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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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ggm ◴[04 Feb 25 00:12 UTC] No.42925329[source]▶
Speculative asset class fails as non-speculative legal tender class.

If king for the day with a sovereign wealth fund I wouldn't forbid investment choices like this on risk grounds, I mean you need risk assets as well as boring ones, right? But I have problems with the moral quality: it's like state investing in the casino business. Monaco? works fine. Anywhere else? It's got problems.

Like a lot of people, I probably fall into severe errors which would be bread and butter for "bad economics" reddit groups but truly, I can't see how this wasn't forseen and expected. It was about WHEN, not IF.

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codethief ◴[04 Feb 25 01:39 UTC] No.42926355[source]▶
> Speculative asset class fails as non-speculative legal tender class.

This. Bitcoin proponents often claim that eventually everyone will use Bitcoin for payments ("Finally no more governments or central banks!") and that's why it will increase in value, so everyone should invest in BTC.

But this argument is fundamentally flawed: A currency, in order for it to work (in order for people to be able to trust it), needs to be stable in value. Which contradicts it being an investment vehicle and drastically varying in value over time.

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aydyn ◴[04 Feb 25 02:24 UTC] No.42926867[source]▶
What currency is stable in value? Certainly not the U.S. dollar.
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bangaladore ◴[04 Feb 25 02:56 UTC] No.42927173[source]▶
A better way to put it is that a deflationary currency is, counterintuitively, not a particularly good currency.

The reality is, Bitcoin and similar, are not being used to actually purchase things. Not at any notable percentage. You're "best bet" is to horde it, and that doesn't make a good currency.

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liontwist ◴[04 Feb 25 03:16 UTC] No.42927362[source]▶
I come to these threads expecting criticism about bitcoin being funny internet money run by a small group of shady characters.

But most of the comments are about how stable currency and stores of wealth are actually bad! It kind of sounds like we think bitcoin is working.

If USD is inflating and Gold is staying still, is gold “deflating”?

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chowchowchow ◴[04 Feb 25 03:44 UTC] No.42927608[source]▶
What do you call someone who bought a pizza with BTC last year? Paper hands? Shouldn’t they have hodled and not had pizza? How can this be a currency.
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liontwist ◴[04 Feb 25 05:14 UTC] No.42928302[source]▶
The utility of the money is in how you spend it. Your same question could be asked about the S&P.

Why would anyone sell? Well at some point in your life you want to use the money to accomplish your life goals

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1. acdha ◴[04 Feb 25 18:26 UTC] No.42936548[source]▶
You could and should ask the same question about stock shares - and indeed there’s an entire profession with centuries of history around that – but it’s a fundamental error to ignore magnitude. The stock market is based on real value and that avoids wild swings when nothing has fundamentally changed - even through the mortgage bubble my portfolio made made gains because people still needed to buy food, cars, phones, clothing, etc. and if did even a little research it had been easy to spot companies whose fundamentals didn’t support their valuation. In contrast, a pure fiat currency like bitcoin has value only from social consensus and has far more volatility.