17 ms·

Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin

130 points by mgh2 5y ago

jononomo 5y ago
A few million men and a few dozen women really really REALLY think bitcoin is Jesus Christ. I think it will be another twenty years before this whole thing blows over just because these dudes are so pot-committed and need religion, basically.
denpieter6 5y ago
When my herpes started interfering with my daily life. And my lips always bother me every damn day. I remember going to the hospital when I was around 25 years old cuz my whole lips were burning like hell. And a nurse came to the waiting lobby and said sorry there are no doctors here. So I had to go back home. My lips were burning like hell and I felt so uncomfortable that night so I turned to the internet where I found a Dr Ortiz the Nauturopathic. I don’t know what would have healed me from this virus if not for the product. I took a comprehensive STD blood test last week again and everything came out negative ,thanks to Dr Ortiz https://www.facebook.com/DrOrtizthenaturopathic https://www.facebook.com/DrOrtizthenaturopathic
aiscapehumanity 5y ago
Did not fail, cope and seethe.
whatanorigtht 5y ago
Nice propaganda piece.
throwaway20875 5y ago
Bitcoin isn't the lone currency in the country and the dollar is still widely used there. Expect more of this as the president of El Salvador has invited the ire of the US government by exposing the US's involvement in corruption in his country: https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1469045510442864642 https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1469045510442864642 The media is about to go full court press on this guy, BTC is just one angle they'll use.
- KarlKemp 5y ago
  This is like that complaint of Brexiteers, that the European Union, which they wanted to be oh-so-independent of, isn’t giving them the deal they had promised. The whole premise was that Bitcoin would allow El Sal to free itself from under the power of the US($). I can’t even tell if you consider that effort to be successful or not. But considering the average American probably thinks ‘El Salvador’ was the guy Scorcese used to get his coke from, I doubt any theories of “the media” having anything to gain from conspiring against the country.
  - throwaway20875 5y ago
    >I doubt any theories of “the media” having anything to gain from conspiring against the country Aside from your sweeping and snide remarks on Americans, this is a woefully naive take. The US derives a lot of its power through the global monetary system. It can essentially isolate an entire country from large segments of global trade by simply sanctioning it (severing SWIFT transactions and threatening any banks with loss of settlement/SWIFT access/penalties for dealing with the country). Most of global trade is settled in dollars and a lot of reserves are held in dollars. The US exports dollars. The US takes advantage of those circumstances for its own benefit and seeks to preserve this system. BTC doesn't really pose a threat (not enough of it, slow throughput, too volatile). Further, the US has a long history of interfering in South America (United Fruit, for example). Or: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... Bottom line: There is clear incentives for the US to have its way in El Salvador and elsewhere. There is also a clear track record of the US doing anything it can, legal or illegal, to achieve its desired outcomes in South America. Leveraging a largely US based mega-corporate-owned media to assist in those endeavors is only natural (and blithely dismissed by midwits like yourself). The president of El Salvador has disrespected the empire, so El Salvador delenda est.
    - KarlKemp 5y ago
      The snide remarks against Americans are essential for my point; Even if the media had those interests and ability to coordinate, their efforts are directed at an audience, and that audience needs to care for anything further to happen. And unless you find oil or Muslims in El Sal, they don’t and won’t.
CPLX 5y ago
> Bukele came onstage to an animation of beaming down from a flying saucer and outlined his plans for Bitcoin City: a new charter city to be built from scratch, centered on bitcoin mining—and powered by a volcano. Bitcoin City would be paid for with the issuance of $1 billion in “volcano bonds,” starting in mid-2022. The 10-year volcano bonds would pay 6.5 percent annual interest. $500 million of the bond revenue would be used to buy bitcoins. The bitcoins would be locked up for five years, then sold to recover the $500 million purchase price; any profit on the sale would be paid out as an additional dividend. Holding $100,000 in volcano bonds for five years would qualify investors for Salvadoran citizenship. Seems legit.
- xwolfi 5y ago
  Yeah, would vote for the clow...man.
- detaro 5y ago
  Matt Levine had a good take on it: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-11-22/be-careful-with-volcano-bonds https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-11-22/be-car... (TL;DR: it's a good marketing play targeting people who want this to be a thing, it's actually better to buy "normal" El Salvador bonds and invest in Bitcoin yourself: the normal bonds give better interest and you'd get the full gains from the bitcoin profit, not just a share)
  - xiphias2 5y ago
    How can institutions that have obligations for performance but limitations in what they can buy get exposure to Butcoin? For normal people this bond doesn't make sense (except for the residence that they get), but regulated institutions may want a piece of it. We'll see.
    - notahacker 5y ago
      I think if you're a regulated institution that wants exposure to Bitcoin you buy a Bitcoin ETF, not El Salvadorean government tokens on an unregulated iFinex marketplace which returns strictly less than an equivalent allocation of Bitcoin and El Salvadorean securities you can buy on regulated marketplaces.
brighton36 5y ago
I think it's a little too soon to announce failure here. The aesthetic performance 'Bitcoin is a currency', is probably not the essential goal. The essential goal may very well be that of increasing the nations wealth by way of ponzi schemes. While I doubt that will work, we should let the game run a bit longer here, to see if any other countries jump aboard the performance. Thus far, this performance has profited for many of the individuals who have participated in the scheme thus far. Good piece though. I'm a patreon supporter of David's , and I greatly enjoy and appreciate his work.
Speednet 5y ago
Color me shocked that a globalist website advocates against Bitcoin in an alarmist "news" story.
- ABeeSea 5y ago
  Can you point me to a isolationist magazine on geopolitics?
  - Speednet 5y ago
    Ah, the technique of distracting from the point by bringing in an irrelevant point that cannot be debunked. Nice try.
    - ABeeSea 5y ago
      You are the one using the word “globalist” as a pejorative. The opposite is isolationists and FP is a geopolitics magazine. So where is the isolationist’s geopolitics perspective you seem to claim is missing?
      - jkhdigital 5y ago
        The opposite of globalist is not isolationist. If I could coin a word, I would choose “localist”.
        ABeeSea 5y ago
        The US is too big for that definition to make sense. Unless people are proposing cutting off the border and trade with Florida. On the other hand, having far-right beliefs like “anti-globalism” (whatever that means) is heavily correlated with a short distance between where one lives now and where they were born.
    - JKCalhoun 5y ago
      As opposed to dismissing the points in the article with merely a wave of "globalist website"? You may be right but you offer no evidence, only shoot the messenger.
josefrichter 5y ago
Why does he insist on Bitcoin? Their biggest use cases are 1. incoming USD payments from relatives in the States and 2. Retail USD transactions. BTC is really bad for both of these. Why not stablecoins on some cheaper chain?
- relaxatorium 5y ago
  Because it’s at least partially, if not mostly, a publicity play and “bitcoin” is the word most regular people know when it comes to crypto stuff.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  Stablecoins won’t go up and lift up the country in a world of money printing and fiat debasement.
  - josefrichter 5y ago
    it's a country with failed currency and failed leadership. USD printing is far from being their biggest problem.
- k__ 5y ago
  I think the focus on BTC is a bad thing too. But I also don't think stable coins only are the way. The new economy needs a mix of both.
  - josefrichter 5y ago
    They're not building a new economy really. It's a country with incompetent leadership and failed local currency, they don't seem to be able to pull it off. And regular folks are just trying to survive - they heavily depend on USD from relatives, but they pay massive fees to corrupt institutions. They are trying to work around that using BTC, but it also has high fees, and brutal volatility on top of that. If your monthly income is $500 and you risk losing 20-30% of that to fees & volatility, you're screwed. No wonder people protest in the streets. What they really need right now it a stablecoin on cheap network. It's not gonna change the world, but it's gonna solve their biggest problems right now.
Passthepeas 5y ago
So the key reason for btc adoption in El Salvador is cheaper remittance payments, I find it odd that an article that sets out to criticize btc in El Salvador doesn't even mention the original intended use case.
- dundarious 5y ago
  Why are retailers forced to support BTC transactions if that is not a key part of the adoption?
  - el-salvador 5y ago
    Based from what I've seen form the rule of law system in El Salvador for the past months... That the most possible answer is that... Someone from the government tweeted or said that they had to do it on a tv interview, otherwise they would officially face fines or perhaps closures.
    - dundarious 5y ago
      Yeah, isn't it a legal requirement subject to penalties, as you say? Then surely it's fair to measure success of the program on those terms as well -- i.e., is it being used as a currency for daily life? The answer is seemingly not (for technical, social, and speculation reasons), meaning it's fair to comment that this part of the project seems to be a failure. OP can't carve off criticisms they don't like or _personally_ care about.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  What would the problem be to use Transferwise?
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    Cost! And speed! I did a transfer wise last week and it cost me $15 in fees. What is this, ethereum?(a joke cos ethereum is too expensive to be useful for the retail user). I could have sent BTC and it would have been quicker and cheaper.
vimy 5y ago
Seems a bit too soon to call it a failure. It hasn’t even been a year.
- bob667 5y ago
  Trashcoin has been going for a decade and it still has no use except for criminals and gamblers. It could have been called as a failure before this scheme even started
- jononomo 5y ago
  Uh... no one is using it...
yosito 5y ago
Didn't El Salvador just announce that bitcoin is legal tender a few months ago? Isn't it a bit soon to declare that it failed? Especially considering the state of El Salvador's fiat.
- johnisgood 5y ago
  What does it mean for Bitcoin to fail? Failed to do what and why? Sure, if you do a BTC <> USD, then BTC is volatile, but if BTC is on its own, then is it?
- howdydoo 5y ago
  The author is also the author of the book "Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain". It seems more like a hit piece than a news article.
  - ABeeSea 5y ago
    Everything is an anti-crypto conspiracy. Embrace the paranoia.
  - mmargerum 5y ago
    Sure read like a hit piece to me. The bigger issue seems to be the IMF loan sharks.
  - deadalus 5y ago
    David Gerard has an anti-crypto agenda and is a regular on r/buttcoin. He has publicly trashed crypto multiple times. [0]https://old.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/nwblbp/podcast_proof_of_waste_w_david_gerard_when_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/nwblbp/podcast_pr... [1]https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2021/0611/In-El-Salvador-rural-community-offers-glimpse-at-crypto-economy https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2021/0611/In-El-Salvador-... [2]http://blocktribune.com/david-gerard-can-get-long-way-just-buzzwords-big-claims/ http://blocktribune.com/david-gerard-can-get-long-way-just-b... [3] https://old.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6dkc8w/why_do_we_keep_letting_david_gerard_who_obviously/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6dkc8w/why_do_we_...
bob667 5y ago
Lol trashcoin. Most pointless invention ever
Proven 5y ago
Bitcoin proves it can transparently replace fiat - that’s what central banks do when fiat fails. It passed the test with flying colors! Next challenge please! Everything has to be tried except real money which won’t be given a chance “because we know it won’t work”. Morons.
eqmvii 5y ago
I’m exhausted by cryptocurrency. There’s a kernel of neat tech innovation and a reasonable argument about monetary policy obliterated by an avalanche of greed, hype, fraud, and magical thinking.
- jes 5y ago
  With respect, do you see currencies just consed up out of thin air as free of the avalanche of negatives you mentioned?
  - smt88 5y ago
    No crypto asset is currency or will be currency. They're tradable assets, not unlike Beanie Babies. And I don't see fiat that way because: 1. I use if every day. It's widely usable as currency, it's inflationary, and its value doesn't fluctuate wildly. 2. Fiat only ever promised to fix the problems with gold, and it did that (in the US and Europe at least). It didn't ride a wave of hype that it couldn't live up to. 3. No one's hobby is talking about fiat. They don't harass me when I say I don't think it's interesting. They don't talk about the world falling apart and fiat plucking us from the ashes.
    - wahnfrieden 5y ago
      There’s plenty of fiat criticism outside of crypto, maybe you are in a bubble of neoliberalism
      - smt88 5y ago
        I don't know what you're arguing against in my comment, but it's not something I actually said. Fiat, The Fed, and active monetary policy are certainly criticized from all angles. I never said otherwise.
      - pc86 5y ago
        Not by anybody taken seriously.
sebow 5y ago
I don't think bitcoin "Failed" necessarily there.People should keep the distinction between "politican" promises of hype.In the case of political talk+ crypto talk, the hype is squared and one should take the square root to take a wild guess of where things will probably be. And i'm no fan of bitcoin by any stretch, but what exactly is the problem?Still better than hyping up and industry and then becoming broke, like venezuela; though i recognize that particular example(which is relevant given the geopolitics here) triggers many.I've personally heard a lot of common people(think shop owners) that at least think this move was a good idea.
thepasswordis 5y ago
This article is weird. It doesn’t seem to explain why bitcoin “failed”, just seems to suggest that El Salvador is not yet an economic paradise after 8 months. I like what this guy is doing. Sure it could fail. But obviously the SOP has already failed. Good for him and good for the people of El Salvador.
- lalaland1125 5y ago
  From the article: > More than 91 percent of Salvadorans want dollars, not bitcoins. The official Chivo payment system was unreliable at launch in September—the kiss of death for a new system. Users joined for the $30 signup bonus, spent it or cashed it out, then didn’t use Chivo again.
  - nkuttler 5y ago
    9% of the population of an entire country wanting bitcoin sounds like a decent win to me. It's not clear to me where that optimistic number comes from though.
    - MaxDPS 5y ago
      *less than 5% want Bitcoin
    - GracefullyBlind 5y ago
      Wait this is far from a decent win! In such a fragmented societies as the ones from Latin America, I wouldn't be surprised if this <9% is actually part of the population that benefits from this the most
      - davidgerard 5y ago
        This is why I'm disappointed that Chivo seems to be a wasted opportunity - there's a lot of businesses in El Salvador that would really like a widely-accepted form of electronic money, and would like Chivo to actually work reliably, which it absolutely doesn't. I think a lot of them are the ones in that 9%, because they want electronic money that much. In a country where only 30% of the population have bank accounts - and that's with a national ID card, and you can get a basic bank account for the asking with your ID - a government-backed electronic payment system that was reliable and trustworthy could have been a game-changer. Instead, they got a dysfunctional system written by political cronies and plagued with fraud. It is possible they'll fix Chivo. But that's the bit I talked about as a failure, 'cos it is. When your system is so bad that people start setting fire to stuff in the streets, I'd be hard put to call that a success. (The headline was written by the editor, but I'd agree that bitcoin has failed with the populace. Anyone asserting "it's early days yet!" has to account for what's happened so far, and explain why this volatile nonsense would work as actual currency, and not just for the few local Chivo bitcoin day-traders.)
emteycz 5y ago
Lol it has just started, like Bitcoin itself.
bsjks 5y ago
Could change “Bitcoin” for “COVID measures” and “El Salvador” for any other country and it would work just as well.
temp8964 5y ago
> The official Chivo payment system was unreliable at launch in September—the kiss of death for a new system. Users joined for the $30 signup bonus, spent it or cashed it out, then didn’t use Chivo again. The system completely failed to check new users’ photos, relying solely on their national identity card number and date of birth; massive identity fraud to steal signup bonuses ensued. Is this Bitcoin's fault?
specialist 5y ago
I'm so glad cryptocurrency finally has a real world use case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayib_Bukele https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayib_Bukele I applaud Pres Bukele's ingenuity. Lacking the resources for any military adventures, or illicit cash (narco, petro) to fund terrorism, or a readily available ethnic minority to persecute (pogroms), Bukele cleverly seized and weaponized some fancy jargon. Huh. I wonder if Bukele's next gig will be on Sand Hill Road. He's gotta do something with his pilfered wealth. There are worse options.
politician 5y ago
The El Salvadorian experiment is most likely on the receiving end of the same strategy used by the West to counter Chile’s Cybersyn project. TLDR: Chile attempts to escape economic slavery from the US, is subjected to manufactured dissent and ultimately overthrown by a military coup that is funded by and supports the West. 100,000 die from Pinochet’s subsequent war crimes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn
jkhdigital 5y ago
I’d love to see El Salvador successfully leave the USD plantation, but there are far too many hucksters and opportunists lurking in their orbit to have any confidence that they’ll make it. Case in point: choosing a Bitfinex-affiliated underwriter for the volcano bonds is either astonishingly poor judgment or willful ignorance.
- el-salvador 5y ago
  That would be very hard for El Salvador. The number one import and export partner is the U.S. https://wits.worldbank.org/CountrySnapshot/en/SLV https://wits.worldbank.org/CountrySnapshot/en/SLV
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
motohagiography 5y ago
These are interesting ideas. I like the idea that coin mining's so-called waste of electricity is creating demand for geothermal energy plants that wasn't there previously. There is an argument to be made that the reason we don't have pervasive green energy is that a) we don't need (demand) enough of power to force investment in renewables, and b) energy prices are too low to drive green tech innovation in the sector. These two points are essentially the same argument, but nobody is building geothermal plants on volcanos in El Salvador to run smelters, so you need real demand to make those plants happen. Cryptocurrencies create demand for cost efficient power generation that just wasn't there before. Environmentalists should be happy about the increased demand for electricity instead of complaining about its carbon and climate effects, as the only thing that is going to drive the real technological change and the innovation required to reduce carbon is demand for existing resources at higher levels and prices. Cryptocurrencies are a big part of solving the environmental problems activists identify. People for whom climate is really just a proxy for arbitrary narrative and for progress toward total centralization probably aren't happy about having the problem they're leveraging solved, but making geothermal and renewables viable by connecting their production directly to infinite demand from the velocity of money itself is how we can drive technology changes that shift us to renewables in a single lifetime. Necessity is the mother of invention, and if I had to bet on people responding to a crisis narrative vs. having clear incentives to innovate on renewables, I would bet huge on the latter.
- acdha 5y ago
  > Cryptocurrencies are a big part of solving the environmental problems activists identify No, they’re not and it’s shameful to try to promote proof-of-waste under the guise of environmentalism rather than just acknowledging that you are trying to find buyers. There’s no shortage of useful applications for green power. Having constant competition to waste that power has incentivized keeping dirty power online and delays conversion by keeping the prices artificially high. Cryptocurrency mining operations can move quickly so they’ll soak up the cheapest green power which might otherwise encourage industrial users to relocate or accelerate personal electrification by people in the area. Since cryptocurrency expensively doesn’t solve any real problems, that’s pure waste and obstruction at a time we cannot afford it.
doopy1 5y ago
"Let's critique Bitcoin instead of El Salvador's insane dictator."

130 points by mgh2 5y ago

A few million men and a few dozen women really really REALLY think bitcoin is Jesus Christ. I think it will be another twenty years before this whole thing blows over just because these dudes are so pot-committed and need religion, basically.

denpieter6 5y ago

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aiscapehumanity 5y ago

Did not fail, cope and seethe.

whatanorigtht 5y ago

Nice propaganda piece.

throwaway20875 5y ago

Bitcoin isn't the lone currency in the country and the dollar is still widely used there. Expect more of this as the president of El Salvador has invited the ire of the US government by exposing the US's involvement in corruption in his country: https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1469045510442864642 https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1469045510442864642 The media is about to go full court press on this guy, BTC is just one angle they'll use.

KarlKemp 5y ago
This is like that complaint of Brexiteers, that the European Union, which they wanted to be oh-so-independent of, isn’t giving them the deal they had promised. The whole premise was that Bitcoin would allow El Sal to free itself from under the power of the US($). I can’t even tell if you consider that effort to be successful or not. But considering the average American probably thinks ‘El Salvador’ was the guy Scorcese used to get his coke from, I doubt any theories of “the media” having anything to gain from conspiring against the country.
- throwaway20875 5y ago
  >I doubt any theories of “the media” having anything to gain from conspiring against the country Aside from your sweeping and snide remarks on Americans, this is a woefully naive take. The US derives a lot of its power through the global monetary system. It can essentially isolate an entire country from large segments of global trade by simply sanctioning it (severing SWIFT transactions and threatening any banks with loss of settlement/SWIFT access/penalties for dealing with the country). Most of global trade is settled in dollars and a lot of reserves are held in dollars. The US exports dollars. The US takes advantage of those circumstances for its own benefit and seeks to preserve this system. BTC doesn't really pose a threat (not enough of it, slow throughput, too volatile). Further, the US has a long history of interfering in South America (United Fruit, for example). Or: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... Bottom line: There is clear incentives for the US to have its way in El Salvador and elsewhere. There is also a clear track record of the US doing anything it can, legal or illegal, to achieve its desired outcomes in South America. Leveraging a largely US based mega-corporate-owned media to assist in those endeavors is only natural (and blithely dismissed by midwits like yourself). The president of El Salvador has disrespected the empire, so El Salvador delenda est.
  - KarlKemp 5y ago
    The snide remarks against Americans are essential for my point; Even if the media had those interests and ability to coordinate, their efforts are directed at an audience, and that audience needs to care for anything further to happen. And unless you find oil or Muslims in El Sal, they don’t and won’t.

CPLX 5y ago

> Bukele came onstage to an animation of beaming down from a flying saucer and outlined his plans for Bitcoin City: a new charter city to be built from scratch, centered on bitcoin mining—and powered by a volcano. Bitcoin City would be paid for with the issuance of $1 billion in “volcano bonds,” starting in mid-2022. The 10-year volcano bonds would pay 6.5 percent annual interest. $500 million of the bond revenue would be used to buy bitcoins. The bitcoins would be locked up for five years, then sold to recover the $500 million purchase price; any profit on the sale would be paid out as an additional dividend. Holding $100,000 in volcano bonds for five years would qualify investors for Salvadoran citizenship. Seems legit.

xwolfi 5y ago
Yeah, would vote for the clow...man.
detaro 5y ago
Matt Levine had a good take on it: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-11-22/be-careful-with-volcano-bonds https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-11-22/be-car... (TL;DR: it's a good marketing play targeting people who want this to be a thing, it's actually better to buy "normal" El Salvador bonds and invest in Bitcoin yourself: the normal bonds give better interest and you'd get the full gains from the bitcoin profit, not just a share)
- xiphias2 5y ago
  How can institutions that have obligations for performance but limitations in what they can buy get exposure to Butcoin? For normal people this bond doesn't make sense (except for the residence that they get), but regulated institutions may want a piece of it. We'll see.
  - notahacker 5y ago
    I think if you're a regulated institution that wants exposure to Bitcoin you buy a Bitcoin ETF, not El Salvadorean government tokens on an unregulated iFinex marketplace which returns strictly less than an equivalent allocation of Bitcoin and El Salvadorean securities you can buy on regulated marketplaces.

brighton36 5y ago

I think it's a little too soon to announce failure here. The aesthetic performance 'Bitcoin is a currency', is probably not the essential goal. The essential goal may very well be that of increasing the nations wealth by way of ponzi schemes. While I doubt that will work, we should let the game run a bit longer here, to see if any other countries jump aboard the performance. Thus far, this performance has profited for many of the individuals who have participated in the scheme thus far. Good piece though. I'm a patreon supporter of David's , and I greatly enjoy and appreciate his work.

Speednet 5y ago

Color me shocked that a globalist website advocates against Bitcoin in an alarmist "news" story.

ABeeSea 5y ago
Can you point me to a isolationist magazine on geopolitics?
- Speednet 5y ago
  Ah, the technique of distracting from the point by bringing in an irrelevant point that cannot be debunked. Nice try.
  - ABeeSea 5y ago
    You are the one using the word “globalist” as a pejorative. The opposite is isolationists and FP is a geopolitics magazine. So where is the isolationist’s geopolitics perspective you seem to claim is missing?
    - jkhdigital 5y ago
      The opposite of globalist is not isolationist. If I could coin a word, I would choose “localist”.
      - ABeeSea 5y ago
        The US is too big for that definition to make sense. Unless people are proposing cutting off the border and trade with Florida. On the other hand, having far-right beliefs like “anti-globalism” (whatever that means) is heavily correlated with a short distance between where one lives now and where they were born.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    As opposed to dismissing the points in the article with merely a wave of "globalist website"? You may be right but you offer no evidence, only shoot the messenger.

josefrichter 5y ago

Why does he insist on Bitcoin? Their biggest use cases are 1. incoming USD payments from relatives in the States and 2. Retail USD transactions. BTC is really bad for both of these. Why not stablecoins on some cheaper chain?

relaxatorium 5y ago
Because it’s at least partially, if not mostly, a publicity play and “bitcoin” is the word most regular people know when it comes to crypto stuff.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
Stablecoins won’t go up and lift up the country in a world of money printing and fiat debasement.
- josefrichter 5y ago
  it's a country with failed currency and failed leadership. USD printing is far from being their biggest problem.
k__ 5y ago
I think the focus on BTC is a bad thing too. But I also don't think stable coins only are the way. The new economy needs a mix of both.
- josefrichter 5y ago
  They're not building a new economy really. It's a country with incompetent leadership and failed local currency, they don't seem to be able to pull it off. And regular folks are just trying to survive - they heavily depend on USD from relatives, but they pay massive fees to corrupt institutions. They are trying to work around that using BTC, but it also has high fees, and brutal volatility on top of that. If your monthly income is $500 and you risk losing 20-30% of that to fees & volatility, you're screwed. No wonder people protest in the streets. What they really need right now it a stablecoin on cheap network. It's not gonna change the world, but it's gonna solve their biggest problems right now.

Passthepeas 5y ago

So the key reason for btc adoption in El Salvador is cheaper remittance payments, I find it odd that an article that sets out to criticize btc in El Salvador doesn't even mention the original intended use case.

dundarious 5y ago
Why are retailers forced to support BTC transactions if that is not a key part of the adoption?
- el-salvador 5y ago
  Based from what I've seen form the rule of law system in El Salvador for the past months... That the most possible answer is that... Someone from the government tweeted or said that they had to do it on a tv interview, otherwise they would officially face fines or perhaps closures.
  - dundarious 5y ago
    Yeah, isn't it a legal requirement subject to penalties, as you say? Then surely it's fair to measure success of the program on those terms as well -- i.e., is it being used as a currency for daily life? The answer is seemingly not (for technical, social, and speculation reasons), meaning it's fair to comment that this part of the project seems to be a failure. OP can't carve off criticisms they don't like or _personally_ care about.
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NicoJuicy 5y ago
What would the problem be to use Transferwise?
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  Cost! And speed! I did a transfer wise last week and it cost me $15 in fees. What is this, ethereum?(a joke cos ethereum is too expensive to be useful for the retail user). I could have sent BTC and it would have been quicker and cheaper.

vimy 5y ago

Seems a bit too soon to call it a failure. It hasn’t even been a year.

bob667 5y ago
Trashcoin has been going for a decade and it still has no use except for criminals and gamblers. It could have been called as a failure before this scheme even started
jononomo 5y ago
Uh... no one is using it...

yosito 5y ago

Didn't El Salvador just announce that bitcoin is legal tender a few months ago? Isn't it a bit soon to declare that it failed? Especially considering the state of El Salvador's fiat.

johnisgood 5y ago
What does it mean for Bitcoin to fail? Failed to do what and why? Sure, if you do a BTC <> USD, then BTC is volatile, but if BTC is on its own, then is it?
howdydoo 5y ago
The author is also the author of the book "Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain". It seems more like a hit piece than a news article.
- ABeeSea 5y ago
  Everything is an anti-crypto conspiracy. Embrace the paranoia.
- mmargerum 5y ago
  Sure read like a hit piece to me. The bigger issue seems to be the IMF loan sharks.
- deadalus 5y ago
  David Gerard has an anti-crypto agenda and is a regular on r/buttcoin. He has publicly trashed crypto multiple times. [0]https://old.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/nwblbp/podcast_proof_of_waste_w_david_gerard_when_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/nwblbp/podcast_pr... [1]https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2021/0611/In-El-Salvador-rural-community-offers-glimpse-at-crypto-economy https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2021/0611/In-El-Salvador-... [2]http://blocktribune.com/david-gerard-can-get-long-way-just-buzzwords-big-claims/ http://blocktribune.com/david-gerard-can-get-long-way-just-b... [3] https://old.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6dkc8w/why_do_we_keep_letting_david_gerard_who_obviously/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6dkc8w/why_do_we_...

bob667 5y ago

Lol trashcoin. Most pointless invention ever

Proven 5y ago

Bitcoin proves it can transparently replace fiat - that’s what central banks do when fiat fails. It passed the test with flying colors! Next challenge please! Everything has to be tried except real money which won’t be given a chance “because we know it won’t work”. Morons.

eqmvii 5y ago

I’m exhausted by cryptocurrency. There’s a kernel of neat tech innovation and a reasonable argument about monetary policy obliterated by an avalanche of greed, hype, fraud, and magical thinking.

jes 5y ago
With respect, do you see currencies just consed up out of thin air as free of the avalanche of negatives you mentioned?
- smt88 5y ago
  No crypto asset is currency or will be currency. They're tradable assets, not unlike Beanie Babies. And I don't see fiat that way because: 1. I use if every day. It's widely usable as currency, it's inflationary, and its value doesn't fluctuate wildly. 2. Fiat only ever promised to fix the problems with gold, and it did that (in the US and Europe at least). It didn't ride a wave of hype that it couldn't live up to. 3. No one's hobby is talking about fiat. They don't harass me when I say I don't think it's interesting. They don't talk about the world falling apart and fiat plucking us from the ashes.
  - wahnfrieden 5y ago
    There’s plenty of fiat criticism outside of crypto, maybe you are in a bubble of neoliberalism
    - smt88 5y ago
      I don't know what you're arguing against in my comment, but it's not something I actually said. Fiat, The Fed, and active monetary policy are certainly criticized from all angles. I never said otherwise.
    - pc86 5y ago
      Not by anybody taken seriously.

sebow 5y ago

I don't think bitcoin "Failed" necessarily there.People should keep the distinction between "politican" promises of hype.In the case of political talk+ crypto talk, the hype is squared and one should take the square root to take a wild guess of where things will probably be. And i'm no fan of bitcoin by any stretch, but what exactly is the problem?Still better than hyping up and industry and then becoming broke, like venezuela; though i recognize that particular example(which is relevant given the geopolitics here) triggers many.I've personally heard a lot of common people(think shop owners) that at least think this move was a good idea.

thepasswordis 5y ago

This article is weird. It doesn’t seem to explain why bitcoin “failed”, just seems to suggest that El Salvador is not yet an economic paradise after 8 months. I like what this guy is doing. Sure it could fail. But obviously the SOP has already failed. Good for him and good for the people of El Salvador.

lalaland1125 5y ago
From the article: > More than 91 percent of Salvadorans want dollars, not bitcoins. The official Chivo payment system was unreliable at launch in September—the kiss of death for a new system. Users joined for the $30 signup bonus, spent it or cashed it out, then didn’t use Chivo again.
- nkuttler 5y ago
  9% of the population of an entire country wanting bitcoin sounds like a decent win to me. It's not clear to me where that optimistic number comes from though.
  - MaxDPS 5y ago
    *less than 5% want Bitcoin
  - GracefullyBlind 5y ago
    Wait this is far from a decent win! In such a fragmented societies as the ones from Latin America, I wouldn't be surprised if this <9% is actually part of the population that benefits from this the most
    - davidgerard 5y ago
      This is why I'm disappointed that Chivo seems to be a wasted opportunity - there's a lot of businesses in El Salvador that would really like a widely-accepted form of electronic money, and would like Chivo to actually work reliably, which it absolutely doesn't. I think a lot of them are the ones in that 9%, because they want electronic money that much. In a country where only 30% of the population have bank accounts - and that's with a national ID card, and you can get a basic bank account for the asking with your ID - a government-backed electronic payment system that was reliable and trustworthy could have been a game-changer. Instead, they got a dysfunctional system written by political cronies and plagued with fraud. It is possible they'll fix Chivo. But that's the bit I talked about as a failure, 'cos it is. When your system is so bad that people start setting fire to stuff in the streets, I'd be hard put to call that a success. (The headline was written by the editor, but I'd agree that bitcoin has failed with the populace. Anyone asserting "it's early days yet!" has to account for what's happened so far, and explain why this volatile nonsense would work as actual currency, and not just for the few local Chivo bitcoin day-traders.)

emteycz 5y ago

Lol it has just started, like Bitcoin itself.

bsjks 5y ago

Could change “Bitcoin” for “COVID measures” and “El Salvador” for any other country and it would work just as well.

temp8964 5y ago

> The official Chivo payment system was unreliable at launch in September—the kiss of death for a new system. Users joined for the $30 signup bonus, spent it or cashed it out, then didn’t use Chivo again. The system completely failed to check new users’ photos, relying solely on their national identity card number and date of birth; massive identity fraud to steal signup bonuses ensued. Is this Bitcoin's fault?

specialist 5y ago

I'm so glad cryptocurrency finally has a real world use case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayib_Bukele https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayib_Bukele I applaud Pres Bukele's ingenuity. Lacking the resources for any military adventures, or illicit cash (narco, petro) to fund terrorism, or a readily available ethnic minority to persecute (pogroms), Bukele cleverly seized and weaponized some fancy jargon. Huh. I wonder if Bukele's next gig will be on Sand Hill Road. He's gotta do something with his pilfered wealth. There are worse options.

politician 5y ago

The El Salvadorian experiment is most likely on the receiving end of the same strategy used by the West to counter Chile’s Cybersyn project. TLDR: Chile attempts to escape economic slavery from the US, is subjected to manufactured dissent and ultimately overthrown by a military coup that is funded by and supports the West. 100,000 die from Pinochet’s subsequent war crimes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn

jkhdigital 5y ago

I’d love to see El Salvador successfully leave the USD plantation, but there are far too many hucksters and opportunists lurking in their orbit to have any confidence that they’ll make it. Case in point: choosing a Bitfinex-affiliated underwriter for the volcano bonds is either astonishingly poor judgment or willful ignorance.

el-salvador 5y ago
That would be very hard for El Salvador. The number one import and export partner is the U.S. https://wits.worldbank.org/CountrySnapshot/en/SLV https://wits.worldbank.org/CountrySnapshot/en/SLV

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motohagiography 5y ago

These are interesting ideas. I like the idea that coin mining's so-called waste of electricity is creating demand for geothermal energy plants that wasn't there previously. There is an argument to be made that the reason we don't have pervasive green energy is that a) we don't need (demand) enough of power to force investment in renewables, and b) energy prices are too low to drive green tech innovation in the sector. These two points are essentially the same argument, but nobody is building geothermal plants on volcanos in El Salvador to run smelters, so you need real demand to make those plants happen. Cryptocurrencies create demand for cost efficient power generation that just wasn't there before. Environmentalists should be happy about the increased demand for electricity instead of complaining about its carbon and climate effects, as the only thing that is going to drive the real technological change and the innovation required to reduce carbon is demand for existing resources at higher levels and prices. Cryptocurrencies are a big part of solving the environmental problems activists identify. People for whom climate is really just a proxy for arbitrary narrative and for progress toward total centralization probably aren't happy about having the problem they're leveraging solved, but making geothermal and renewables viable by connecting their production directly to infinite demand from the velocity of money itself is how we can drive technology changes that shift us to renewables in a single lifetime. Necessity is the mother of invention, and if I had to bet on people responding to a crisis narrative vs. having clear incentives to innovate on renewables, I would bet huge on the latter.

acdha 5y ago
> Cryptocurrencies are a big part of solving the environmental problems activists identify No, they’re not and it’s shameful to try to promote proof-of-waste under the guise of environmentalism rather than just acknowledging that you are trying to find buyers. There’s no shortage of useful applications for green power. Having constant competition to waste that power has incentivized keeping dirty power online and delays conversion by keeping the prices artificially high. Cryptocurrency mining operations can move quickly so they’ll soak up the cheapest green power which might otherwise encourage industrial users to relocate or accelerate personal electrification by people in the area. Since cryptocurrency expensively doesn’t solve any real problems, that’s pure waste and obstruction at a time we cannot afford it.

doopy1 5y ago

"Let's critique Bitcoin instead of El Salvador's insane dictator."