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El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

(ticotimes.net)
927 points smallerfish | 1 comments | 04 Feb 25 00:00 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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stephen_g ◴[04 Feb 25 02:17 UTC] No.42926769[source]▶
Despite that interference, from everything I’ve read though it’s hard to describe the bitcoin experiment as anything else than a massive failure…
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kylebenzle ◴[04 Feb 25 02:24 UTC] No.42926864[source]▶
Yeh, it failed so hard no one even uses it anymore.
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Kindra ◴[04 Feb 25 03:05 UTC] No.42927268[source]▶
Are you able to point to a single case where Bitcoin was used as legal tender in an every day business transaction? By this I mean, can you give an example where someone ordered a cup of coffee with Bitcoin directly and not through a proxy?
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1970-01-01 ◴[04 Feb 25 03:32 UTC] No.42927507[source]▶
100% this.

Food, medicine, transportation, education, and everything else at or near the bottom of Maslow's pyramid of needs still cannot be directly purchased with bitcoin.

The other punchline to the Bitcoin joke is that it's finite. In 120 years it will begin to evaporate from existence as more and more wallets are simply lost to time.

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wruza ◴[04 Feb 25 03:54 UTC] No.42927687[source]▶
It is highly divisible though, there’s 2.1e15 satoshi and 2.3e14 cents in the world (re google). It can lose 90% of itself before being unable to replace cents. Also, the network can just agree to change the protocol to fix this issue, should it arise. Countries do redenominations all the time.
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the_sleaze_ ◴[04 Feb 25 04:32 UTC] No.42927986[source]▶
I think the fundamental appeal of Bitcoin is the lack of ability to change the protocol based on any external factors at all.

Otherwise it's just fiat all over again

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1. wruza ◴[04 Feb 25 04:59 UTC] No.42928200{5}[source]▶
What it really is is basically a consensus between participants. Once the consensus about a change gains critical mass, that change just happens, by someone coding it into the software and people updating to it. The change (fork) becomes mainstream and the old version becomes fringe. And vice versa, if consensus never achieved. There will be people who stay on old version anyway. It’s up to who believes in what, based on available software based on ideas that are worth new code.