became spouse. So it's an idea. Not tangible.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#737

Post by taurknaut »

olalonde wrote: post #274
kristjansson wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely if that’s all it takes to induce them to give up it tells you something about the benefits they felt were accruing from BTC.

They're not giving up on Bitcoin. In fact, it's likely that they'll use the loan to buy more Bitcoin. https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/el-salvadors-bitc...

Who are they possible gonna offload that bitcoin on to? Their neighbor? That doesn't strike me as a socially acceptable thing to do.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#738

Post by shash »

int_19h wrote: post #619
shash wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I was literally thinking of this article!

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#739

Post by paulgb »

rsynnott wrote: post #710
paulgb wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is, it needs to be more than that if it is to survive. Since inception, mining has mostly been subsidized by new bitcoin, which is capped by design (and about 95% distributed). Satoshi’s paper assumed that transaction costs would make up for the exponentially declining subsidy, but that hasn’t really happened since it never lived up to his “digital cash” vision.

> The trouble is, it needs to be more than that if it is to survive. But why is it necessary for it to survive? Like, I think even cryptocurrency true believers would acknowledge that there are better cryptocurrencies out there if you want a currency; bitcoin seems at this point of largely symbolic value.

I’m not talking about losing mindshare, I mean in the literal sense that transaction volume is necessary for Bitcoin to avoid an attack on the network. The incentive system that secures it is designed to increasingly rely on transaction fees increasing over time to make up for the diminishing pool of unmined Bitcoin that currently subsidize network security.

That largely hasn’t happened; transaction fees have dropped as it became a store of value and moved less frequently (and increasingly moved off-chain in tradfi rails).

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#740

Post by rsynnott »

paulgb wrote: post #739
rsynnott wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The trouble is, it needs to be more than that if it is to survive. But why is it necessary for it to survive? Like, I think even cryptocurrency true believers would acknowledge that there are better cryptocurrencies out there if you want a currency; bitcoin seems at this point of largely symbolic value.

I’m not talking about losing mindshare, I mean in the literal sense that transaction volume is necessary for Bitcoin to avoid an attack on the network. The incentive system that secures it is designed to increasingly rely on transaction fees increasing over time to make up for the diminishing pool of unmined Bitcoin that currently subsidize network security. That largely hasn’t happened; transaction fees have dropped…

Yeah, but what I mean is, if bitcoin went away tomorrow, why would anyone care? Advocates of cryptocurrency as currency, I think, have largely already gone beyond bitcoin in any case at this point, and the speculators could just move on to the next speculative asset.
Post reply on HN