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El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

(ticotimes.net)
927 points smallerfish | 2 comments | 04 Feb 25 00:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.648s | source
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starspangled ◴[04 Feb 25 00:51 UTC] No.42925817[source]▶
It's interesting and nice to see how progressive and creative El Salvador has been. Some failures are perfectly understandable when one is willing to try new things. Their approach to crime is another thing that comes to mind that was lambasted and ridiculed by the "international community" and "experts". Yet in the space of a single decade they went from murder capital of the world to safer than New Zealand (in terms of homicide rate), which is just staggering.

I love that they are innovating and experimenting and trying their own things, and don't let the stuffy pompous status quo hold them back.

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1. BryantD ◴[04 Feb 25 01:01 UTC] No.42925930[source]▶
Note that their official homicide numbers no longer include bodies found in unmarked graves (as of 2021), people killed in conflicts between police and gangs (as of 2022), and people killed in prison. These are arguably reasonable decisions but unless you backfit the old numbers, you don't have the real trend.

I suspect that the trend would be impressive either way, you'd just lose the "safer than New Zealand" line.

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2. starspangled ◴[04 Feb 25 01:32 UTC] No.42926276[source]▶
Well there's no need to suspect, homicide rates were dropping like a rock before 2021. Perhaps faster than has been achieved by any other social reform on record.