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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: 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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willmadden ◴[04 Feb 25 05:43 UTC] No.42928498[source]▶
What are you talking about? Their Bitcoin holdings more than doubled in value.
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hagbarth ◴[04 Feb 25 06:15 UTC] No.42928708[source]▶
Would that not be a bad thing when using it as legal tender? Deflation tends to be disastrous for the economy.
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almosthere ◴[04 Feb 25 08:20 UTC] No.42929618[source]▶
that doesnt hold for a deflationary currency
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motorest ◴[04 Feb 25 18:33 UTC] No.42936630[source]▶
> that doesnt hold for a deflationary currency

I think crypto proponents in general share this inability to understand the fact that one of the most basic traits of money is stability of it's value, and anything that fails to meet this basic requirement is simply useless as a currency.

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1. npoc ◴[05 Feb 25 12:53 UTC] No.42947817{3}[source]▶
Bitcoiners understand it well. They realise that in order to stabilise in value and become a unit of account, it has to grow close to it's ultimate potential as a store of value first. Which in the case of bitcoin is potentially well over $100T market cap. This is why El Salvador is likely willing to back down in the currency aspect for now and focus onto accumulating and holding bitcoin reserves.