El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender.

thebossanova

This was the announcement for anyone interested: https://youtu.be/_59hrgTiRJU


Jack and the Strike team have been doing great work in El Salvador for the guts of this year, helping solve a remittance problem of ex-pats sending money back to their families using the Layer 2 protocol of Bitcoin, Lightning, which basically has infinite transaction per second and is instant so the fluctuation in the Bitcoin price at the time of the send is negligible. Basically, their app uses Lightning to send dollars between users, bypassing the traditional intermediaries who would take massive fees.


Making Bitcoin a legal tender and reserve currency is a first step in innovation for a country with the majority unbanked with most people having no opportunity to get themselves out of poverty. What happens after this is anyone's guess but it looks like his Twitter account has already been removed.

Overheal

Overheal wrote: »

Maybe, but still means 10k BTC was sold for two pizzas.

You could sell a desk lamp and tell the guy to order you a pizza instead of paying you. Doesn't mean Pizza Hut are taking desk lamps as currency.

thebossanova

thebossanova wrote: »

This was the announcement for anyone interested: https://youtu.be/_59hrgTiRJU


Jack and the Strike team have been doing great work in El Salvador for the guts of this year, helping solve a remittance problem of ex-pats sending money back to their families using the Layer 2 protocol of Bitcoin, Lightning, which basically has infinite transaction per second and is instant so the fluctuation in the Bitcoin price at the time of the send is negligible. Basically, their app uses Lightning to send dollars between users, bypassing the traditional intermediaries who would take massive fees.


Making Bitcoin a legal tender and reserve currency is a first step in innovation for a country with the majority unbanked with most people having no opportunity to get themselves out of poverty. What happens after this is anyone's guess but it looks like his Twitter account has already been removed.

So is it just an easier way for expats to take money out of the country?..

Tbh it just seems like another bitcoin publicity stunt..

Overheal

Deleted User wrote: »

You could sell a desk lamp and tell the guy to order you a pizza instead of paying you. Doesn't mean Pizza Hut are taking desk lamps as currency.

I think people are missing the point :rolleyes::rolleyes: the point is that's the first commercial valuation of bitcoin ie. 10k BTC = 2 pizzas.

https://twitter.com/PapaJohns/status/1396221079748677632?s=20

HGVRHKYY

85603 wrote: »

Why would a cocainey south american country start using a difficult to trace crypto currency.

Bitcoin difficult to trace? What a moronic comment

ineedeuro

HGVRHKYY wrote: »

Bitcoin difficult to trace? What a moronic comment

Is that why drug dealers and hacker etc all over the world use it? Because it really easy to trace?

ineedeuro

ineedeuro wrote: »

Is that why drug dealers and hacker etc all over the world use it? Because it really easy to trace?

The good old days before crypto when there was no crime, drug deals, robberies, ransoms or money laundering.....

Crypto isn't easier to hide, it's all recorded and public on the blockchain and is in fact harder to hide!

Capt'n Midnight

Badly fukt wrote: »

Crypto isn't easier to hide, it's all recorded and public on the blockchain and is in fact harder to hide!

It makes the step of transfering assets to a different country easier. Which is one of the reasons China is cracking down on it.

You still need to use traditional money laundering afterwards.

Ten of Swords

HGVRHKYY wrote: »

Bitcoin difficult to trace? What a moronic comment

Not everyone here has the same level of knowledge or understanding about bitcoin or the technology that underpins it. Comments like these aren't helping anyone and will be carded in future

HGVRHKYY

ineedeuro wrote: »

Is that why drug dealers and hacker etc all over the world use it? Because it really easy to trace?

It's a fully public ledger, even mixer services are being busted these days with systems designed to analyse the blockchain which is resulting in criminals who use it being traced and caught. You'd know XMR is the crypto of choice for DNMs these days if you had a clue

HGVRHKYY

Ten of Swords wrote: »

Not everyone here has the same level of knowledge or understanding about bitcoin or the technology that underpins it. Comments like these aren't helping anyone and will be carded in future

If people are ignorant on a topic maybe they shouldn't make concrete statements as if they're not ignorant - being ignorant is perfectly fine when you approach a discussion with curiosity to learn, not when you make statements as if you actually understand it all when you clearly don't

It's just laughable when people talk strongly about BTC when they clearly haven't done much research to understand even the most basic aspects of it

https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1401622548396314631

The real reason behind this may be to dodge sanctions that the Biden administration is considering putting on Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/exclusive-us-targets-central-america-officials-possible-sanctions-over-2021-05-05/

And Paraguay want in on the action

https://outline.com/HKzq8e

Overheal

HGVRHKYY wrote: »

If people are ignorant on a topic maybe they shouldn't make concrete statements as if they're not ignorant - being ignorant is perfectly fine when you approach a discussion with curiosity to learn, not when you make statements as if you actually understand it all when you clearly don't

It's just laughable when people talk strongly about BTC when they clearly haven't done much research to understand even the most basic aspects of it

you can correct the information and foster a constructive discussion without being toxic.

How easy or hard is BTC to trace? Isn’t it difficult to determine who owns a particular wallet?

The J Stands for Jay

[Deleted User] wrote: »

It's still entirely reliant on the traditional banking system as well.

Like every other legal tender currency?

ineedeuro

Badly fukt wrote: »

The good old days before crypto when there was no crime, drug deals, robberies, ransoms or money laundering.....

Crypto isn't easier to hide, it's all recorded and public on the blockchain and is in fact harder to hide!

Google "why do hackers use bitcoin"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-hackers-use-bitcoin-and-why-it-is-so-difficult-to-trace-11594931595
Blockchain isn't harder to hide.

Its says a lot when a country which has nothing else but drugs aligns itself to Bitcoin. Says it all really.

RulesOfNature

Why are people here begrudging el salvador, a nation that is unable to compete with most countries in any traditional industry or market, for trying out an asset that historically has done nothing but go up in value.

Meanwhile, Ireland has a real fvcking problem with the housing market, which is infinitely more dangerous than a few bitcoins.

Richard Hillman

We'll be getting a good old fashioned American lead regime change.

Esel

Richard Hillman wrote: »

We'll be getting a good old fashioned American lead regime change.

Freudian slip or intentional?

Del Griffith

ineedeuro wrote: »

Is that why drug dealers and hacker etc all over the world use it? Because it really easy to trace?

You think there might be any chance that the reason is that the transactions can't be reversed by a central authority? You know, decentralised immutable ledger and all that.
Could that be it?

Wanderer78

Hamsterchops wrote:

Not sure how bitcoin works myself, but this looks like a moment in history. I guess other countries will follow suit?

Not really, their economy is probably wrecked, and this could be an act of desperation, I expect a significant rise in criminal activities from this move, as bitcoin isn't actually a currency at all, it doesn't have any of the criteria of being one

ineedeuro

Del Griffith wrote: »

You think there might be any chance that the reason is that the transactions can't be reversed by a central authority? You know, decentralised immutable ledger and all that.
Could that be it?

Maybe you missed it but I already provided the answer above.

It’s value dropped 10% overnight. Not much use as legal tender. That and the 7 transactions per second that Bitcoin allows. And each of those transactions costing multiples of what the average daily wage in El Salvador is.

Del Griffith

So hard to trace https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/07/politics/colonial-pipeline-ransomware-recovered/index.html

Phoebas

Del Griffith wrote: »

So hard to trace https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/07/politics/colonial-pipeline-ransomware-recovered/index.html

From the linked article:

"The misuse of cryptocurrency is a massive enabler here," Deputy National Security Advisor Anne Neuberger told CNN.

ineedeuro

Del Griffith wrote: »

So hard to trace https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/07/politics/colonial-pipeline-ransomware-recovered/index.html

So how many million did the US spend on getting the money back? it would be losing face if they didnt

thebossanova

ineedeuro wrote: »

So how many million did the US spend on getting the money back? it would be losing face if they didnt

Not many. The Bitcoin was tracked to a wallet, using their contracted analytics company, that looks like it was on an Cloud Service provider which had servers in California, so they just subpoenaed the company and took control of the server, confiscating the Bitcoin directly. Pretty basic stuff from an IT investigation point I would think and not very smart by the hacker to leave the Bitcoin where they didn't fully control it which has some people scratching their heads.

Deleted User wrote: »

It’s value dropped 10% overnight. Not much use as legal tender. That and the 7 transactions per second that Bitcoin allows. And each of those transactions costing multiples of what the average daily wage in El Salvador is.

Locals in ES are using the Lightning network for direct dollar to dollar transactions over a layer 2 protocol of Bitcoin. Zero fees, zero latency therefore zero value loss due to Bitcoin price fluctuation. It's a technical solution bypassing traditional banking.

Donald Trump

Using the example of FBI tracking transactions from known criminal activities to specific wallets is like the FBI recording serial numbers of notes and tracking them down and catching a random fella in a shop spending them (albeit the recording is automatic).

It is of no use in identifying owners of intermediate wallets in a chain of transaction if the owners of those wallets never use them to interact with an external interface - but instead only use it for accepting enough payment in bitcoin to cover what they need to send on themselves to their own suppliers.

100 Euro worth of bitcoin that is transferred by a junkie in Dublin, which ends up being spent by a poor farmer in El Salvador is not going to convict the Dubai resident cartel druglord whose wallet it passed through. He can easily be careful and only accept enough payment into it that he needs to go out the other end to his own producers.

Hamsterchops

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Not really, their economy is probably wrecked, and this could be an act of desperation, I expect a significant rise in criminal activities from this move, as bitcoin isn't actually a currency at all, it doesn't have any of the criteria of being one

"Isn't actually a currency at all", this even though it's now legal tender (in El Salvador). I thought that because its status had changed to 'legal tender' it would now be a recognised currency?

Admittedly, I know nothing about Bitcoin.

Poor farmers in El Salvadore are no more going to be using bitcoin than the man on the moon..

This is a crypto hype stunt..It's for the benefit of the crypto bros online..That's why it was announced where it was..