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El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

(ticotimes.net)
927 points smallerfish | 3 comments | 04 Feb 25 00:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.371s | 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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stevenwoo ◴[04 Feb 25 07:01 UTC] No.42929030[source]▶
They just offered to accept any criminal of any nationality (including American citizens) from the USA for a fee. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/us/politics/el-salvador-p... It's creative but hard to see as progressive, importing the idea of a for profit prison system from the USA.
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starspangled ◴[04 Feb 25 07:22 UTC] No.42929190[source]▶
Yes I am certain that not everything El Salvador does is progressive, even before reading this link.

Some people called Obama progressive and he definitely helped destroy Libya and Syria, ordered the extrajudicial execution of a US citizen under presidential immunity, droned poor brown people living on the other side of the planet, let Citi group pick his cabinet, etc. Nevertheless, the progressive things that Obama did do were still progressive.

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1. notthemessiah ◴[04 Feb 25 09:08 UTC] No.42930049[source]▶
El Salvador is a gang-infested shithole because US interventionists backed those who would later lead gangs to stop a left-wing revolution. The Salvadoran government often targeted civilians, and massacred peaceful protestors. Then after the civil war, the same US-backed mercenaries and soldiers who had engaged in massacres and violence came back home, they employed the same terror techniques to build up the gangs and gain power for themselves, exploiting all the displaced peoples, especially the Lost Children of Central America who were kidnapped and raised in the gangs.
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2. aucisson_masque ◴[04 Feb 25 10:11 UTC] No.42930513[source]▶
What's your point?

That's what the usa did to the entire south and middle America.

3. starspangled ◴[04 Feb 25 11:01 UTC] No.42930865[source]▶
> El Salvador is a gang-infested shithole

Far less so now, because they refused to listen to the dogma preached from these experts and institutions (significantly coming from those associated with or funded by the US), about how they should run their country.