El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

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

Despite that interference, from everything I’ve read though it’s hard to describe the bitcoin experiment as anything else than a massive failure…

>President Nayib Bukele’s government has accumulated 5,900 BTC, achieving profits of $333.59 million from an initial $269.74 million investment, fuelled by Bitcoin’s recent surge past $100,000. (dec 2024)

I wish I could have a $333m failure like that.

(edit - see also his approval rating - 91% https://x.com/stats_feed/status/1875573928250179666)

If the only thing it can accomplish is being traded back and forth for "hard" currencies such as the US Dollar than it's no more useful than the Soviet Ruble. It's not even useful as an actual anonymous currency, it's not even anonymous without a considerable amount of legwork.