El Salvador Abandons Bitcoin as Legal Tender After Failed Experiment
Understand the implications of Bitcoin's downfall in El Salvador. Learn about the failed economic bet and its impact on the country's financial stability.
I generally keep out of crypto discussions as I do not sufficiently understand it. But this event is very easy to understand. In the beginning of the article itself:
... approved last Wednesday a confusing reform to the Bitcoin Law at the request of Bukele’s government, which had no other option to receive the $1.4 billion credit agreed in December with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Thus, this move was forced on El Salvador by the IMF.
“Forced” is doing a lot of work here. I think it was El Salvador that decided it was worth to ditch btc in favor of getting actual rescue money.
Edit: it makes sense that Bukele just told Rubio they’d be happy to be the US’ offshore prison system. Seems they really need the money.
Bitcoin isn't good for making little purchases, firstly because it takes so long to get confirmations, if each block is 10 minutes and you need like 3 blocks to consider it confirmed that's 30 minutes. But that ties into the second issue which is that you probably don't want millions of tiny transactions on the Blockchain, you want them processed off-chain and then settled in bulk (to the Blockchain) periodically as a single transaction.
Finally someone who knows what theyre talking about, with an actual valid criticism.
Bitcoin is great for little transactions if you use the lightning network. Sending on the lightning network means instant payments with no confirmation required and absolutely tiny fees. And the only thing that shows up on the blockchain is the transactions to initially start using lightning network and to take your coins back off the lightning network. Transactions made over the lightning network aren't recorded anywhere other than maybe by the people transacting.
i got back into bitcoin recently and decided to move the contents of my old wallet to a new SegWit one and look into using lightning.
To open a lightning channel i have to stake £170 up front though which is crazy, how are people in poorer countries supposed to do that?
or even here. poverty is on the rise, a lot of people are living hand to mouth and just having that kind of money lying around isnt a thing.
i like the idea of bitcoin but i worry it doesn't scale well.
Add to that that virtually nowhere accepts it. The value of bitcoin comes from its use as a currency. if it doesn't have that then it's entirely speculation.
oh well, i have £2k in there and i'm not turning it back into fiat. I'll spend it if i can or ride it all the way to 0 if that's the way it goes
edit: if BTC does hit $1m a coin as the hodlers hope then that would amount to $2000 to open a lightning channel (or more realistically $2400 as electrum wouldnt let me open a channel with the supposed minimum 0.002 BTC, i had to make it 0.0024). I hope that the minimum amount to open a channel will be updated long before that happens though, but i guess we'll see
They could’ve solved that by making the block size larger, but instead did some weird ass replace-by-fee system.
That's the same way as the economic system works though
Each bank and creditor keeps track of if what they owe each other and then they settle the balancebetween them periodically (depends on the country)
If assume you could do something similar with bitcoin, but you would need an overlay
I had a Libertarian try to tell me that this was going to revitalize El Salvador just a couple of weeks ago, lmao.
Not the greatest idea to transition to a currency where every single transaction requires the same amount of energy to power a mansion for a week.
Not promoting just saying that this is misinformation. Transactions are done in bulk and on the lightning network at a tiny fraction of what you suggest.
Edit: BTC itself can only process 8 or so transactions per second(hence the high energy demand per transaction), the actual number of monetary lightening network transactions (grouped up into a these large BTC transactions) is close to a million.
Didn't know it was that bad. Knew it was bad, but that's depressingly bad.
It’s absolutely bonkers to me that Libertarians think BTC is a better option that fiat bills.
This shit has the have been astroturfed or otherwise psyop’d.
Well their reserves doubled in value
Who could have predicted this
Let's not get astray here.
The reason El Salvador stopped using Bitcoin as a legal tender is not because it's some sort of failed experiment (it had issues, but still), but due to continuous pressure of IMF interested in maintaining a US dollar-centric economy.
El Salvador is reliant on US dollars in its economy, which puts it under heavy US influence. Knowing Salvadoran currency wouldn't be strong, Nayib Bukele suggested an alternative option - risky, volatile, but free from pressure of other countries and strongly appreciating in the long run. IMF didn't like it, and that's where we are.
So, when you cheer Bitcoin not being legal tender anymore, you also cheer US and IMF projecting power over the country.
Its even funnier. They just straight up promised them a billion dollar loan on the condition that they abandon bitcoin.
In December, the government struck a $1.4 billion loan deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that scaled back its bitcoin embrace after the lender urged officials to limit its exposure. The lender specifically advocated making acceptance of bitcoin voluntary for the private sector, which is spelled out in the hastily-approved law.
Exactly. The title is misleading af
They were forced to stop using Bitcoin as legal tender by external parties. The question people should be asking is why? And the answer is not that it was a failed experiment.
Well, also, they just cut a deal with Marco Rubio to be America’s prison, so they must’ve figured that was more lucrative than Bitcoin and continuing to agitate the US by challenging the dollar was creating unnecessary friction.
Yeah the headline is insane. This would have been a wildly successful experiment, and now is a great time to cash out.
I guess they made a deal to sell their coins to the US.
Edit: misinformation, sorry. They're not selling. they're still buying. The IMF is just forcing them to strike the word legal tender
Why isn't this being discussed on any of the crypto subreddits? This is all I could find. Somebody's not telling the truth:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/1ihd9ek/el_salvador_buys_11_more_bitcoin_boosting/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1iflbk5/the_satoshi_statue_has_arrived_in_el_salvador_en/
Mods are probably preemptively blacklisting this article and similar articles to avoid inconvenient information reaching the cryptobros. From a cursory glance, both of those subs seem pretty overwhelmingly biased towards being pro-crypto.
It would hurt their feefees
the buttcoin sub is decent
Looking forward to them establishing monero as a legal tender
The IMF wouldn't give them a credit unless they stopped forcing people to accept Bitcoin as payment, which almost no one was using anyway.
officials ensure that the government will continue betting on this cryptocurrency, whose price currently exceeds $100,000.
I think that's why El Salvador is dropping it. They never really forced people to use Bitcoin, US Dollar was also the legal tender and unlike Bitcoin, also the money of account.
But really though, can you call for IMF to stop lending to countries which buy Bitcoin using state funds when the issuer of Dollars, the U.S. has a President who has run multiple crypto/NFT scams and wants to use Government money to pump up crypto prices?
They wouldn't be able to do all that evil stuff with the petrol-dollar if there were a valid alternative... Thus the IMF ban on bitcoin.
i remember laughing at crypto nerds about this a few years ago, but who's laughing now?
me, still
El Salvador apparently invested about $270 million in bitcoin since 2021 and that investment is worth about half a billion bucks now. Oh my god, ha, what idiots!
Ok, can they sell it then? What's the use of Bitcoin? Why are you valuing it in Dollars? Countries accumulate Dollars and other first world currencies to be able to import more (and in case of El Salvador, spend more domestically). Bitcoin is sitting there doing nothing.
Same applies to massive foreign exchange reserves like in the case of China. But still, atleast forex reserves can be quickly used to stabilize the exchange rates.
Also keep in mind even if they sell it and assuming there is enough liquidity, $300m one time isn't a lot of money even for a country like El Salvador.
El Salvador apparently invested about $270 million in bitcoin since 2021 and that investment is worth about half a million bucks now. Oh my god, ha, what idiots!
... Okay just to clarify, you're saying they invested $270,000,000 and now it's worth about $500,000?
Is there a typo in your comment or something?
Crypto prices from a few years ago were hilariously low. Keep laughing tho!
Time to go for this guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3zlHx3ajQk
The only surprise here is that they stuck with it for as long as they did.
"This is good for bitcoin."
Honestly with the Trump government right now and the pending trade war, this might be good for Bitcoin. It's supposed to be a store or wealth that you use to buy other cryptos like monero to spend.
This is not good for the environment because crypto mining is second only to AI model training in useless expendenture of natural resources and pollution.
But ironically, and I say this with no joy. This could be good for Bitcoin and that's bad for us all.
Bitcoin price movement seems to follow the US stock market, so I wouldn't bet on it.
Bitcoin has gone up by at least 40k in the last three months, surely that must have made El Salvador a few pretty pennies.
Crypto is a massive scam. It has no value. It is just used to obscure fraud.
I mean neither does FIAT currency, U.S. currency is based on taxes , there is nothing that backs it. Majority of GDP is just finance. We need more education on what and how a currency actually works.
The value of a unit of currency is based on someone else's willingness to accept it. If you're willing to accept two clam shells in exchange for one widget, then our clam shell currency has value between us.
Almost anyone in the world is (currently) willing to accept a US dollar. There will be some exchange rate and transaction fee, so maybe I demand three dollars instead of two. I know that I can convert those three US dollars into my local currency that others are willing to accept.
The whole premise of bitcoin is that the line will continue going up and someone will always be willing to pay more for it than what you paid. If you agree to sell your car for one bitcoin, and tomorrow it crashes, you just lost the entire value of your car. The chances of a sovereign currency crashing is never 0, but it's much more stable than bitcoin.
If you think crypto is a scam, wait until you learn about how fiat currency works. Crypto is a great idea that has been plifered by scammers trying to make another pump and dump scheme.
It really isnt that far off from the stock market, and there are books of regulations involving share trading because all the various frauds commited over the centuries, though most are to protect the captial...
Not really scammers but speculators.
A means of exchange shouldn't be a speculative investment, the two objectives are at odds with each other.
WOAH what a surprised maybe it's because half of the fucking country lacks electricity or internet? Really good job Bukele.
Well I'm sure the petrol-dollar will fix all that stuff like when El Salvador was a utopia before bitcoin. \s
Did bitcoin fix their economy?
The government, she assured, will continue buying bitcoin and having reserves in this cryptocurrency. According to the National Bitcoin Office, El Salvador has 6,050 bitcoins worth $634.8 million. “President Bukele continues buying bitcoin, we have a Bitcoin Office, we have the Bitcoin Law, bitcoin can be used in El Salvador.
They're going to have the US by the balls like Saudi Arabia when bitcoin crosses $1mm/coin
an extremely volatile speculative asset primarily used for buying drugs, gambling, and illegal pornography doesn't work as an actual currency?
who would have guessed
Half of El Salvador doesn't have electricity or internet, Bukele is just a far-right weirdo who probably thought this would attract Techbros to invest in his regime.
Wow the misinformation
The government, she assured, will continue buying bitcoin and having reserves in this cryptocurrency. According to the National Bitcoin Office, El Salvador has 6,050 bitcoins worth $634.8 million. “President Bukele continues buying bitco
They are still keeping the mass reserves just not forcing it to be accepted as legal tender in stores. Before if someone wanted to pay in Bitcoin you had to accept it, now you don't have to.
Yeah most commenters here just read the headline I think.
The govt just wanted the loan so they did the thing.
They're still big into bitcoin. Seems like their holdings have gone well (only because Trump won), but their other projects haven't been successful by any metric.
People haven't taken up crypto as a currency, it's just the pres using federal resources to invest in crypto. He's been lucky so far.
The thing we all knew would happen, did happen. Crypto is only useful to commit financial crimes and even for that it's bad.
BUT I WAS TOLD THERE'S NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BUTTCOIN AND REAL MONEY, WHAT THE HELL?!?11?!
Who could have ever seen this coming other than anyone who thought about it for the briefest amount of time?
The problem with any new kind of currency no matter what it is will always be controlled and manipulated by the wealthiest individuals who will flood their wealth into that new system.
Strike the word new.
This is good for bitcoin
If he were smart, he would bring back the Colon and stop using US Dollars. But noo he had to do stupid shit like Bitcoin.
He's just a US puppet, Trump literally called him a dictator and said that the Salvadoran people areremoveds and murderers, and Bukele is still licking the US boot. Just like South America's failson dictator wannabe Daniel Noboa and Captain Ancap in Argentina.
Captain Ancap in Argentina.
And note not even he wants to do crypto
It's would be much much easier to manipulate the Colon. That's why it no longer exists.
lol
Womp womp
