31 ms·

El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

• jimmyed 5y ago
  Are they being the first country for the sake of being the first country?
  • dna_polymerase 5y ago
    No, they really just like wasting 4 bucks on every transaction.
    • Workaccount2 5y ago
      And waiting 10 minutes for confirmation Edit: Lightning networks are bandaids on a prototype cryptocurrency.
      • forgingahead 5y ago
        Regardless of your opinion of BTC or of crypto in general, 10 minutes to confirm significant monetary transactions that all parties can agree on, without the need for a central trusted authority, anywhere in the world, at any time of day, is a pretty significant achievement.
        • bgitarts 5y ago
          How about instant BTC transaction using the https://lightning.network/ https://lightning.network/
      • breadzeppelin__ 5y ago
        y'all most not have heard of https://strike.me/ https://strike.me/ which operates on the lightning network to send whatever local currencies through btc instantly for little / no fee
        • gruez 5y ago
          And before people ask, it uses the lightning network so it's non-custodial.
          • yokem55 5y ago
            If you run your own lightning node, lightning is non-custodial. But strike is just a wallet that uses their own lightning node. So, if using strike, strike has custody of your funds.
            • dom96 5y ago
              how does this work? Isn't Strike just a company that manages the transactions at which point why is Bitcoin even mentioned at all?
            • gruez 5y ago
              >If you run your own lightning node, lightning is non-custodial. But strike is just a wallet that uses their own lightning node. I don't know the implementation details of the strike app, but I don't see why you can't keep the signing keys on the device itself (as opposed to the server), and the server is only used for communication with the bitcoin network. That way you don't need to run a lighting node, but they don't control your funds either. Thin wallets use this model I believe.
          • lawn 5y ago
            Strike is custodial... Yes you can run LN in a non-custodial manner, but the user experience is really bad.
            • gruez 5y ago
              > Strike is custodial... You seem to be correct, based on their suggestion that you download another lightning wallet[1]. My prior impression was that strike contained a lightning wallet and a custodial wallet (for their fiat exchange). That said, with low cost and instant lightning network transactions you can basically use it in a non custodial way (ie. transfer out the moment you exchange for fiat). [1] https://strike.me/faq/howtopurchase https://strike.me/faq/howtopurchase
    • silentsea90 5y ago
      Have you heard of the lightning network? Fees are effectively 0.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • janandonly 5y ago
    No, Japan recognized bitcoin as legal tender some years ago. But smart move. Even the poorest of the poor have smartphones with a (limited) internet subscription. So a web based wallet like www.coins.io will work wonderfully for them. But the reason El Salvador is working together with Strike.me is because they have a service where someone pays you in bitcoin but you can choose to receive all or part of the payment in dollars or another currency.
    • ionwake 5y ago
      Do you have to pay CGT in Japan?
    • bloak 5y ago
      I've read a bit about what Japan did in relation to Bitcoin, and I've read a bit about what El Salvador is proposing to do in relation to Bitcoin, and I've read a bit about what the term "legal tender" means, and honestly I can find almost no points of similarity between those three things.
  • ArkanExplorer 5y ago
    The President of El Salvador doesn't want to get couped. He figures his best bet is to establish a public persona, in English, and appeal to Americans (tech bros) directly. Its the same in Europe. Russian Oligarchs bought British Soccer Clubs so that they could become public personalities and avoid being assassinated by the Russian Government or other oligarchs. The political class in South America exists in a different sphere. They are ancestrally directly European, whereas the working classes of the country are ancestrally native American or mestizo. The concern for the every day worker is minimal as is the overlap between the worlds of these groups.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
• fennecfoxen 5y ago
  .
  • buzzy_hacker 5y ago
    The article uses the words legal tender and says “ The new law means every business must accept Bitcoin as legal tender for goods or services, unless it is unable to provide the technology needed to do the transaction.”
  • sadfasf122 5y ago
    All merchants are mandated to accept it.
  • quickthrower2 5y ago
    This seems to be the new news that congress approved it?
  • jasonlaramburu 5y ago
    How are businesses expected to deal with the high transaction fees (>$5 last time I checked)? The minimum wage in El Salvador is $300/month. Even lightning network wallets must make periodic on-chain transactions. Also most crypto exchanges charge a minimum fee for any withdrawals. These costs seem like a significant burden to place on a developing country's small and informal businesses.
  • brickmort 5y ago
    Not a dupe. The earlier thread from 3 days ago is about the announcement that a bill would be proposed to make bitcoin legal tender. This thread is from the news from several hours ago that the bill officially passed into law by Salvadoran Congress.
  • mnw21cam 5y ago
    That's not what legal tender means in all parts of the world. For instance, in England and Wales, legal tender has an extremely narrow definition - it means that a law court has to accept it for the payment of a debt. Legal tender doesn't apply to people who aren't law courts, and legal tender only applies to past debt - it doesn't apply to future payments such as a purchase at a shop. It looks (from the news articles) that it has a broader definition in El Salvador, but unless one is an expert in that country's law, it would be best not to make claims about it. If someone is an expert, I'd love to hear what the actual facts are.
• mywittyname 5y ago
  Is the government accepting it for the payment of taxes and fines? Or are they just forcing businesses to take on the risk of accepting it? I can't imagine what an enormous pain in the ass this is going to be for businesses, given the volatility of BTC.
  • thebean11 5y ago
    There are services that convert to fiat currency on the fly, no risk to the business. With the caveat that I have no idea if they are available in El Salvador..
  • muyuu 5y ago
    it's more of an issue when economic actors around you don't operate in the same currency I fully expect people to keep USD on the side, it's already part of the culture all over Central America
  • sadfasf122 5y ago
    They guarantee spot rate to dollar for every transaction - so businesses never need to take that risk if they don't want to. They are mandating that merchants must accept it as a means of transaction though.
  • doomroot 5y ago
    The president said last night, in a Twitter spaces group, that they, the government, are offering a free wallet that will instantaneously transfer bitcoin to USD to any merchant that doesn’t want bitcoin exposure. He clarified that there will be no obligation for merchants to use this government funded wallet.
  • jmvoodoo 5y ago
    The big thing IMO is that taxes won't be due on capital gains for Bitcoin. This could potentially drive foreign investment?
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• pawelduda 5y ago
  Other governments are already accumulating BTC silently. Way too many eyes on the topic lately. There will be some FUD along the way (maybe even El Salvador banning/unbanning BTC up to few times - the classic) but I believe at some time news will start popping left and right that other countries hold BTC on balance sheets. Will eventually start with ETH too if it hasn't already. Re people below: I don't have any sources to back up my claim, sorry. I should have put more emphasis that what I wrote is mostly based on my beliefs and observation over years. You will only hear the news after a government has acquired amount of BTC they're satisfied with. If I wanted to acquire large amounts of BTC for the best price, I would do so quietly, while enjoying prices lowered by the Korea/electricity/whatever FUD (not saying these arguments against BTC are invalid but they would serve my goal). Feel free to dispute or downvote, whatever suits you.
  • zie 5y ago
    Do you have any sources for "Other governments are already accumulating BTC silently."?
    • pawelduda 5y ago
      In short no - I've edited parent post for more info
  • mtmail 5y ago
    Do you have sources about other countries accumulating BTC?
    • pawelduda 5y ago
      In short no - I've edited parent post for more info
  • tnel77 5y ago
    I’m hoping ETH and BTC are mostly sideways over the next year or so. I’d like to continue buying while it’s (relatively) cheap.
• blocked_again 5y ago
  > The El Salvador President has previously said the move will open up financial services to the 70% of Salvadoreans who do not have bank accounts. Right. People who can't even afford a bank account would now all be using financial services by paying 10 dollars per transaction.
  • atatatat 5y ago
    Shortsighted. If you make one legal tender, suddenly they all are more useful there. Doge transactions outside of their system for small things, their corpo BTC chain for larger things? Maybe.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • vbezhenar 5y ago
    They're using Lightning network which provides almost free transactions.
  • doomroot 5y ago
    El Salvador is using the lightning network to facilitate transactions for the most part. They are using the work of Strike & bitcoin beach in El Salvador as an example.
    • chronicsunshine 5y ago
      They are using them? The country has a population of >6 million. Bitcoin beach is a philanthropy run by one adult coordinator, 4 university students and 4 high school students. The country is not using the lightning network. Maybe some have intentions for them to. But this is not something widely used by any means. ref: https://www.bitcoinbeach.com/ https://www.bitcoinbeach.com/
  • 5y ago
• GranularRecipe 5y ago
  I wonder to what degree this is related to the prevalence of organized crime (Bitcoin being a 'currency' of the black market).
  • lui8906 5y ago
    When will this myth die. Do you have any evidence of this? See below a report from a firm whose task is to find bad behavior on the blockchain. Key points: - 0.34% of tx in 2020 were illicit - Of that 0.34% it is almost all scams and darknet market tx In 2021, the large darknet markets either only accept Monero or accept BTC and Monero. Large ransomware gangs like DarkSide prefer Monero (they offer discounts for it). It's reasonable to assume that the percentage of BTC tx that are illicit are even lower as Monero assumes more of the activity. BTC is not a 'currency' of the black markets. - https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-crypto-crime-report-intro-ransomware-scams-darknet-markets https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-crypto-crime-repor...
  • danlugo92 5y ago
    Drug dealers making $2k a month benefit from bitcoin. Drug dealers making $1m a month can go directly to the bank and have it laundered haven't you read the news?
• Saint_Genet 5y ago
  Congratulations to Bitcoin. All it took was a fascist takeover.
  • manuelaljibes 5y ago
    Do you even know what fascist means?
    • OliverJones 5y ago
      I know what "fascist" means. "Authoritarian" might be a slightly better epithet for the current president Bukele. His party recently voted, in the assembly, to fire five supreme court judges who opposed Bukele. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Salvadoran_political_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Salvadoran_political_cris... He and his party were elected, however. It seems Salvadorans are getting sick of the neverending war between the MS-13 and Calle 18 gangs.
    • Saint_Genet 5y ago
      I do, yes
  • lasagnaphil 5y ago
    For the context, here are some Wikipedia articles about the 2020 and 2021 political crisis in El Salvador… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Salvadoran_political_crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Salvadoran_political_cr... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Salvadoran_political_crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Salvadoran_political_cr...
    • vzcx 5y ago
      Respeto.
• danaos 5y ago
  I don't see how this is going to benefit Salvadorans. As much as I try, I can't find a use case beyond money laundering, ransomware and extortion.
  • throwitawaybaby 5y ago
    Going to help the kidnappers get paid. A fair bit of those in El Salvador: https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/el-salvador#124e7e https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/el-sa...
    • X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
      Why do you feel like it'd be better than cash in this case?
      • slver 5y ago
        You don't have to pick bitcoin personally, obviously. Yes, after that you have to launder it, but that's a smaller problem comparatively.
        • lui8906 5y ago
          Is it a smaller problem? It is fairly trivially traced on a transparent blockchain whereas cash is not.
          • slver 5y ago
            Yes, it's a smaller problem to lose even all your ransom money, than to be physically captured and put in jail for decades. Can't we just agree on that? Also "fairly trivially traced" can be naive. Here's one scenario from a million possible scenarios. You hate politician John Doe and happen to know me. I have a stash of millions in ransom money on my public anonymous wallet. So I start sending money to organizations close to John Doe, and John Doe himself, implicating him in crime. You give me cash personally for a job well done. I just laundered some of my money and used the "trivial to trace" money against someone else. Things aren't as simple as you may believe. Sure, if you're stupid and directly cash out your coin to your persona, you'll get traced and caught. But money is money, it's a resource you can use in countless ways to move the pieces on the board around and get someone to pay you for it. Here's another example. I start donating 100k USD worth of coin to bunch of charities. You may assume one of those is a pawn. But you can't prove who it is. Well, I happen to know one of the charity owners. I give him 30%, I just laundered 70k. I also lost some, but eh? I can blackmail some more people. Other people's money are cheap to me when I risk nothing by taking them. Those are relatively simple schemes. If you sit down and think, you can come up with much better ones. For example what I use this ransom money to pay for some other criminal activity? Like kill someone. I move the problem to them, but they can pass the ball around more until you can't prove WTF is happening. You have no idea whom those wallets belong to and why are there transactions happening. You can trace the money but you have no idea after some point if the recipient has any clue about the origin, or if there's criminal intent. Here's another weakness. Who has worldwide authority over crime? No one. So if I shift my coin to the opposite side of the world and cash it there, due to fragmentation, lack of cooperation and so on, I may have cashed out before someone manages to even make the right calls to begin negotiations on cooperation.
• neiman 5y ago
  My 2 cents about it. https://twitter.com/neiman30/status/1401592760084336648 https://twitter.com/neiman30/status/1401592760084336648 Editing: sorry for sharing the tweet instead of rewriting the content here, it was a lazy move on my side.
  • mindstreamer 5y ago
    Thanks Neiman, who are you again?
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      One comment in nine months and this is it? Try harder.
  • gruez 5y ago
    >First note, the bill is not yet adopted! Wasn't there a vote?
    • neiman 5y ago
      There was, I wrote it 3 days ago before the vote.
• ChrisRR 5y ago
  I wish bitcoin hadn't become the go-to crpyto. As a world, we shouldn't be encouraging the use of a currency which is literally churning out CO2 into the air when there's so many less wasteful cryptos out there
  • limusrazor 5y ago
    The less wasteful cryptos are more centralized. What's the point of using an inefficient data structure (blockchain) if you are sacrificing de-centralization in pursuit of gaining efficiency? Over time miners will move into renewable energies as the price of them goes down.
    • raesene9 5y ago
      From a financial trading/pricing standpoint, I'd say bitcoin is centralized too, in that binance, bitfinex, coinbase and the rest of the major exchanges are necessary for the trading process. Then when you add their dependence on centralized stablecoins like Tether to the mix, I don't think BTC would have the price it has now, if it were truly decentralized.
  • fastball 5y ago
    It has years more momentum than everyone else, not really surprising it's on the top. But if there is better tech, it will get usurped eventually.
    • ChrisRR 5y ago
      I wish that were true. The best solution doesn't always win, but the most publicised solution will
• FreeTrade 5y ago
  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 see how broadly 'bitcoin' is interpreted. The CGT exemption will be of interest to crypto whales and entrepreneurs and may attract some, but organized crime is a concern given the nature of the asset.
  • rawtxapp 5y ago
    I'm not sure how you can say lightning doesn't work when it in fact does, 1ml.com shows you growing adoption and there are many private channels that won't even be known. There are many easy to use wallets, etc. Channel factories will bundle channel open/closes into a single transaction, so it won't be burdensome on the main chain.
  • TimJRobinson 5y ago
    They're literally using Lightning for payments right now in El Salvador. They didn't do this without having local projects already. Bitcoin Beach (https://twitter.com/Bitcoinbeach https://twitter.com/Bitcoinbeach) made a lot of this happen.
    • FreeTrade 5y ago
      The cost and complexity of opening channels for users is prohibitive. Any widely adopted solutions will therefore be custodial. Might as well use PayPal.
      • rawtxapp 5y ago
        There are easy to use non-custodial wallets (try Phoenix wallet).
        • FreeTrade 5y ago
• ankurpatel 5y ago
  This is good news in that we will see a real country with decent population use it and fail badly proving that Bitcoin is not viable as a valid currency. Once that is done its value should plummet dramatically. Until now it is not used for any payments and mainly for speculation/gambling to make easy money. Most of the people are just supporting it to hype up the value so they can make most profit.
  • rawtxapp 5y ago
    Or, maybe just consider this, you are wrong and it ends up being very successful and more countries adopt it. For what it's worth, they have already been using Bitcoin in the El Zonte for some time now [1]. 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2020/07/14/this-el-salvador-village-adopts-bitcoin-as-money/?sh=29d0164c2044 https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2020/07/14/this-...
    • squeaky-clean 5y ago
      It doesn't really help my faith in BTC when the article never refers to actual Bitcoins like currency, and instead uses USD equivalent everywhere. > Transfers of $35/family are made to 600 families every 3 weeks, which covers 50% of basic needs per household. $35? Or $35 equivalent in Bitcoin? The article never really explains why giving them bitcoin is better than just giving them $35 in paper bills and coins. Just that the person giving the money will only do so as BTC, it doesn't sound like the townsfolk have any say in it. > At the time of writing, the price of Bitcoin is $9226.56. So anyone who paid their utility bill with Bitcoin at the time of the article overpaid by 4x compared to current bitcoin prices, or about 6x compared to the peak. How realistic is it for this to continue when delaying a utility bill by a month could possibly make the value of that bill half, or double. I don't see how this can scale, and it sounds like the El Zonte situation only works because of the guaranteed BTC income by a benefactor.
    • ankurpatel 5y ago
      My question to you is have you used it to buy anything real with it?
• alessandroetc 5y ago
  Huge news!
• ffggvv 5y ago
  the home of ms-13. it’s fitting the child traffickers can use bitcoin to transact in.
  • fastball 5y ago
    Yep, and I hope you've never done business with any of these[1] companies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...
• angry_octet 5y ago
  Amazingly shortsighted. The primary beneficiaries of this will be organised crime, who will now be able to wash the Bitcoin via El Salvador to convert it to dollars, which they can use to buy trade items and export the profits. The number one export of El Salvador is actually people. If they were concerned about remittance fees they could just set up a bank in the US with low fees, instead of getting kickbacks from OCGs and Western Union / Money Gram etc. El Salvador is set to be a big climate change loser, and every joule spent on bitcoin is bringing them closer to disaster. "El Salvador has seen a steady increase in extreme events (storms, floods and droughts) during the last 30 years. The Pacific coastline is already experiencing rising sea levels and it is expected that 10–28 percent of the country’s coastal zone territory will be lost by the end of the century. Coastal areas, home to over 30 percent of the population, are highly vulnerable to the combination of sea level rise and El Niño events." https://www.climatelinks.org/resources/climate-risk-profile-el-salvador https://www.climatelinks.org/resources/climate-risk-profile-... Coastal flooding risk is significant due to loss of mangroves. https://thinkhazard.org/en/report/75-el-salvador/CF https://thinkhazard.org/en/report/75-el-salvador/CF
  • annoyingnoob 5y ago
    My take is that El Salvador may actually want the flow of money laundering through their banking system. And it gives them an opportunity to seize some of it. The idea of increased remittances is interesting but the logistics of doing that on the ground might be challenging for the unbanked.
  • kspacewalk2 5y ago
    El Salvador has (and will have) negligible impact on both generation of and popularity of cryptocurrency, so I don't think that argument is very important given the far more pressing matters they have to deal with as a country, and ones they have control over. The point about opening up a bank is interesting though. The amount of money WU is skimming off the top must be a non-negligible percentage of the country's GDP. There's gotta be a less pie-in-the-sky way to disrupt that without making El Salvador a money laundering haven, which will absolutely happen with this idea.
• BurnGpuBurn 5y ago
  "Bitcoin is positioned to disrupt the remittances industry in El Salvador, estimated at about $5 billion annually. Most families in towns like El Zonte do not have bank accounts, and rely on services such as Western Union WU +0.5%, which take 5-10% in fees. The closest Western Union is approximately one hour by bus, requiring the recipient of the cash transfer to take the bus back with cash on hand, creating a safety issue." [0] [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2020/07/14/this-el-salvador-village-adopts-bitcoin-as-money/?sh=1c8a51bb2044 https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2020/07/14/this-...
  • viraptor 5y ago
    The WU fees are likely so high because they can be. If there's no competition, why not rake profits? I'm curious what the fees will be in a few weeks.
    • 52-6F-62 5y ago
      If you are the only financial service for a large population, why not take them for all they're worth?
      • viraptor 5y ago
        Because you push the government to legislate an alternative on an immediate country-wide level. At their scale they could've been taking smaller profit for many years without poking the bear.
        • 52-6F-62 5y ago
          I think you misunderstand. I was rephrasing your statement "Why not take profits" to reflect the reality of WU's role in El Salvador.
    • ccortes 5y ago
      Not only that, but handling cash is expensive
• shp0ngle 5y ago
  If two Bitcoin forks both claim they are the "real bitcoin", who decides which one is the real legal tender? El Salvador courts?
  • notum 5y ago
    The High Council of Shitcoins, of course. Court fees payable in Shiba.
    • shp0ngle 5y ago
      I meant it in serious way (as serious as Bitcoin is, which is not much). How can you legally define what "bitcoin" is, when that definition is not clear? Most people will tell you "bitcoin is whatever is in the consensus in the last release of Bitcoin Core, based on the bitcoin github repository"... but that is still kind of finicky Bitcoin to their credit does not change the consensus rules all that much (only via "soft forks"). But still. Is code in bitcoin github repository what now decides what is legal tender in El Salvador? Does El Salvador now need to agree with all the decisions Bitcoin Core team makes? What if they don't like Taproot? A lot of the Bitcoin software around still doesn't allow bech addresses. Does all El Salvador citizens now need to support them? Even when the software doesn't? Is bech32 part of "bitcoin" as defined by El Salvador?
  • X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
    That's a very good question. IMO it seems pretty unlikely that bitcoin will undergo another fork any time soon, the people that were fine with forking went to BCH and then had many subsequent forks meanwhile the people that stayed on BTC either believed in small blocks or believed in the virtue of not forking.
    • shp0ngle 5y ago
      I have heard some people are planning another UASF with respect to Taproot. Because miners are not agreeing with it.
      • 5y ago
• pengwing 5y ago
  So how does paying in BTC via Lightning actually work? What kind of integration will store owners in El Salvador have to make within the next 90 days? Does this apply to buying a can of soda at a brick and mortar?
  • rawtxapp 5y ago
    There's a bunch of open source payment processors they can use [1], BTCPay is my favorite. I think strike and a bunch of other Bitcoiners are helping them. 1: https://lightningnetworkstores.com/services https://lightningnetworkstores.com/services
• mrtksn 5y ago
  Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27445119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27445119
• nemo1618 5y ago
  Regardless of your feelings about Bitcoin, it was really exciting to see the president of El Salvador himself pop into a Twitter Space last night, as the bill was being voted on, to chat with bitcoiners about the implications of the new law. This is exactly the appeal of Twitter, if you think about it: it's a kind of "direct democracy" where the leader of a country can chat casually with everyday people -- and not in some scripted townhall photo-op, but within a space moderated by the people themselves!
  • hmoy 5y ago
    He could likely be on the Space knowing comfortably that the bill would pass. Because otherwise, he'd send the army in again.
  • pavlov 5y ago
    This president of El Salvador sent soldiers into the Legislative Assembly to coerce the parliament to vote in his favor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Salvadoran_political_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Salvadoran_political_cris... He is not a friend of democracy, except the performative "chatting with laser-eyed crypto stans on Twitter" kind.
    • ddvvff 5y ago
      Sorry if this is not on your sensibilities, but that assembly was very corrupt so much so that people wanted them out as soon as possible, he did not command the military to do what they did, the military showed up in support for the people who were also there. He has 90% approval rate on the opposition owned polls, and he has supermajority of the assembly for a reason, 30 years of pure corruption without any consequences by the previous governments, you'll not find enough people to oppose him to fill a boulevard. The new assembly just passed a bill finally allowing Salvadorans in other countries to vote in all future elections, if that's not democracy I don't know what is, if the opposition is against the overwhelming support he has, maybe they should've done things right by the people in those 30 years, but they didn't and they're finally out. And it was done democratically, by the people without a single protest. Read into what the traditional parties did to try to block Bukele for running for president, they closed a political party overnight with a congressman from that party still in the assembly, which was unconstitutional, but nobody said a word there.
• dukeofdoom 5y ago
  Bitcoin has too many problems. Each government will issue their own crypto currency and retain full control over their currency and tax revenue. Why wouldn't they?
• scottmsul 5y ago
  Haha as someone who listened to the entire Twitter spaces chat last night, it's amazing how ignorant HN is about what's actually happening on the ground in El Salvador.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • captn3m0 5y ago
    I found this to be a good read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Salvadoran_political_crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Salvadoran_political_cr...
    • ddvvff 5y ago
      It's really superficial, for example it mentions arbitrary descisions from part of the supreme judges, but completely gloss over the fact that they were members of political parties and we're seen at rallies all over the country, they delayed clear cases of corruption from previous governments and that's more than enough reason to get them out according to the constitution. People want ARENA and FMLN out of the country for good.
    • lowkey 5y ago
      To add color to the source you shared, no where in the article (or in my research) does anyone claim that what the majority elected Salvadoran government did here was illegal, only that their opposition didn’t like it and so called it a ‘coup’. Based on my understanding the elected government was well within it’s rights to replace these judges under the constitution of the country. Also to echo the sister comment here, many of these judges were highly politically active oponents of the newly elected government. Here is another good read if you want to understand the historical context in which El Salvador is operating [1] In short, one of the primary reasons that El Salvador is in a difficult position financially and politically at all is the history of war crimes committed against them by foreign governments such as the United States. In the 1980’s the US Government spent $1-2 million US dollars per day to fund a 12 year long proxy civil war to defend US imperial interests. This resulted in the US Government directly funding the training and recruitment of an army of child soldiers. The country is still dealing with the ramifications of this war today. I see your claims that new El Salvador government is evil and raise you 1 US Government with a history of war crimes against the country. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvadoran_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvadoran_Civil_War
• runbathtime 5y ago
  Does anyone know how Strike works? Strike is the private partner to the El Salvador government that will help convert bitcoin to usd that merchants are forced to accept.
• macspoofing 5y ago
  And that will fix what exactly? I'm not against it, I guess. I just don't get the point of it and what problems it fixes for El Salvador.
  • kragen 5y ago
    Remittances are a big part of El Salvador's economy, and they're expensive and risky. I wrote about my Argentine experience with these issues at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27448744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27448744
• runbathtime 5y ago
  Does anyone know how the Strike app works? They say they use bitcoin to move usd to usd? Strike is the partner with the El Salvador gov that will help convert bitcoin to usd for any merchant who doesn't want the bitcoin. Merchants will be forced to accept bitcoin for payment for goods and services, and the government will basically subsidize the transaction (a huge tax on its people for the benefit of bitcoiners).
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• nathias 5y ago
  Great news for El Salvador, its people and people in general.
• throwaway879 5y ago
  What are the chances the President of El Salvador was paid off by Coinbase or the like?
• gfodor 5y ago
  This represents yet another valuable opportunity for crypto skeptics to set up falsifiable measure to check their skepticism against, but I'm afraid most won't bother going through the exercise.
• isodev 5y ago
  El Salvador didn't get the memo on killing the planet for the next generation.
• sgeisler 5y ago
  To give some technical background: yes, using Lightning (as they seem to do) for affordable BTC payments is challenging for most. As far as I am aware that is why they rely on custodial solutions [1]. People hold their money with someone from their village they trust, which is not ideal but neither is being unbanked. Down the road I could easily see this trust being spread over multiple people using multisig wallets. The amazing thing about all this is that everyone can become a BTC "bank". You need a bit of capital but orders of magnitude less than a normal bank would require, maybe 2k$ to get started of which you might spend 400$ on hardware and fees to open some channels. The trustless nature of lightning lets you and your users then join the global payment network without asking for permission from anyone and you can engage in commerce internationally. I think, while we are still early, that this is an awesome experiment. It will highlight the UX problems so we can fix them. Hopefully at some point all this will make sense to the average westerner too, so we can finally have a money not controlled by anyone (states, incumbent banks) again. But that might take a long time. [1] https://github.com/GaloyMoney/galoy#status-of-the-project https://github.com/GaloyMoney/galoy#status-of-the-project
  • vmception 5y ago
    I've always said that the most productive use of the state in response to bitcoin is by helping make better UX, protocols, optional smart contracts for industries (no different than little stickers on plastic bottles or electronics, but way more useful for builders and consumers alike). This is a great step in that direction.
• dools 5y ago
  Legal tender laws do little to give a commodity value as a currency. No central bank runs the Bitcoin blockchain ledger as their payment settlement system so no one truly accepts Bitcoin in payment of taxes.
• awkward 5y ago
  Good move to compete with Belize or the Seychelles as a hub for international money laundering.
• clint 5y ago
  This will last 1 year tops lmao
• kragen 5y ago
  There's disappointingly much heat and little light in this thread; lots of people in rich countries ripping on El Salvador (and bitcoin) with little more than stereotypes to go on. Let me try to displace some of the content-free flaming with real information. I'm not in El Salvador, but I do have some experience with how Bitcoin gets used in practice in low- and middle-income countries, despite the transaction fees sometimes being high. I don't have experience with Strike or Lightning in general, so while in theory they should help a lot with the transaction-fee issue, I don't know how they work out in practice. I’ve been using Bitcoin to get paid for a couple of years at this point where I live here in Argentina. It’s currently 13 years after Bitcoin’s invention, and some people think it’s regressing instead of progressing. Well, 13 years after the internet’s invention was 01982; not only couldn’t you get so much as a weather report online, much less IRC, but many of the early interesting experiments like NLS at SRI had shut down, and more and more places were disabling guest access to their hosts—you couldn’t run so much as a game of ADVENT without getting a username. And a password. Things were seriously regressing. The only people you could talk to on the internet were other people who really bought into the subculture. If you live in a country with a highly functional banking system and no kleptocracy, Bitcoin is probably a bit puzzling unless you have family in Cuba. But it’s not puzzling at all for those of us who live somewhere in the middle of the broad spectrum between Switzerland and Somalia, because most places have a little kleptocracy. Argentina is a stable democracy, far from being “a failed state,”† but if you want to send US$500 abroad via non-Bitcoin means it’s basically impossible, and the only broadly available savings vehicle is real estate (“ahorrar en ladrillos”), which of course grossly inflates real-estate prices, with a substantial part of the capital city occupied by empty apartments someone bought “as an investment”. Historically, Argentines have saved by buying dollars, but that’s limited to US$200 a month now, and then only if you have a non-under-the-table job (about a third of total employment is under the table): https://www.ambito.com/finanzas/dolares/cronologia-del-cepo-cambiario-se-cumple-un-ano-la-restriccion-impuesta-macri-n5129832 https://www.ambito.com/finanzas/dolares/cronologia-del-cepo-... You can see that in September 02019 when this measure was imposed the price of a dollar was AR$63.50; now it’s AR$155. So whatever savings you had in pesos in 02019 have lost 59% of their value to peso devaluation. In 02001 a lot of Argentines had saved dollars in their dollar-denominated bank accounts. This did not preserve their savings through the financial crisis that year; the cash-strapped government limited withdrawals to a trickle, then converted dollar deposits to pesos at a one-to-one rate, then released the exchange-rate peg, at which point peso went overnight from being worth US$1 to being worth US$0.25 before settling at about US$0.31 for the next few years. The US did something similar in 01933. Some might suggest using “alternatives to banks like credit unions where customers—as owners—hold more power,” but Credicoop depositors suffered the same two-thirds confiscation of savings as depositors in for-profit banks. And they pay the same 3% tax on bank transactions including checks. That’s more than a fast Bitcoin transaction fee of US$15 for transactions over US$500. But we’re not a failed state. There are no gangs of bandits roving the streets in Argentine cities (though there are some pretty bad slums where you’ll get robbed if you wander in without knowing anybody). Courts, free public hospitals, and roads continue to function, though there are more potholes than a year ago. Argentine infant mortality is 10 per 1000 live births, down from almost 20 in the late 01990s and the same as the late 01980s in the US; life expectancy at birth is 77 years, worse than Switzerland’s 84, but the same as China and Hungary, and better than Saudi or Mexico. (Somalia is 54.) Most of the world, and notably El Salvador, is worse off than Argentina, although not necessarily in such a statistically transparent fashion. About one fourth of the people in the world are unbanked, 51% here in Argentina, 70% in El Salvador; even advanced countries like Russia, Hungary, and Uruguay have roughly a quarter of the population unbanked: https://www.gfmag.com/global-data/economic-data/worlds-most-unbanked-countries https://www.gfmag.com/global-data/economic-data/worlds-most-... And if your family lives in a country like Iran or Venezuela subject to US sanctions, and you live in the US? Good luck sending them an ACH, instant or otherwise!‡ It’s well known that Bitcoin is very popular in Venezuela, which kind of is a failed state, so one of the Venezuelan governments is trying to tax Bitcoin remittances at 15%. https://archive.fo/ZRXzS https://archive.fo/ZRXzS Bitcoin handles a few billion dollars per year in such remittances, which are the lifeblood of the Salvadoran economy. A few billion dollars a year might seem like a trivial amount of money to someone in a rich country, but in poor countries, it’s enough to keep several million people alive. Even in the US, it’s common for the police to confiscate large amounts of paper currency just because they can (“civil forfeiture”); US bank accounts are probably fine for US$100K but probably somewhat risky for US$10M if the bank thinks you don’t seem like the kind of person who ought to have it. US$10M in US$100 bills fits in a box you can wheel around on a dolly, but Bitcoin is a lot more practical. (And of course US$10M in dollar bills loses about US$200k per year to inflation.) The problems with official corruption in El Salvador are reputed to be dramatically worse than in the US, and Bitcoin should help a lot with that. Transaction fees are usually high enough that you wouldn’t want to use Bitcoin to pay for a can of Red Bull or even a restaurant dinner. But it’s extremely practical as an alternative to Western Union or US$100 bills or gold, even with the current very high transaction fees. At the moment, the Bitcoin transaction fee is very low—the median Bitcoin transaction fee in the last block was 0.0495 millibitcoins, which is US$1.72: https://btc.com/0000000000000000000c28aea6e8c073e44e249460e8e16cfc4a46f3b47d536b?page=60&order_by=fee&asc=1 https://btc.com/0000000000000000000c28aea6e8c073e44e249460e8... When I last checked a week ago, it was 0.00678 millibitcoins, which is US$0.25: https://btc.com/0000000000000000000778ef382c1697706e34634696ece8d3243eb061e896d9?page=59&order_by=fee&asc=1 https://btc.com/0000000000000000000778ef382c1697706e34634696... Three months ago it was at what I think of as a more normal rate of 0.31 millibitcoins, US$11, which is lower than the 3.4% spread you’d pay to a jeweler or black-market money changer for transactions over US$350: https://btc.com/00000000000000000000476ab57eea9be8ada36e26803130287eb75c7e99797d?page=72&order_by=fee&asc=1 https://btc.com/00000000000000000000476ab57eea9be8ada36e2680... So, Bitcoin doesn’t have to be a cypherpunk utopia to be a big improvement on the status quo ante. For those of you living in stable countries where your worries are things like “instant and extremely low-fee ACHs” and “decentralized utopia”, this may be very confusing, but try to remember that most of the world lives in places with much more pressing concerns, concerns that Bitcoin helps a lot with. And you may live there too, soon—the loyal subjects of Kaiser Wilhelm in 01913 certainly didn’t expect that in 15 years they’d be in the middle of a hyperinflation episode that remains legendary a century later. I think that, by providing workarounds to the people who need them, cryptocurrencies probably not only ameliorate the most immediate and pressing concerns of poor parts of the population like Venezuelan immigrants and MS-13 victims, but probably also adjust the power balance in a more liberal and democratic direction. This will improve the chance of those concerns being ameliorated by public policy over the next decades as well. But it’s hard to tell what will really happen. The potential disaster scenario is that, by making most taxation impossible, cryptocurrencies destroy the modern welfare state without providing anything to replace it. So the public hospitals close, the enormous police force starts to support itself by extracting tribute, and the infrastructure decays. Pretty similar to what’s happened in the US over the last 50 years, in fact, only more so. However, at this point I think the modern welfare state is already doing a good enough job of destroying itself without any significant help from cryptocurrencies—as evidence, I can point to Maduro, Macri, Bolsonaro, Trump, and Brexit, and metonymically to the social changes they betoken. So at this point I’m more worried about cushioning the collapse than preventing it. (I posted an earlier version of this comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27337189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27337189.) ____ † We’ve remained democratic since 01983, electing presidents from three different political parties (UCR, PJ, and PRO), and there’s no serious insurgency. It’s the economy and government policy that are ruinously unstable, to a point that seems satirical to anyone accustomed to the US, but is lamentably common worldwide. Rich people sometimes say they don’t know of legitimate uses of Bitcoin outside of “failed states”. ‡ Family remittances are specifically exempted from the US sanctions on Iran, but good luck finding a US bank that’s willing and able to take that risk: https://www.wiggin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/26580_advisory-family-remittances-from-us-to-iran-not-prohibited-by-iranian-transactions-regulations-martini-glasser-november-2011.pdf https://www.wiggin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/26580_advi...
• okareaman 5y ago
  Why not a stable coin?
• RivieraKid 5y ago
  Bitcoin will never be able to beat official currencies in developed countries in this important metric - short term inflation risk. People tend to forget this but no other asset is safer in the short-term than the dollar, euro, etc. Why? Because no other asset has a powerful central entity whose job is to prevent loss of value above the 2% inflation target.
  • X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
    Beat at what?
    • RivieraKid 5y ago
      In short-term inflation risk.
  • psychlops 5y ago
    Their job is to push the worth of their currency inexorably toward zero.
    • RivieraKid 5y ago
      No, their job is to maintain inflation as close to 2% as possible.
      • psychlops 5y ago
        Indeed, it's the same thing.
        • RivieraKid 5y ago
          2% inflation is not a real problem. It's preferable to a situation where the official currency would have a 0% inflation.
• mumblemumble 5y ago
  One angle I haven't seen explored much yet: This move will mean that people are legally required to use bitcoin, whether they're prepared to or not. How does this work out for individuals running small businesses, who may not have the technical expertise to adapt well to Bitcoin? I fear they're quickly going to become the targets of phishing attacks.
• werber 5y ago
  Reading these comments has me a bit confused. Even in remote parts of Central America Androids are extemely common, there is less of a barrier to entry to a crypto wallet than there is to a bank.
• jokoon 5y ago
  I think it's time that we need some expert opinion and debunking of bitcoin. Elon Musk sold his bitcoins, Bill Gates was against it, Warren Buffet mocked it. One could easily make a fun documentary about all the disappointments of bitcoin. The MtGox theft was a wakeup call.
  • sumedh 5y ago
    > Warren Buffet mocked it. Buffett has also said that he does not understand technology.
    • jokoon 5y ago
      He understands currencies, which is enough. The tech part of bitcoin doesn't really matter, to be honest.
  • Shosty123 5y ago
    Elon already clarified that Tesla did not sell their Bitcoin.
    • bitobserver 5y ago
      Tesla sold 10% of their Bitcoin in Q1. https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/elon-musk-tesla-bitcoin-holdings-sold-good-cash-alternative-personal-2021-4-1030350083?op=1 https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/elon-mus...
• lowdest 5y ago
  Remittances are a significant part of the El Salvadoran GDP. As a percent of GDP, remittances have been up to 21.8% of total GDP in recent years [1]. If encouraging Bitcoin reduces the 5-10% typical remittance fees charged on 20% of GDP, that could be a 1-2% boost to GDP purely through legislation. Even if it doesn't last, it does force remittance companies to become competitive, which will benefit El Salvador for years to come. [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS?locations=SV https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS?lo...
• Growling_owl 5y ago
  This is historic! Now a country has BTC as legal tender, add to that the 700 B marketcap and the fact that it cannot be banned because nobody has enough political capital to piss off millions of holders. We are in a new era. The social messaging out there is BTC vs Central Banks and maybe we'll get to that fight someday in the future, but in the meantime BTC is cannibalising Gold which was always the go to option for Libertarians, Government haters and Central Bank critics and opponents. In my opinion Central Banks have nothing to worry, at least with regards to BTC. By the time BTC takes all of gold marketcap it won't post the outsized returns that it has up to now (regardless of the deflationary protocol) and so people will stop rushing in.
• X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
  I kind of assumed this is a play to get $ from bitcoin tourism, but also clearly El Salvador is not a country that needs to take into account the affect it has on their own currency. They gave up on their own currency in 2004.
• alexf95 5y ago
  One of the first country to do it and definitely not the last country. More will follow in the next years I am pretty sure about that.
• jqpabc123 5y ago
  Wouldn't be better to just start a government run block chain and use USDT. The folks behind tether will probably "loan" them a reserve to start with. It costs them nothing to create so they "loan" them out like candy and the price stays fixed at or near 1 USD. Amazing!!!
• jvanderbot 5y ago
  Oh, the most corrupt government in the world has adopted the most specious currency option, typically used for fraud, ponzi, and money laundering? I'm so surprised.
• ravenstine 5y ago
  I think it's interesting that people are still harping on the transaction fees. It's a fair point, but I don't honestly think that most people who've studied Bitcoin for more than a minute wants to use it for transactions. More and more people are seeing Bitcoin as either a store of wealth or a money making scheme. In either of those cases, the transaction fees really don't matter as much. Incessantly bringing up the transaction fees seems to be missing the contemporary vision of BTC. The original intent of BTC is pretty much dead outside of black markets, and even then BTC wouldn't be a first choice.
  • ekerstein 5y ago
    People bring it up because BTC evangelists keep arguing that bitcoin is a game changer for remittances, the unbanked, transactions, etc.
• liquidify 5y ago
  Is bitcoin specifically legal tender, or other digital currencies, or layer 2 solutions, or what exactly? If bitcoin only was made legal tender, then layer 2 solutions will not be legal tender, and businesses could choose to only accept direct bitcoin payments via the blockchain, forcing customers to pay high fees.
  • drcode 5y ago
    Sure, if businesses collude to undertake user hostile actions, they could get this experiment to fail. Let's hope the incentives lead them to treat their customers better.
  • bubersson 5y ago
    Then maybe as a customer I would buy from the seller that doesn't have the high fees. As soon as one business chooses to use the "cheaper and faster" option, then all other businesses sort of have to too, unless they want to be out of business.
• coliveira 5y ago
  This is going to be great for drug traffickers and other shady elements operating in El Salvador. What they did was just opening the door for the worst individuals to laundry money and buy assets in El Salvador.
  • el-salvador 5y ago
    El Salvador's AML laws are very strict, much more than other countries. Most payments over US$ 100 require and ID, and every bank deposit, require an ID or Passport.
  • stiltzkin 5y ago
    Do you really think BTC transactions are private? BTC transactions are open to public.
• merricksb 5y ago
  Earlier discussion (4 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27408683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27408683
• 1billionstories 5y ago
  its one of the most corrupt countries in the world, so I have a suspicion the people who voted for this have been compromised by Big Bitcoin
• dang 5y ago
  This has had quite a few discussions including a couple large ones: Bitcoin becomes Legal Tender in El Salvador - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27445119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27445119 - June 2021 (134 comments, ongoing) El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27408683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27408683 - June 2021 (398 comments) El Salvador Congress Approves Bitcoin As Legal Currency - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27444718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27444718 - June 2021 (48 comments) Bitcoin is a legal tender in El Salvador for all transactions and tax payments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27444400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27444400 - June 2021 (8 comments) El Salvador Bitcoin legal tender is much bigger news than most realize - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27421705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27421705 - June 2021 (7 comments) Bitcoin: El Salvador plans to make cryptocurrency legal tender - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27416409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27416409 - June 2021 (8 comments) El Salvador to offer residence and no capital gains tax to Bitcoin investors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27416068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27416068 - June 2021 (6 comments) El Salvador President: 1% of BTC invested would increase GDP by 25% - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27414667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27414667 - June 2021 (14 comments) --- I guess we'll leave this one up and then downweight follow-ups [1], unless significant new information [2] arises. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=follow-up%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22significant%20new%20information%22%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
• hypnotist 5y ago
  I am just surprised how much negativity is in HN towards Bitcoin. This is the first case of decentralised open source tech winning against big established powers - governments/faceamagoos. We should be celebrating this. I sure hope that Bitcoin is going to be Linux of money/finance. Lightning might not be at the scale it needs to be now but it will improve greatly. maybe it is good enough already? Like Ruby on Rails. People keep talking about it being slow while massive web applications are being built with and billions of dollars being processed.
  • ausbah 5y ago
    by comparing it to Linux do you mean where the backbone of finance is run by Bitcoin (like Linux running servers), or where <1% of users directly use Bitcoin themselves?
    • hypnotist 5y ago
      well, Linux is hugely successful open source project. Virtually everyone is "touched" by it directly or indirectly. It is one of core components of internet infrastructure. Bitcoin could be that. (of course I am aware that desktop/direct usage is really small)
      • barnabee 5y ago
        Android users all use Linux. The fact they don’t know is one way it might feel like if most people “use” bitcoin and other decentralised tech.
    • beambot 5y ago
      Linux's Unix predecessor originated in the mid-1960s and into the early 1970s. It's almost 50 years old at this point. It didn't even get POSIX compliance until the 1980s, and it was 20-25 years old (2x BTC) when Linus got around to building the Linux kernel. Bitcoin (and blockchain generally) is only 12 years old. Time will tell how well this comment ages... but it's a bit unfair to compare the two directly at their respective ages.
    • 5y ago
• 271828182846 5y ago
  Can someone please tell me if I should sell or keep my BTCs and why? Thanks!
  • sandeeps_ 5y ago
    Please sell
  • bubersson 5y ago
    You should listen to "Think for yourself". Pretty good song.
• hypnotist 5y ago
  off topic but I am really wondering ... How a story on top of HN (number 1) suddenly drops to number 19 in matter of minutes ? Algo glitch ? Penalty for mentioning Bitcoin much ?
• lowkey 5y ago
  Does this mean that Tesla is now required to accept Bitcoin in El Salvador?
• ausbah 5y ago
  >The new law means every business must accept Bitcoin as legal tender for goods or services, unless it is unable to provide the technology needed to do the transaction. how easy is it for businesses to incorporate tech like this?
• kseistrup 5y ago
  They should have chosen NANO instead of BTC: Fast transactions and no transaction fees.
  • kseistrup 5y ago
    A bunch of redditors have set up WeNano spots all over El Salvador now: https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/nvsbin/lets_fill_el_salvador_with_wenano_spots/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/nvsbin/lets_f...
• steve76 5y ago
  I have some choices in front of me. What do I do? Stop smuggling drugs. Stop murdering people. Stop being a lackey to street gangs. Or, I know! Latest fad I know nothing about!!!!!!!!
• jbverschoor 5y ago
  There is so much misinformation about bitcoin, misunderstanding about the problems within countries, banking, politics. It's really unbelievable how almost everybody seems to be living in bubble where banks are safe and good.
• root_axis 5y ago
  I don't see why people are so fixated on LN, it changes nothing, you might as well be using something like coinbase.
• keymone 5y ago
  The level of ignorance on HN about how bitcoin works is staggering. Supposedly a forum of smart technologically savvy people completely missing the mark. Bitcoin doesn’t use energy. Bitcoin isn’t limited to 3 tps. Bitcoin isn’t controlled by miners. Bitcoin isn’t controlled by China. Read and research a bit more before forming such strong opinions. Edit: right, flag and downvote, what else can you do, it's not like you have a rational and defensible position anyway :D
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• vmception 5y ago
  I think the IMF getting repaid in bitcoin is a hilarious and amazing downstream effect
• squidproquo 5y ago
  As reassuring as when Palau joined the "Coalition of The Willing."
• qwerty456127 5y ago
  Bitcoin is the worst cryptocurrency to use as an actual currency, isn't it? I mean the transaction speed and commission rates.
• chucknthem 5y ago
  This is the full text of the bill https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1402446890466217985 https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1402446890466217985 3 pages, double spaced. Very digestible.
• navd 5y ago
  It’s sad to see how pessimistic people here are against cryptos. Try flipping that perspective and see how this can benefit so many people in the world.
  • tradertef 5y ago
    Agreed. Tech community in general are against Bitcon. They all see it as "scam".