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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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1. mhast ◴[04 Feb 25 10:35 UTC] No.42930682[source]▶
There have been stores which accepted bitcoin as payment. Webhallen.com is an electronics store in Sweden which at least used to accept bitcoin (not sure if they still do).

As a general rule it's not very convenient to do so though since the value can fluctuate. (Which naturally all currencies do, but it would be kind of like paying with USD in the EU. You could do that, but most stores are not interested in the extra hassle of keeping track of multiple currencies.)

It is also not uncommon for services like VPN or IPTV streaming ("pirate streaming") providers to accept crypto.