What Happened After El Salvador Adopted Bitcoin as Legal Currency? (foreignpolicy.com) 123
Foreign Policy magazine explores just what happened after El Salvador adopted bitcoin as legal currency and launched its official government-approved bitcoin wallet Chivo:
Chivo launched just after midnight on Sept. 7. The system started failing at three a.m. Server capacity was increased, and app installations were not re-enabled until 11:30 a.m. Transactions failed through the day; customer service lines were jammed; Chivo ATMs ran out of cash. Shortly after ten a.m., the price of bitcoin crashed by $10,000 in three minutes...
After protests on Sept. 6, more than 1,000 people marched on the Legislative Assembly on Sept. 7, jumping barriers placed early that morning to keep them out. One group of protestors set some tires on fire. Opposition politicians attended the day's session in "No Bitcoin" shirts. The protests were not against bitcoin itself. People protested the forced acceptance, the complete lack of transparency from the government, and the dysfunctional Chivo payment system — "people are against how things are being done in the name of bitcoin," local businessman Patrick Murray said....
[T]he Bitcoin Law, and the disastrous launch of Chivo, has frightened the bond markets; El Salvador's sovereign debt dropped almost five cents in a single day, ending Sept. 7 trading at 87.6 cents on the dollar. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are already reluctant to supply further funding because of the Bitcoin Law...
Traders were reluctant to accept bitcoin. "I'd rather lose the sale," one trader told La Prensa Grafica. Others didn't trust money they couldn't hold in their hands. Street vendors may not even have phones. Many of their customers are illiterate. Some government offices didn't accept bitcoin payments. Transfers from Chivo to bank accounts were not reliable. The Chivo ATMs didn't work well — one machine had a reported three successful cash withdrawals in a day. Even transfer of bitcoins in and out of Chivo had problems...
"El Salvador's Bitcoin Law Is a Farce," blares the headline on the article, saying El Salvador's system "doesn't work, the currency crashed, and the public hates it."
"Fears of criminals bringing in dirty bitcoins and exchanging them for clean dollars, draining the $150 million trust that was set up as a buffer between bitcoins and dollars, have not come to pass — because Chivo doesn't work well enough."
After protests on Sept. 6, more than 1,000 people marched on the Legislative Assembly on Sept. 7, jumping barriers placed early that morning to keep them out. One group of protestors set some tires on fire. Opposition politicians attended the day's session in "No Bitcoin" shirts. The protests were not against bitcoin itself. People protested the forced acceptance, the complete lack of transparency from the government, and the dysfunctional Chivo payment system — "people are against how things are being done in the name of bitcoin," local businessman Patrick Murray said....
[T]he Bitcoin Law, and the disastrous launch of Chivo, has frightened the bond markets; El Salvador's sovereign debt dropped almost five cents in a single day, ending Sept. 7 trading at 87.6 cents on the dollar. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are already reluctant to supply further funding because of the Bitcoin Law...
Traders were reluctant to accept bitcoin. "I'd rather lose the sale," one trader told La Prensa Grafica. Others didn't trust money they couldn't hold in their hands. Street vendors may not even have phones. Many of their customers are illiterate. Some government offices didn't accept bitcoin payments. Transfers from Chivo to bank accounts were not reliable. The Chivo ATMs didn't work well — one machine had a reported three successful cash withdrawals in a day. Even transfer of bitcoins in and out of Chivo had problems...
"El Salvador's Bitcoin Law Is a Farce," blares the headline on the article, saying El Salvador's system "doesn't work, the currency crashed, and the public hates it."
"Fears of criminals bringing in dirty bitcoins and exchanging them for clean dollars, draining the $150 million trust that was set up as a buffer between bitcoins and dollars, have not come to pass — because Chivo doesn't work well enough."
So... nobody saw this coming a mile away? (Score:3, Interesting)
A banana republic government decides to base their currency on a fake currency primarily used for money laundering and pump-and-dump scamming, and they thought it would go well?
I'm sure Generalissimo and El Presidente made out like bandits by prebuying some bitcoin before implementing the policy, and then selling it at the "dump" point though...
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A banana republic government decides to base their currency on a fake currency primarily used for money laundering and pump-and-dump scamming, and they thought it would go well?
It would make a good plot for a Marx Brothers movie, if only they were still around to make one.
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It is also a given that corrupt government officials and their associates are going to be profiting off of this. I'm not so clear how this new type of corruption is going to be more profitable than the old fashioned style of corruption they have been practicing successfully for generations though.
Re:So... nobody saw this coming a mile away? (Score:5, Interesting)
The primary way people "make money" off of bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies is pump-and-dump manipulation. They buy some of it up, announce they're going to do something that causes a price spike, then sell off before the crash.
Similar to how Elon Musk last propped his net worth up [gizmodo.com] on a couple occasions by buying bitcoin, announcing Tesla would start accepting it for purchases, selling off, then announcing "oops guess we won't" to let it crash again...
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Re:So... nobody saw this coming a mile away? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, sorry, he backed up his arguments and had a verifiable example.
While you didn't even have an argument. All you had, was a statement. Followed by a personal attack (aka showing us you know you lack arguments), that makes us think you're the one thinking in terms of beliefs, and are projecting.
Anyone can check that Bitcoin is not a stable market, but pumped (which seems to be half the reason BizX still runs this site) and dumped regularly.
And mind you that I'd generally love to see a proper cryptocurrency.
But I'd go further and say the lie or delusion that "mining" would give it value in any way, is the core problem. So it doesn't even qualify for the "belief" argument that keeps traditional fiat currencies from being jokes. It's not just a scam. It's a *bad* scam.
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Bitcoin? I don't know. But if you think Musk didn't pump-and-dump Doge, for example, then you need glasses and a white cane.
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For fuck's sake, the guy's been pumping Doge over Twitter for months, and he wasn't even being subtle about it.
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Technical analysis works until it doesn't, especially on something without fundamentals.
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The best strategy historically has been to hold it for as long as possible.
So you're admitting that it's completely useless as a currency?
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I wish I had a mod point to point out how insightful this comment is.
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That's great if you want to lose 100% of your principal. This is the narrative the Ponzi schemers want people to believe.
The problem with this premise is that it's mathematically unsustainable.
The only way to generate a return with bitcoin/crypto is to sell it to someone who will pay more. That person expects to do the same thing, and so-on and so-on. But this requires a never-ending stream of people who have been hoodwinked into
Elon Musk = Bitcoin Pusher (Score:1)
Similar to how Elon Musk last propped his net worth up [gizmodo.com] on a couple occasions by buying bitcoin, announcing Tesla would start accepting it for purchases, selling off, then announcing "oops guess we won't" to let it crash again...
That's why he's called a Bitcoin Pusher [urbandictionary.com].
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And you're an urban dictionary pusher.
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Maybe, but at least he's right. I just upped his definition.
Re:So... nobody saw this coming a mile away? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well all currencies are "fake" by definition...
Many countries create their own currencies out of thin air, el salvador has its own currency known as "colon" and before that it was called "peso", but because they are a small and relatively poor country so there is very little interest in their own currency.
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No, most current ones! Not all!
Currencies made out of materials that themselves hold value, even if nobody believes in them, are "real" by definition.
It's an application of of "Reality is that, which, if you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.".
And I don't even mean gold. Because gold, too, would be completely useless to me, unless I had a moron or a chip maker to sell it to. ;)
E.g. matter-energy and space-time are the most universal real currencies in the universe. They will always be valuable.
And work
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So on the one hand gold is not valuable but on the other hand energy-matter, of which gold is certainly a part, is valuable.
I think you have categorized the world well enough.
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No, most current ones! Not all!
There are no currencies today made out of precious metals. None.
National treasuries are pretty happy about that because when you have intrinsically worthless coins you can make money (a practice called seigniorage) by minting them. Also if you make coins out of metals that have value even close to the face value of the coin you run the risk of commodity price spikes causing the coins to be worth more as ingots, and the coins disappear.
Re:So... nobody saw this coming a mile away? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fiat currency is as "fake" as the government that stands behind it. If you have a country that's been around hundreds or thousands of years and whose monetary system continues to work, it's no longer "fake." The dollar has been functioning and stable for hundreds of years. Bitcoin hasn't managed to be functional, nor stable in the 12 years of its existence.
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The US dollar was created in 1914, so that's like 107 years.
And I suppose if you use the word stable to mean "doesn't go wildly up and down in value", I guess I could concede that. But if by "stable", you mean "preserves purchasing power", then oh, no, it isn't that.
The purchasing power of the US dollar has dropped over 96% since 1913. That's hardly "stable" in terms of purchasing power.
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A banana republic government decides to base their currency on a fake currency primarily used for money laundering and pump-and-dump scamming, and they thought it would go well?
You're just parroting the layman's (and Slashdots) popular opinion of Bitcoin without having a clue what it's all about, how it can be useful in a manner of ways, and probably with no idea that Bitcoin is just one part of the larger blockchain revolution taking place before our eyes, if you dare to look. You never bothered to do some research.
The problem of El Salvador's Bitcoin adoption is that they went into it head over heels, without proper planning, preparation and trials. It seems completely rushed an
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- its a virtual currency, up untill recently not backed ore used by any state
- it canbe mined but due to the way it's designed that boat has sailed fot most people as either the power involved on commodity hw ( this is befor the chip shortage) , or the cist of asics/ high end gpus makes the barier of entry rather high.
- it's short term vol is rather high comoaredto most other established currencies, maki
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Prof. Feynman (Score:1)
Shortly after ten a.m., the price of bitcoin crashed by $10,000 in three minutes...
Bitcoin Bros: [urbandictionary.com]
Prof. Feynman:
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Or this one:
"Be careful when you follow the [bitcoin] masses. Sometimes the M is silent."
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Funny thing about BTC, the price only goes up. As more governments move away from the dollar, and that there are only 21 million coins, period. So, because of this, as time goes on and wallets are lost, BTC only becomes more valuable over time.
It is funny, because the people who gripe about BTC are the ones who missed the BTC train, while the ones who are on it are pretty much set for life.
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The freaking chart and even the damn parent comment of yours show that that is not true. It goes down all the time.
You're as deluded as a disciple.
And mind you that it's still, and will always completely worthless to to everyone outside the cult.
Enjoy your 51% attack though.
Cause you can bet your ass that is countries get involved, they are gonna do that to each other. Hell, I will do it if necessary. Just for shits and giggles. It's not like a bot army is that hard to come by.
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The freaking chart and even the damn parent comment of yours show that that is not true. It goes down all the time..
I believe the ACs thinking (if it can be called that) is that because the price swings of BTC get bigger and bigger that is a good thing that recommends it as an investment.
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Well, if you want to call speculation "investment" maybe. Anything as volatile as Bitcoin is certainly good for speculation.
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Funny thing about BTC, the price only goes up.
Bullshit. It's down ~1% just today.
Hey, i bought at $60k last April. When is it going up again?
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Funny thing about BTC, the price only goes up.
Then why is the current price 5% lower than it was a couple weeks ago?
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Long term this helps keep BitCoin healthy (Score:2, Informative)
Sure there was absolutely some people taking advantage of this to reduce exposure to BitCoin.
But long term I think this really helps.
For one thing, as much as there have been protests it will get a lot more average people using the system, and increased transaction flow attracts more nodes to the network.
It also tests and tweaks the Lightning system on a larger scale than they might have otherwise, improving it pretty rapidly.
But longer term, this creates a base of stability for BitCoin in a world that see
Bitcoin can be many things, but not currency (Score:5, Insightful)
First let me say, I'm not saying Bitcoin is useless. It has its purpose.
Here they are trying to use it for a very specific purpose - currency. Currency is used for two things. A) as the primary medium of exchange (products for sale as priced at X dollars/pesos/francs), and B) a store of value, you can save up X& per month to buy a car in six months, knowing that a car will cost you 1000&.
If you're going to price a subscription for 10& / month, you need to know how much 10& is worth. If you're going to save up to buy a car with &, you need to know how many & a car will be worth six months from now.
Even more so when you sign a 12 month lease for an apartment, or a five year lease for a business location, or for a car. Stable value is the first requirement of a currency.
That's why the US increased the supply of dollars by 20% last year - so that supply would match demand and the value of the dollar would remain stable.
Bitcoin is by design astable, and can never be stabilized. If BTC is "doing well" more people will want it. That's higher demand, which means higher prices. Because there is no matching increase in supply. The supply, th creation of new BTC, is preset at a low percentage that keeps getting lower, and cannot respond to demand.
That's why the price is so volatile and always will be.
Suppose the price of BTC did stop going up. Then a bunch of people who are currently enjoying the upward roller coaster of BTC would hop on over to the Reddit "short squeeze" strategies or wherever else they think they can make a quick buck, if BTC was no longer rising. People selling BTC means prices fall, since there is no change in supply. What do you think happens when the price of BTC falls for months straight? The longer it falls, the more people pull out, the faster it falls.
(Same increasing prices cause higher demand cause higher BTC prices).
BTC has a POSITIVE feedback loop. It can only ever shoot up or shoot down. It can never be stable. A currency requires a compensating NEGATIVE feedback loop, a damper, to stabilize prices.
There is worse (Score:1, Interesting)
Now watch all the bitcoin bros
If you think "Bitcoin Bros" are bad, wait until you see the people stumping for fiat currencies that are backed by nothing and long run even less stable than Bitcoin. At least Bitcoin is limited in amount, unlike almost any modern fiat "currency".
What I really advocate for is the only actual money, silver and gold. I just can see BitCoin being a good alternative to all other fiat systems that are pretending to be viable currencies as well.
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Goldbug detected.
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Doesn't sound like a goldbug, since gold suffers (to a lesser extent) the same issue, at least in the short term, for amount. If the demand for gold doubles, the supply is limited.
In the long term, it's slightly more flexible, since high price of gold may make some mining profitable where it wasn't before, which in theory should lower the price. In practice, that hasn't happened in the last 20 years, leaving gold at a very high price when adjusted for inflation.
And, of course, there's no mechanism fo
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fiat currencies that are backed by nothing
Repeating something doesn't make it true.
On the other hand, cryptocurrencies are also fiat and backed by nothing.
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Bitcoin, on the other hand, IS backed by nothing. It's based on an artificial scarcity that does not exist in reality - as evidenced by the fact that there are more cryptocurrencies in the world than there are countries.
Re: There is worse (Score:3)
> If you think "Bitcoin Bros" are bad, wait until you see the people stumping for fiat currencies that are backed by nothing and long run even less stable than Bitcoin.
At the end of the day, the US dollar is backed by one thing - the taxing power of the US government.
I'm going to assume you were kidding when you said dollars are more volatile than BTC. While it's supposed to inflate at 2% annually, the dollar has gone as high as what, 5% in a single year under the modern system. 3% higher than the targ
Re:USD is getting less stable every day (Score:4)
Sure at the moment Bitcoin can and will lose value more rapidly on some days, but the more people that use it as currency, the more stable it will become.
It will not - there's no reason for it to. The parent poster is 100% correct here.
Hell, even if BTC magically stopped having regular double-digit value swings, it's still deflationary by design. Meaning there's zero incentive to use it as actual currency.
The fundamental definition of inflation is the increase in money supply. Which was 40% last year...
Nonsense. The fundamental definition of inflation is sustained increase in prices, and this is caused by money supply increasing without any associated demand. This is why, despite a USD M2 increase of ~40% last year, you still only see single-digit inflation figures.
That's simply untrue in practice. It can have some vigorous swings but spends a large part of the time floating along within a much more tight range [statista.com].
That "much tighter range" you mention is 66% wide and less than a year old now. For my life, i don't understand why people talk about current BTC pricing trends as if they were a fact of nature or something.
Re: USD is getting less stable every day (Score:2)
Why would you want an inflationary money supply? That means the bank or government just can print money whenever they see fit and unless they tell you so, your money floats on nothing while the economy crumbles.
The USD is currently in a hyper inflationary cycle due to extreme government spending. You think the cost of staple foods rising 20-30% in the last few months is a good thing?
Re: USD is getting less stable every day (Score:4, Insightful)
Because an inflationary policy means a working economy. Sitting on your money means it dwindles little by little, so you have every incentive to spend it and use it for something useful. So you buy stuff, invest it in a business, etc.
A deflationary policy would incentivize minimizing spending and investment, because you'd be passing on the money's growth in value. And that's exactly what we see with Bitcoin today. The guy that bought that famous pizza was a moron. He should have sat on those 10K bitcoins, done absolutely nothing with them, and if he sold them today he'd have $473 million.
So today, you'd be stupid to buy pizza with bitcoin. What you should do with it is just to increase your hoard like a dragon, never spend a cent if you can avoid it, and cash out whenever you think things have hit the peak. This of course means it's no longer a currency anymore, it's a global game of hot potato where people are just playing a game of passing around an otherwise useless asset until the law stops the game, people move on, or the market craters for one reason to another.
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This. Thank you.
Re: USD is getting less stable every day (Score:2)
Ok that makes sense and explains nicely why we need moderately inflationary policies. Thanks.
Offcourse it's a very fine balance and involves almost innumerable real life parameters affecting each other (even though economics simplifies then into 2-3 theoretically constructed parameters affecting money supply n inflation...) so it probably makes way more sense to look at how things are actually working IRL with BTC than to argue theoretical ideas on if it's good / bad / ponzi...
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That's true for almost every currency however, if you sit on your money (save) you get richer, but you don't invest and investing MAY make more sense. The guy buying a pizza with bitcoin is still a multi-millionaire but he may also have kick-started the Bitcoin economy in the first place. It is possible if everybody hoarded it, nobody would've trusted it as a real currency and it would still be at a few cents per Bitcoin.
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You can't eat bitcoin, so when you need something, you will have to spend it. Inflationary money incentivises you to spend your money now because otherwise it will lose its value. Deflationary money incentivises you to consume less and only buy important things. This is a good thing, in particular for the environment as it encourages efficient use of resources.
Having a car doesn't mean flooring it (Score:2)
> Why would you want an inflationary money supply? That means the bank or government just can print money whenever they see fit and unless they tell you so
Having a car doesn't mean you floor the accelerator all the time. The gas pedal means you can go the appropriate speed for conditions. Same with the money supply. Having the ability to adjust it means you can have the right supply for conditions.
For example, as I recall in 2020 the demand for the USD increased so 20% more dollars were needed to keep th
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We also have a lot more instability compared to to the 1980s, according to economists driven by the fact we have fiat currency, the gap between rich and poor has grown tremendously and the market is a lot less open.
Re:USD is getting less stable every day (Score:4, Informative)
The USD is no longer a store of value
This is, of course, complete nonsense. Multiple corporations now have literally billions in literal cash in literal banks, Apple being one of them. Every time this is brought up a bunch of people start saying "no they don't, those are investments not cash", WRONG. It is ACTUAL CASH MONEY IN BANKS. They have plenty of the other stuff too of course. They have so much money they literally can't spend it and can't invest it.
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Dollars won't go to zero outside of an apocalypse, Bitcoin can.
They rely on imports, they need to pay for them.
Re: Bitcoin can be many things, but not currency (Score:2)
The supply is adjusted*in order to keep the value stable*. Keeping inflation close to 0% without going under 0.
Th El Salvador government has no need to stabilize the USD since the US government does that.
Re: Bitcoin can be many things, but not currency (Score:3)
Re why you want 2% inflation, rather than 0%.
There are two reasons.
First, deflation (a negative inflation rate) can become a feedback loop, with deflation causing less spending, causing more deflation, in a spiral. That can be really bad, so you want to avoid ever going negative. Aiming for 2% gives a little room to slightly miss the target without a deflationary spiral ensuing.
Secondly, increasing the money supply increases inflation, but reduces unemployment. If you can easily borrow money to grow your lo
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A currency requires a compensating NEGATIVE feedback loop, a damper, to stabilize prices.
Not so sure about that. Gold has been more stable over history than fiat money, for sure.
(This isn't as obvious as it might be, since we moderns price gold in fiat money ... the value of gold usually remains pretty stable while the price in fiat money fluctuates a bunch. )
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Not so sure about that. Gold has been more stable over history than fiat money, for sure.
Um, you might want to look a bit deeper into that...
Re: Bitcoin can be many things, but not currency (Score:2)
> A currency requires a compensating NEGATIVE feedback loop, a damper, to stabilize prices.
Not so sure about that. Gold has been more stable
Gold has a negative feedback loop.
When gold prices go down, fewer people mine gold, reducing supply. Mines shit down entirely at times. Reduced supply pushes the price back up.
The higher the price goes, the more people mine (and sell) gold, pushing the price down.
I think that if you looked at the purchasing power of gold over the last 50 years vs the purchasing powe
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If a major terrorist attacks in the US is funded by Bitcoin transfers, Bitcoin will go to zero.
The US has the power to end Bitcoin any time it likes, it can close all the formal on/off-ramps worldwide (see Iran sanctions). If the only on/off-ramps are physical exchange, Bitcoin dies.
“Move fast and break things” (Score:2)
But in an echo of the Silicon Valley model—“Move fast and break things”—the government tried to sell speed and totality as an advantage. One government figure said: “We can do this slowly, or we can just put it on the people and people will learn. If they’re forced to do it, they’ll learn and they’ll learn quickly.”
Shortly after ten a.m., the price of bitcoin crashed by $10,000 in three minutes. Chivo users watched their $30 in bitcoin drop below $25 in real time—a strong practical education in bitcoin’s volatility.
I'd say they got a quick education on cryptocurrency volatility...
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The fact that it can happen at all is already fucking insane.
Governments have agencies to control their currencies and keep them stable. That requires absolute, centralized control. Which works for the Euro and the Dollar because only they can print money.
Which is exactly the point of what Bitcoin wants to do away with.
So stability and Bitcoin are literally mutually exclusive. Bitcoin will never be stable. Somebody could even mathematically prove it.
El Salvador's experiment failed, because they had no way t
Re: 1 week recovery for 3 min $10K drop?!??!? (Score:2)
It's actually pretty normal. It took stocks 15 years to recover from a one night crash in 1929, but recover they did. In fact, anyone who had invested right before the Great Depression started, and held to their stocks for those 15 years, came up ahead from all those who decided to go for more stable stuff.
As such, a week to recover from a crash is pretty fast insofar as investments go. But I agree with everyone else saying something this volatile doesn't work as currency. As an investment, yes. As a day-to
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A wise investor might pause at the thought of investing in something that is unfit for its purpose.
But yeah, if you invest based on graphs it looks okay. So far.
Due Diligence (Score:2)
There is no way that anyone with a working brain and doing the bare minimum amount of due diligence wouldn't quickly learn that Bitcoin could never work as a currency for a large population.
I mean, it could never work in general for hundreds of reasons, but specifically it doesn't scale so you have to use something that isn't Bitcoin first, which defeats the purpose.
We need a BTC 2.0... (Score:1)
The Lightning Network sort of helps here (although a good DDoS can easily mean a double spend attack), but what is really needed is a true Bitcoin 2.0. Not Etherium, Doge, or one of the many altcoins out there, but something designed from the ground up, maybe with a way of doing a "hard snapshot" of the blockchain every so often, so one doesn't have to parse all 200+ gigs to be sure of a transaction.
Most altcoins have something new and cool, but what is needed is something that can take the anonymous facto
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We need something that doesn't store transactions forever, can handle many transactions a second, is easy to mine without ASICs, and has some modern features to ensure trustworthiness, and to ensure a 51% attack doesn't happen.
Congratulations. You've just described classic, centrally-managed currencies.
Re: We need a BTC 2.0... (Score:2)
"Easy to mine" and "decentralized trust" (/trustless) can not be together by any way using current / known tech.
Even with all that, it's the fact that the originating group/person went missing a long time back which infuses the required confidence in the users.
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So ... business as usual? (Score:3)
It doesn't work and everyone's required to use dollars instead of the local currency.
Same as it ever was.
Is this a balanced article? (Score:2)
But no. It's all just one big horror story.
Any intelligent person will question the motives behind any completely one-sided story like this...
Oh, and by complete coincidence, the author of the article has also published a book called "Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain", which, in his own words is "a sober riposte to all the upbeat forecasts about cryptocurrency".
Talk about unbia
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A balanced article would have listed some positives of the event (even if they were overwhelmingly outweighed by the negatives).
But no. It's all just one big horror story.
Any intelligent person will question the motives behind any completely one-sided story like this...
Oh, and by complete coincidence, the author of the article has also published a book called "Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain", which, in his own words is "a sober riposte to all the upbeat forecasts about cryptocurrency".
Talk about unbiased "journalism"...
They did list a positive at the end - since the system for transferring from bitcoin to something of value worked so poorly, the problem of money laundering hasn't materialized.
That aside, introducing an extremely volatile, high transaction cost "currency" to a country was something everyone would recognize as a disaster - in a low tech country, even more so. A currency should be stable, and when most users are buying it because they think someone else will buy it from them for more real currency - you know
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Events aren't balanced that way, so you can't write a balanced report in the way you want. There is no upside to disasters like hurricanes, flooding, airplane crashes or economy crashes.
'Balanced journalism' has its place in discussion-type settings where you can invite proponents and opponents to debate the merits of a proposal.
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The right way to write about this would be to go to El Salvador and talk to the different people involved, gather all opinions, both positive and negative. Preferably, after the inevitable initial problems were resolved.
I'd bet a whole bitcoin that the author wrote this article from his basement office. I very much doubt he'd be able to find El Salvado
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A balanced article would have listed some positives of the event (even if they were overwhelmingly outweighed by the negatives).
But no. It's all just one big horror story.
Yes. It is a balanced article. You just missed the obvious point: There's no positives.
Re:Is this a balanced article? (Score:4, Insightful)
The story is about the rollout of BTC in El Salvador and, yes, from what i've heard from people living there, it's been one big clusterfuck.
The fact that the story lists no positives doesn't mean it is biased. Maybe they're just not there to be listed.
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A balanced article would have listed some positives of the event (even if they were overwhelmingly outweighed by the negatives).
I note that you didn't mention any positives in your comment, either. I presume that's because there aren't any, or surely you would have mentioned at least one to make the point that there are examples to support your argument.
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slashdot editors and community seem to be mostly bitcoin hostile, so no real surprise the article appears here.
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Oh, you like the shit sandwich!
Let's see...
Bitcoin has a pretty cool name. {insert article here} But despite its problems, Chivo is also a pretty cool name!
If you don't like it. Don't use it. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You don't get to "not use" BTC in El Salvador anymore.
Re: (Score:1)
Chivo means "goat" in Spanish (Score:4, Funny)
So as they say: "A prudent man does not make the goat his gardener."
SuperKendall ( 25149 ) (Score:2)
Your track record on most issues is shit. Time to shut up.
Re: (Score:1)