←back to thread

El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

(ticotimes.net)
927 points smallerfish | 5 comments | 04 Feb 25 00:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
Show context
ks2048 ◴[04 Feb 25 00:26 UTC] No.42925530[source]▶
Do pro-bitcoin people still talk about goals of bitcoin being a currency that people use daily?

I don't follow it closely, but that idea seems to have faded and now it's just an asset to buy and hold while it magically goes up forever.

replies(12): >>42925658 #>>42925661 #>>42925711 #>>42925713 #>>42925980 #>>42926026 #>>42926151 #>>42926197 #>>42927159 #>>42928125 #>>42928576 #>>42928678 #
ptero ◴[04 Feb 25 00:42 UTC] No.42925713[source]▶
It is not an asset that goes up forever.

It is permissionless, very liquid asset that the governments cannot dilute. For many people this is a very big deal. A significant part of the world population lives under regimes where the governments control the money flow, heavily dilute savings in the single local fiat currency and can confiscate savings under a guise of money reform.

While not nearly as bad, most democratic, developed countries dilute their fiat to the tune of 5-7% a year. Would I buy bitcoin if I have an easy access to a convenient currency with no (or at least significantly under the average GDP growth) debasement? Hell no! Otherwise, I will (together with gold, income-generating stocks, real estate, etc.) as an insurance against government spending run amok. My 2c.

replies(1): >>42925832 #
Turskarama ◴[04 Feb 25 00:53 UTC] No.42925832[source]▶
It's false safety. If the government can't get their drop of blood by diluting their fiat, they will simply do it another, more direct way.

At best it will work as long as few enough people are doing it that the government doesn't care.

replies(1): >>42928890 #
cylemons ◴[04 Feb 25 06:42 UTC] No.42928890[source]▶
Sure they can criminalize bitcoin possession or use their police force and state apparatus to serveil and track all bitcoin usage. But that is way more effort than simply turning on the money printer.
replies(1): >>42929485 #
1. Turskarama ◴[04 Feb 25 08:02 UTC] No.42929485[source]▶
It's much simpler than that, they simply make selling bitcoin a capital gain event (which it is) and tax it. They could even make a separate special rate for cryptocurrency pretty easily. Now maybe you think this is easy to avoid, in which case I would ask why you aren't already committing tax fraud.
replies(1): >>42930707 #
2. cylemons ◴[04 Feb 25 10:40 UTC] No.42930707[source]▶
The reason tax evasion with regular currency is so difficult is because pretty much all banks/financial institutions report your income to the state. But with crypto, especially anonymized ones like monero, the decentralized nature makes it almost impossible to track income and who it belongs to.
replies(1): >>42935171 #
3. mvieira38 ◴[04 Feb 25 16:59 UTC] No.42935171[source]▶
It is almost trivial for a 3-letter agency to track bitcoin flow. Every transaction is entirely public with only pseudonyms to obfuscate identity, and with the current KYC laws good luck not getting doxxed while buying BTC. We need to move this discourse away from "crypto" and towards Monero specifically if we want any progress on adoption
replies(1): >>42944085 #
4. cylemons ◴[05 Feb 25 05:11 UTC] No.42944085{3}[source]▶
Isn't a wallet just a private-public key pair? One could easily generate those on a whim and start transacting using them. I assume the KYC laws apply to exchanges but what about individuals with bitcoin directly trading with each other? No way to track that
replies(1): >>42966786 #
5. npoc ◴[06 Feb 25 21:42 UTC] No.42966786{4}[source]▶
Yes - I buy my bitcoin using a decentralised exchange over Tor. All the authorities can see is that I send a random person some money to their bank account. They have no idea what it's for, and would have to individually track down and successfully interrogate each different person I send money to, to discover how much bitcoin I had bought and even then they can't prove I own it.