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El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

(ticotimes.net)
927 points smallerfish | 18 comments | 04 Feb 25 00:00 UTC | HN request time: 1.415s | source | bottom
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portaouflop ◴[04 Feb 25 02:07 UTC] No.42926658[source]▶
IMF gave them 1.4 billion to abandon the “experiment”:

> The IMF made this a condition for a loan of 1.4 billion US dollars (1.35 billion euros). In December of last year, the IMF reached an agreement with President Nayib Bukele’s government on the loan of the stated amount to strengthen the country’s “fiscal sustainability” and mitigate the “risks associated with Bitcoin,” as it was described.

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I dislike cryptocurrencies as much as the next guy but this was clearly something else than a failure of the currency itself

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patrickaljord ◴[04 Feb 25 03:49 UTC] No.42927642[source]▶
> I dislike cryptocurrencies as much as the next guy

Is this really the general sentiment on HN?

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1. wordofx ◴[04 Feb 25 03:57 UTC] No.42927710[source]▶
It should be. It’s dumb as hell. Bitcoin and blockchain have no real use.
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2. LoganDark ◴[04 Feb 25 04:44 UTC] No.42928078[source]▶
TBF Monero is pretty decent for buying drugs.
3. dcreater ◴[04 Feb 25 06:17 UTC] No.42928717[source]▶
I used to be close minded as well before actually studying Bitcoin.

There are plenty of bad actors in crypto but Bitcoin is at worst a very interesting experiment that can profoundly change the world for the better. Most is not all of the rest of crypto is basically hawk tuah coin with less obvious illegitimacy. In fact bitcoiners don't consider Bitcoin as "crypto"

4. yard2010 ◴[04 Feb 25 06:22 UTC] No.42928755[source]▶
That sounds equally wrong as "crypto is everything, blockchain is the solution" sentiment
5. toenail ◴[04 Feb 25 06:53 UTC] No.42928973[source]▶
Bitcoin has lots of uses, you just haven't found one you need.
6. dmichulke ◴[04 Feb 25 07:08 UTC] No.42929080[source]▶
There are probably a billion bitcoiners (direct or indirect owners) and you basically state that you're smarter than all of them.

Just wow.

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7. vichle ◴[04 Feb 25 07:23 UTC] No.42929205[source]▶
You don't need to be dumb to fall for a dumb idea. Also, the average person is smarter than about 4 billion people.
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8. malthaus ◴[04 Feb 25 07:43 UTC] No.42929350[source]▶
and the true believers of those are maybe 0.001%, the rest are just hoping for a quick buck by riding the wave

cryptocurrencies are a failure and net negative, and the longer we hold on to believing they aren't, the more damage we are doing

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9. dmichulke ◴[04 Feb 25 07:50 UTC] No.42929395{3}[source]▶
> You don't need to be dumb to fall for a dumb idea

I get you can do something stupid in a rush but the longer you have time to reconsider, the higher the likelihood that you "didn't just fall for a dumb idea". Bitcoin is 15 years old.

> Also, the average person is smarter than about 4 billion people.

Bitcoiners are drawn from a normal distribution and not from the bottom part of the distribution, so that argument doesn't really work here.

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10. int_19h ◴[04 Feb 25 08:18 UTC] No.42929599[source]▶
The real use is black market transactions.

Whether you find that a feature or a bug depends a lot on where you live.

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11. genem9 ◴[04 Feb 25 10:48 UTC] No.42930777[source]▶
We have USD for that …
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12. kidintech ◴[04 Feb 25 12:19 UTC] No.42931397{4}[source]▶
> Bitcoiners are drawn from a normal distribution and not from the bottom part of the distribution

I think it's objective truth to note that "Bitcoiners" are predominantly comprised of:

a) people conducting illegal affairs (don't read this as "illegal" in the sense of jaywalking)

b) technically illiterate people, down on their luck and hoping to get rich quickly

With those in mind, I would argue that "Bitcoiners" are instead drawn from the left side of most distributions.

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13. zigman1 ◴[04 Feb 25 12:28 UTC] No.42931472{3}[source]▶
A lot of things are net negative and straight up dangerous

But we keep doing them because enough people can get money out of it

14. dandanua ◴[04 Feb 25 12:38 UTC] No.42931565[source]▶
There are less than 5 billion smartphone users, and you think every fifth has a bitcoin? Though, I'm not surprised hearing such estimations from a bitcoiner.

Anyway, no matter how large the unity of dumbs is or how passionate they are about their goal, it won't make them smarter. What they can achieve, though, is making other people dumber than they are, so that they can appear relatively "smarter".

15. EFreethought ◴[04 Feb 25 15:31 UTC] No.42933632[source]▶
A lot (if not most) bitcoiners think they are smarter than all the non-bitcoiners.

Do you object to that?

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16. int_19h ◴[05 Feb 25 07:16 UTC] No.42945014{3}[source]▶
Now try sending some to, say, Iran.
17. dmichulke ◴[05 Feb 25 10:20 UTC] No.42946496{3}[source]▶
Let's say they're taking a financial risk which incentivizes (some of) them to study the matter more closely than someone else that is not taking that risk.

Does that mean they're smarter? I don't think so. It's a bet they're willing to take and time will tell who was right.

18. dmichulke ◴[05 Feb 25 10:22 UTC] No.42946521{5}[source]▶
Do you have any facts to support your assumptions a) or b)?