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El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

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Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#841

Post by nadermx »

desumeku wrote: post #162
nadermx wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold has a utility, used in a large swath of electronics. Can always be sold to make something. Bitcoin can only be sold if there is a fiat currency trading in it

Electronics didn't exist for the thousands of years that gold was used as currency. The fact is, it only has most of the value that it does because it was rare, malleable, particularly shiny, and because metallism was simply the easiest way (or at least one of the easiest ways) to invent the concept of currency and a monetary system.

Even then it had a utility as jewlery. Bitcoin fails on that.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#842

Post by stiltzkin »

georgeecollins wrote: post #105
ptero wrote: post #17

That's heavy editorializing: El Salvador keeps buying the Bitcoin for its strategic reserve. Businesses and citizens can keep using it. But for getting an IMF loan, IMF (which, to put it mildly, doesn't like Bitcoin) required the end to Bitcoin legal tender status. Now the businesses are free to accept it or not instead of being required to accept it. That's all. The government plans to keep buying and using it.

There seems to be two concepts that are getting conflated. One concept is that BTC is a good investment. Historically that is undeniable. The other concept is that it is a good medium of exchange. I think that is not so true because 1) its neither cheap nor easy to buy a lot of things with it 2) a thing that goes up in value is not a good medium of exchange because people don't want to spend it, they want to hoard it…

[dead]

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#843

Post by [deleted] »

chungy wrote: post #232
redundantly wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gestures at all of the billionaires

I dare you to come up with a single example of someone that has a billion dollars in liquid assets. They probably don't exist: "billionaries" are worth billions on paper, thanks to stocks, investments, real estate holdings, etc. All in all, billionaires are a bad example of holding legal tender, because that just doesn't happen.

[deleted]

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#845

Post by verdverm »

whimsicalism wrote: post #768
verdverm wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was emailing rent to my roommate 6+ years ago for zero fees with GPay, it's hard to see it being easier than that.

well, it is. for instance, for my rent rebalancing i have to pay more than $2500 and gpay doesn’t allow that. the fees would be fractional cents. in fact short of wiring i have not found any service allowing me to send more than that in a day and certainly not with instant deposit gpay takes 1-5 days to appear in account, i can spend the money i transfer here immediately

Too many malicious actors in crypto for it to become mainstream, sorry, not sorry

The community needs to self police and remove this problem if they ever want me to give it a third chance. There are several other fundamental issues in crypto, so not sure this will be enough on its own to reach mainstream adoption

For example, I don't want my transaction history on a public ledger, encrypted or not

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#846

Post by pshan »

llamaimperative wrote: post #837
tasuki wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying low consumption is bad and high consumption is good? High consumption has been improving the economy, and destroying the earth. I'm not saying I have the answers, but it's not so simple.

No, I'm saying that consumption at subsistence levels and investment opportunities having to overcome a deflation hurdle is bad. It is very good that the default thing to do with excess money is invest it.

I'm not trying to strawman the opposing side, but I always found it ironic that many of the cryptocurrency proponents I talk to think that starting a business is amazing and innovation is important, but also hate inflation, which encourages those two things.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#847

Post by [deleted] »

nadermx wrote: post #841
desumeku wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electronics didn't exist for the thousands of years that gold was used as currency. The fact is, it only has most of the value that it does because it was rare, malleable, particularly shiny, and because metallism was simply the easiest way (or at least one of the easiest ways) to invent the concept of currency and a monetary system.

Even then it had a utility as jewlery. Bitcoin fails on that.

[deleted]

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#848

Post by desumeku »

verdverm wrote: post #845
whimsicalism wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, it is. for instance, for my rent rebalancing i have to pay more than $2500 and gpay doesn’t allow that. the fees would be fractional cents. in fact short of wiring i have not found any service allowing me to send more than that in a day and certainly not with instant deposit gpay takes 1-5 days to appear in account, i can spend the money i transfer here immediately

Too many malicious actors in crypto for it to become mainstream, sorry, not sorry The community needs to self police and remove this problem if they ever want me to give it a third chance. There are several other fundamental issues in crypto, so not sure this will be enough on its own to reach mainstream adoption For example, I don't want my transaction history on a public ledger, encrypted or not

"Crypto needs to self-police and remove malicious actors" and "Crypto needs to stop having a public ledger" are two contradictory actions where achieving one would make the other impossible.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#849

Post by starspangled »

rat87 wrote: post #819
starspangled wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I am certain that not everything El Salvador does is progressive, even before reading this link. Some people called Obama progressive and he definitely helped destroy Libya and Syria, ordered the extrajudicial execution of a US citizen under presidential immunity, droned poor brown people living on the other side of the planet, let Citi group pick his cabinet, etc. Nevertheless, the progressive things that Obama…

Let's be 100% clear on this Assad and Ghadaffi destroyed Syria and Lybia respectively being asshole dictators that caused revolutions and that attempted to stay in power by claiming over mountains of dead Syrians and Lybians. The west didn't interfere much in Syria so Assad was able to stay in power a while longer and kill many more of his own citizens. The west messed up the post revolution period but letting Gaddaf…

Let me be clear, folks. Lots of people contributed to their destruction, and Obama was one of them. One of the major players involved in those messes.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#850

Post by llamaimperative »

pshan wrote: post #846
llamaimperative wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm saying that consumption at subsistence levels and investment opportunities having to overcome a deflation hurdle is bad. It is very good that the default thing to do with excess money is invest it.

I'm not trying to strawman the opposing side, but I always found it ironic that many of the cryptocurrency proponents I talk to think that starting a business is amazing and innovation is important, but also hate inflation, which encourages those two things.

They'd have to think at least one or two steps further than chart-go-up.
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