81–90 of 145 posts
I know you have the option to convert to USD, but haven't seen yet if there would be any fee to doing so. Also, it might be difficult to get every merchant in the country to be able to accept bitcoin. The other thought I had was if they would start accepting other crypto as well if this works out.
Sigh. Bitcoin BTC, at 3 transactions per second, doesn't have the capacity to support El Salvador's economy. Even if Lightning worked (it doesn't), BTC doesn't have enough capacity to open channels for users at a reasonable cost. Salvadorians will end up forced to use proprietary payment networks denominated in BTC. BTC is not cash anymore, it won't work as such. There are other cryptos that could work, we'll have to…
> Even if Lightning worked (it doesn't) What doesn’t work? I’ve only skimmed some LN search results, and it looks like there are a bunch of services using it, including strike [0] which was mentioned in a comment of the big thread here [1]. This would have the same problem (proprietary network) you mentioned, but it seems to be working still? [0]: https://strike.me/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27408978
I know you have the option to convert to USD, but haven't seen yet if there would be any fee to doing so. Also, it might be difficult to get every merchant in the country to be able to accept bitcoin. The other thought I had was if they would start accepting other crypto as well if this works out.
> Also, it might be difficult to get every merchant in the country to be able to accept bitcoin. How's the Internet infrastructure in El Salvador?
* Wireless data can be spotty in rural areas due to many hills and mountains. We would need an MVNO for rural areas coverage, as it wouldn't be cost effective for the four mobile networks to place a tower in every rural corner.
* Wireless coverage in cities was limited/overloaded for about 5 years due to lack of new frequencies. This was a regulatory issue fixed about 2 years ago and wireless service is finally improving
* Some companies stopped providing wired service in rural areas about 15 years ago due to copper theft. Not sure if this has improved
Sigh. Bitcoin BTC, at 3 transactions per second, doesn't have the capacity to support El Salvador's economy. Even if Lightning worked (it doesn't), BTC doesn't have enough capacity to open channels for users at a reasonable cost. Salvadorians will end up forced to use proprietary payment networks denominated in BTC. BTC is not cash anymore, it won't work as such. There are other cryptos that could work, we'll have to…
I think the trade-deficit between El Salvador and the rest of the world[0] will mean this is just a gimmick in the end.
[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/el-salvador/balance-of-trade
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surely if you look via godmode on earth, you can even ascribe intrinsic value to it in the case of complet societal collapse where there's only tribes fighting for tomatoes. But is that a useful view?
Coins in WoW have a value, anything can have a value. The problem is that these are in abstractions many levels over the biological processes that the life is based on. The core of the human life is based on people processing materials to sustain biological processes and the rest of the humanity is built on top of it. Intrinsic value comes from the ability to support that structure. At the top of the structure there…
Sure, in this hype cycle Bitcoin has once again had a huge inflow of capital. But if you look at Bitcoin dominance charts, you can see that it is at an all-time low, and IMO will continue to be if its community stays so conservative.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Forget Lightning— Did you know you can transfer Bitcoin from one user to another on Coinbase with zero transaction fees instantly? Any exchange can do the same. Centralized layer two scales just fine for many use cases and is working today.
This is the dumbest thing I've ever read. So you designed a system that sacrifices everything to achieve trustlessness, and then you immediately reintroduce a centralised trusted entity. You can't make this shit up. I'm so glad I left the crypto community in 2014, it's become completely deranged.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surely if you look via godmode on earth, you can even ascribe intrinsic value to it in the case of complet societal collapse where there's only tribes fighting for tomatoes. But is that a useful view?
Coins in WoW have a value, anything can have a value. The problem is that these are in abstractions many levels over the biological processes that the life is based on. The core of the human life is based on people processing materials to sustain biological processes and the rest of the humanity is built on top of it. Intrinsic value comes from the ability to support that structure. At the top of the structure there…
I'm annoyed that the intrinsic value argument is constantly being brought up even by economists against crypto currencies. I have a similar understanding of the concept as you have, in that the value derives from the material eventually - land being most valuable.
However, what many that say BTC has no intrinsic value neglect is the opportunistic value of the traditional banking sector. German Wirecard e.g. went broke and now its stock is worth nothing anymore. Seems there was no intrinsic value either except for a few office chairs I guess.
Nobody warned investors of that. But for Bitcoin, where corruption is less likely given its transparent structure, people keep talking about intrinsic value and how it apparently has none.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>How do you think the elite class became elite They fought and murdered the competition. Their offsprings continue doing that until they no longer had the intelligence or power and got exterminated and their wealth redistributed. This is very, very different than stumbling upon something.
>This is very, very different than stumbling upon something. a) Accumulating capital & power (e.g bitcoin, land, property, influence) has always had a 'stumble upon' component. There's no inherent 'fight and murder' evil to it... b) Early Bitcoin acquisition required some level of computer/security/independent thinking competence. Early land acquisition required some level of legal/defence/homesteading competence. As…
I'm sure that inventing the Internet had a component of drinking coffee.
Anyways, the BTC is a power transfer by virtue of being early and demanding all the goods and services to be provided in exchange of transferring some amount of it.
If that is deemed unfair by the stakeholders it is very likely that there will be fight and murder phase. Can you imagine if it turns out that Satoshi is a mathematician from El Salvador and secretly holds half of the reserves once BTC is established as a world currency?
Do you think that El Salvador will instantly become world's richest country and everyone will provide them with food, wine, weapons, iPhones, software in exchange of some of the coins?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The intrinsic value argument is a funny one. What's the idea behind it? Assume you have asset X but then one key assmption fails. Now, is asset X still valuable considering the failed assumption? For land, you can say that even in the case that society collapses it is still valuable. Or is it? What exactly is the assumption that deems BTC's intrinsic value zero and land's value more than zero?
> What exactly is the assumption that deems BTC's intrinsic value zero and land's value more than zero? For me the easiest way to determine if something has intrinsic value is ask yourself what would happen if you owned all of it (and couldn't be forced to give it up). If you owned all the Bitcoin in the world, we wouldn't accept its use, and would just create another currency with identical properties. If you owned…
Don’t all modern currencies work like this?