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El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

(ticotimes.net)
927 points smallerfish | 2 comments | 04 Feb 25 00:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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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dragonwriter ◴[04 Feb 25 04:41 UTC] No.42928058[source]▶
If you need to go to the IMF for a loan of ~3% of your GDP to mitigate the risks associated with Bitcoin, well, that's a pretty good sign that adopting Bitcoin as legal tender was a pretty disastrous failure.
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mike_d ◴[04 Feb 25 07:03 UTC] No.42929046[source]▶
> mitigate the risks associated with Bitcoin

The IMF gave them 1.4 billion dollars to mitigate the risk of bitcoin to the IMF. A subtle but important difference.

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motorest ◴[04 Feb 25 18:26 UTC] No.42936542[source]▶
> The IMF gave them 1.4 billion dollars to mitigate the risk of bitcoin to the IMF.

You need to be functionally illiterate to draw that take from the announcement. Read the thing, be informed.

https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2024/12/18/pr-24485-el-...

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1. yesfitz ◴[04 Feb 25 23:22 UTC] No.42940695[source]▶
Lenders of money want to get their money back. They try to minimize the number of factors that threaten getting their money back. Those factors are called "risks".

El Salvador wants to borrow money. The IMF is willing to lend it, but sees El Salvador's Bitcoin policies as a risk to getting their money back.

From the IMF's perspective it is a risk to El Salvador's economy and therefore the repayment of the IMF's loan.

~ You may want to review the Hacker News Guidelines for commenting. Your comment is out of line with a few of them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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2. motorest ◴[05 Feb 25 04:11 UTC] No.42943673[source]▶
Your reply addresses nothing in my comment. The truth of the matter is that El Salvador reached out to the IMF for funding to address a number of issues listed in the announcement, and the adoption of Bitcoin as a national currency is one of many many topics covered by the deal. Spinning this as "the IMF paid off El Salvador to shut down Bitcoin" is, again, a take born out of functional illiteracy.