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

891–900 of 930 posts

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#891

Post by robertlagrant »

brokenmachine wrote: post #858
robertlagrant wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Billionaires stole the profits of our work from us This seems like a very skewed perspective. You work for a salary, I imagine, and you freely agreed to take that job and in return get a salary, even if the company was losing money or its share price was plummeting. I.e. taking a salary because of the security of payments. Lots of people who invest in businesses lose all their money. You can't point at the very ver…

That's a good point and I do agree in principle. But there still needs to be some mechanism to limit wealth inequality or we still get the inevitable conclusion. The US minimum wage hasn't changed in 16 years! Which means many of these peak performers are built on the back of poverty, people who don't have the luxury of "freely agreeing" to take their labor elsewhere. It's just not fair at all. Governments are funnel…

> The US minimum wage hasn't changed in 16 years!

I don't mind this, because minimum wage is a national minimum. States (and even more fine-grained than that) need to have contextualised minimum wage, or it's just silly. That's why it hasn't changed. Minimum wage increases wages at the expense of reducing employment, for any job that isn't worth that wage. You can't increase the national US minimum wage to what would get you an apartment in California and expect jobs to exist in Appalachia.

Honestly, the national minimum wage seems almost pointless. States should handle it, as they can contextualise at least a bit better.

And it not changing isn't evidence of anything when state-level minimum wages exist.

> Which means many of these peak performers are built on the back of poverty, people who don't have the luxury of "freely agreeing" to take their labor elsewhere.

Thus I don't think it means that. And also - your false dichotomy of you're either a wealthy business owner or you're on national minimum wage is not helpful either. People are paid what they can negotiate. Companies pay what they can negotiate. Companies exist if they charge a low enough price for their level of service or product. It's a tri-party system. The existence of other companies in in-demand businesses is what drives up wages, as if you don't like your job you can move, and people do. That's why I would say where possible, things that stop new companies springing up should be removed. Thinking it's all about national minimum wage is honestly the wrong approach, in my opinion.

> You have to agree that trickle down is not trickling down.

I don't know what this means. I didn't mention anything trickling down.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#892

Post by robertlagrant »

notahacker wrote: post #822
robertlagrant wrote: post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people are willing to pay more. Why should I make money because my house is worth more than it was? Because people are willing to pay more. There's no more "should" required than that.

Um... if the only legal tender around was an asset with fixed supply, people holding it wouldn't be willing to pay more, (or invest it in making more stuff) that's the whole point.

But you see my point, right? I'm challenging the question of "why should someone buy that thing for more than the seller paid for it?" The answer is: because the new buyer is willing to pay that for it.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#893

Post by [deleted] »

karlgkk wrote: post #884
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…

> Your marriage is a speculative asset I’m guessing that you had a divorce /and/ that I know the reason why she left you

[deleted]

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#894

Post by hshshshshsh »

karlgkk wrote: post #884
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…

> Your marriage is a speculative asset I’m guessing that you had a divorce /and/ that I know the reason why she left you

You are a smart man.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#895

Post by LudwigNagasena »

georgeecollins wrote: post #782
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. So... traditional money is good because it forces poor people to spend it? Rich people have no problem converting cash into assets that go up in value and holding onto them converting back at need. It's only poor people that have to hold comparatively high percentage of their assets in someth…

Yes, exactly. It forces the poor (and the rich) to spend it. When you take out a mortgage on a house its partly because someone took cash they received and deposited it in the bank. If they kept the cash the bank would not have reserves to loan.

You don't even need to do anything to deposit money in the bank anymore. Most people automatically receive their salary in the form of direct bank deposits. And if the value of your money grows, why would you want to do anything with it? You would just let it sit there in the bank.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#896

Post by MadSudaca »

Unearned5161 wrote: post #825
MadSudaca wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your explanation, and the reason why I removed the last sentence is that I thought it was thoroughly unhelpful. I'm not intending to bait. Really I find the arguments against deflation insufficient. I get the picture that some inflation is good to keep the system running smoothly, however, the description of why inflation is desirable is lacking when explaining why deflation is necessarily bad, all thin…

Perhaps the argument I left in a different comment will illustrate why inflationary currencies are preferable. Please note that by inflationary I don't mean high inflation, I mean small, controlled, inflation. > You should use a money that loses value because its purpose is as a medium of exchange and not a store of value. You need to have something in your life that you can reliably use to acquire things you need an…

Thanks for taking the time to argue with me. You make some good points, however, for me personally, the evidence seems insufficient to sway me into believing that a deflationary currency is not beneficial.

I agree with your arguments about why some inflation is desired, it incentivizes people into spending their money, this makes it so that people engage in trade more often and, when voluntarily made on the basis of sound information, trade is beneficial to both parties. The net positive done in the world increases, at the small cost of some inflation, that is, the loss of some of your net worth if you rest on your laurels keeping your cash.

All this being said, for me there is a great asymmetry in the demonstrable harm done by inflation vs deflation. The list of people who have suffered the consequences of irresponsible governments is just too large, with you and me being at risk of suffering from them during our lifetime. The temptation is just too large to mishandle currency. While deflation is something that we will very hardly experience in our lifetime, barring some massive technological breakthrough that changes the means of production forever.

Moreover, there's no reason to believe that an economy can't work with deflation. Believe me, it CAN work with extreme inflation where calculation into the future is made very hard, it can surely work with deflation. Yes, some psychological aspects will be new, like people holding off purchases because their money will be worth more in the future, but that will not necessarily translate into a wide-scale halt in purchases. People will still want things more right now than the equivalent of their increasingly valuable currency. This new modality will introduce problems, no doubt, but these will be overcome by new adaptations. There is simply not enough evidence to ensure that a system like this can't work.

I agree that one ought to proceed with care in these matters because a system that seems to work in the beginning might fail catastrophically later on. However, as any change, one ought to weigh the negative risks against the benefits. With the promise of cryptocurrency we're entering a new world. One in which each individual will be more empowered and global commerce will be facilitated. The complexity of the world shows us that no matter how much optimism or pessimism you bake into your decisions, for some things, you will just never know for sure.

Lastly, another problem with inflation is that it favors the elites. Possibly, this is one of the biggest reasons why it's so widely disseminated. Those close to the central banks, those that understand about finance, those that seek power for themselves at the expense of others, among others. This kind of centralization of power motivates individuals at the top to sell the idea to the masses as if it's for their own good, and sometimes it is, but you can't deny that the incentives do not point to this being something that overwhelmingly favors the disenfranchised and the ignorant.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#897

Post by dmichulke »

EFreethought wrote: post #765
dmichulke wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are probably a billion bitcoiners (direct or indirect owners) and you basically state that you're smarter than all of them. Just wow.

A lot (if not most) bitcoiners think they are smarter than all the non-bitcoiners. Do you object to that?

Let's say they're taking a financial risk which incentivizes (some of) them to study the matter more closely than someone else that is not taking that risk.

Does that mean they're smarter? I don't think so. It's a bet they're willing to take and time will tell who was right.

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#898

Post by verdverm »

whimsicalism wrote: post #176
verdverm wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When most people hear daily usage, they think groceries, bills and paycheck, not day trading on an exchange, defi or centralized. In this regard, crypto currency is not really a currency that people can use for their daily lives without worry and risk from volatility

yes it is, just use stables. frankly it is a much more convenient way to move money if the other person has it as well e: and i’m no crypto obsessive really, i don’t think it was usable even 3 years ago but it’s pretty handy now, can easily send $20 in usdc on base or use it to purchase carbon offsets or use it on election/sports betting or use it to purchase deepseek r1 credits…

I already have stable digital dollars in my bank account, why do I need another one that costs me more money to use?

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#899

Post by dmichulke »

kidintech wrote: post #717
dmichulke wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't need to be dumb to fall for a dumb idea I get you can do something stupid in a rush but the longer you have time to reconsider, the higher the likelihood that you "didn't just fall for a dumb idea". Bitcoin is 15 years old. > Also, the average person is smarter than about 4 billion people. Bitcoiners are drawn from a normal distribution and not from the bottom part of the distribution, so that argument do…

> Bitcoiners are drawn from a normal distribution and not from the bottom part of the distribution I think it's objective truth to note that "Bitcoiners" are predominantly comprised of: a) people conducting illegal affairs (don't read this as "illegal" in the sense of jaywalking) b) technically illiterate people, down on their luck and hoping to get rich quickly With those in mind, I would argue that "Bitcoiners" are…

Do you have any facts to support your assumptions a) or b)?

Re: El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

#900

Post by npoc »

motorest wrote: post #833
almosthere wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that doesnt hold for a deflationary currency

> that doesnt hold for a deflationary currency I think crypto proponents in general share this inability to understand the fact that one of the most basic traits of money is stability of it's value, and anything that fails to meet this basic requirement is simply useless as a currency.

Bitcoiners understand it well. They realise that in order to stabilise in value and become a unit of account, it has to grow close to it's ultimate potential as a store of value first. Which in the case of bitcoin is potentially well over $100T market cap. This is why El Salvador is likely willing to back down in the currency aspect for now and focus onto accumulating and holding bitcoin reserves.
Post reply on HN