El Salvador's crypto experiment ends in failure

I'm pretty open to the idea that their crypto experiment ended in failure because bitcoin must be a truly terrible reserve asset, but being assassinated by the IMF isn't really evidence of that. El Salvador doesn't seem to have independently changed their minds about the merits of their policy.

I might draw a very vague parallel with a gentleman who can't repay a mortgage and through various machinations the bank forces him to sell his beanie baby collection. The beanie baby collection might have been a success or a failure for him personally. Probably was a failure. But that isn't really what we're learning in this story.

And pointing out that they lose money on the bitcoin reserve is a bit of a non-sequiter. They all do that. Gold has storage costs, the USD inflates like crazy and sometimes the US sanctions you. The analysis has to be a bit deeper than just noting that money was lost, it is a tricky question of relative options.

The article makes a case on the merits for the failure of the project, in terms of its uptake, the direct value generated, and the costs of its rollout.

Those arguments could be levelled against any currency. Typically uptake is only 100% because the government has a "thou shalt accept this" policy. If it was practically voluntary then a bunch of businesses would operate on a barter system or private scrip. Even with the insistence of the tax office it takes regular crackdowns to stop alternatives springing up.

And it is even easy to argue that normal currency is value destructive, all the flows of money into crypto are implicit "I'd rather be burning energy than using USD" announcements.

No, this was very specific to crypto:

> The IMF was wary of lending to El Salvador while bitcoin was legal tender. Its volatile price posed a risk to financial and fiscal stability.

Government currencies don't have the price volatility of Bitcoin. You simply can't reliably manage an economy with that kind of volatility.

It isnt true.

Look at the cost of the japanese yen relative to the dollar.

I have seen prices double and then half due to international politics.

Living here in Japan though, prices seem mostly stable despite the volatile yen. I am not sure how this works.

I'm taking about currency value in local purchasing power.

And that's what you're observing -- prices are mostly stable.

Currency exchange fluctuations only affect imports and exports, and they vary as well between each pair of countries.