Topic: ㅤ - page 11. (Read 11875 times)

You sound like you are just making shit up.

It is about math , and the lack of btc supporters that refuse to use math.

BTC transaction fees are too high, so no one is stupid enough to use it in everyday purchases.
LN is a failure because it charges 2 onchain transaction fees, plus it's own fees,
ensuring that direct transactions of less than 1000 transactions, it is still cheaper onchain, which is already too high.
Only Banks can use LN affordably since they can loop thousands to millions of transactions of offchain to 2 onchain transaction fees.

Adoption of onchain bitcoin is designed to fail, between individuals, only using Banks and never transacting onchain makes any financial sense,
and if that is the case using visa/mastercard makes more sense with less headaches.

So bitcoin adoption has always been a non starter, since the refusal of the btc devs and community to increase blocksize,
which is the only way to spur adoption thru lower onchain transaction fees.
LN was design for banks usage, not retail.  

According to reports, Bitcoin hasn't altered El Salvador's economic realities, in part due to the protracted "crypto winter" that has plagued the sector since the beginning of 2022.

Secondly, government-held BTC has seen a loss of roughly 60% of its estimated total worth following the most recent market crisis.

Due to Bukele's inability to draw in new cryptocurrency investors and a fall in the number of Salvadorans using Bitcoin, the nation's economy is being drained.

With these results, the Bukele administration's critics charge that it has shortcomings, dubbing it dictatorial and image-focused while raising questions about the practicality of its lofty goals to transform El Salvador.

Besides the fact that, to me, it's really difficult to understand how someone could say that the bitcoin adoption failed just after a few months (credit card, internet, television... It was the same), it would be great to actually ask these people who protested what bitcoin is and what they're knowledge level is as well:

I'm pretty sure that 99.9% have absolutely no clue and they're protesting just because someone else told them to protest.

El Salvador's economy grew by 16.63% in 2021, which is an astonishing amount considering many countries see 4% as great.

Numbers are still out on this year, obviously.

Source:https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SLV/el-salvador/gdp-gross-domestic-product

Hypothetically, let's say that Bukele is able to run again and gets reelected in 2024 for another 5 years, then at what point is he going to give up upon bitcoin?  Prior to 2029?   Is he going to fail before the 2024 election?

Be more specific with your criticism and your prediction rather than just spouting out nonsense conclusory statements that have little to no reference in terms of what you are predicting or even the timeline for such, except El Salvador's inevitable failure in regards to its bitcoin adoption - or maybe you want to hedge your bets and proclaim that El Salvador will fail in its bitcoin adoption in the next 50 years.. before 2070-ish..

In other words, give more specifics.. otherwise you are speaking nonspecific conclusory nonsense.

First I have quite a few doubts whether your renditions of facts are very accurate in regards to bitcoin being rejected by El Salvadorean citizens - and Bukele and other government representatives have quite a bit of discretion regarding various ways forward that they want to go in the government, and it seems that Bukele remains pretty popular in El Salvador.. so it is difficult to understand why you want to be fighting those kinds of on the ground facts.

Second, I wonder why you seem so hostile towards bitcoiners appreciating the various efforts that are being made in bitcoin, and to continue to argue that bitcoiners are blindly following some kind of a disingenuine scheme in bitcoin, when the facts also don't seem to support those kinds of accusations either.  There tend to be a lot of bullshit framing of arguments to be proclaiming that bitcoiners are some kind of a homogenous community that agree on x, y and z... which surely is bullshit since it has tendencies to imply that bitcoin has varying centralizing tendencies.. which are also not implications supported by actual evidence..

Regarding your compare and contrast of various on the grounds and grass roots efforts on the ground in various places in Africa, none of those are necessarily preferable, even though they seem to be working quite well as you suggest - and in the end bitcoin is going to have pushes that come from all directions, and the mere fact that El Salvador is promoting bitcoin in El Salvador does not necessarily mean that on the ground efforts are not also informing El Salvador's approach to attempting to create bitcoin friendly policies.  

Surely, if you amorphously refer to Africa, then you seem to be either avoiding talking about various governmental efforts or you are trying to minimize various governmental efforts, and surely many of us following the bitcoin space realize that Nigeria is frequently pointed out as one of the highest of bitcoin adoption countries in spite of their government seeming to fight against bitcoin in a variety of ways, so sure there are likely a decent number of valid points to suggest that bitcoin adoption can take place in a variety of ways, and I have quite a few doubts in accepting your El Salvador bashing framework that wants to suggest that bitcoin is ONLY stronger if it grows in a hostile environment.. when your analysis seems incomplete at best when you are seeming to want to make battle out the ideas and to impose what you believe to be better or worse, when both ways can exist at the same time and they do exist at the same time, and whether these kinds of various systems end up merging and converging or creating separate systems that compete.  The idea of good ideas coming together is referred to as Schelling point, so we have those kinds of things going on at the same time in which the good ideas will end up emerging, but they are not going to come together until time passes and systems bump up against each other  (also Nash equilibriums play out too).

It seems to me that in the shorter term there are going to be a whole hell of a lot of ways that bitcoin builds and develops, and likely in the longer run a lot of the systems will merge and converge, and the free-er the market of ideas, the more free and easy it should be to recognize various better systems to beat out the lesser systems - but in the earlier stages of growth there is likely going to be a lot of variations in terms of better and worse attributes, and yet even in that regard, it seems illogical to be proclaiming that systems in Africa are superior to El Salvador's adoption - even if you personally have that opinion.

There is some validity to the thrust of your points that frequently governments overpromise and under deliver, and I doubt anyone would be proclaiming that Bukele would be exempt from those kinds of claims that do not end up materializing, but you seem to be quite inclined to point out the so many ways that Bukele is less then genuine in his assertions - so from your point of view Bukele is largely engaged in spinning matters in ways that he is not going to be able to carry out.. and then you also want to proclaim that bitcoiners just fall in line with whatever he says.  Personally, I am not very inclined towards worshiping governments or even leaders, but Bukele has gained a lot of popularity because he has been working to achieve matters that he proclaims to want to do, and I have my doubt that he is even as close as disingenuine that you seem to ongoingly want to paint him.  For some reason, it's like no matter what you are wanting to see the negative and maintain high levels of skepticism that do not really seem warranted - even though we are seeing that modifications of plans are being made along the way and sometimes the proclamations regarding what is achievable seem to be a bit much, too.. so for me, even though modifications have come to these projects, I have difficulties concluding that Bukele and his people were being disingenuine in setting those various targets to aim for.

I largely agree with you that governments do not matter as much as people matter, but the dynamics of any area can change through the actions of governments in terms of either promoting something or making a hostile environment, or alternatively the government could attempt to remain somewhat neutral, too.

So government action and interaction can surely affect the atmosphere for something like bitcoin even if they might not exactly be able to stop bitcoin, but they could make lives miserable or pleasurable in relation to something like bitcoin, and surely sometimes, it irritates me a bit to project the governments as if they are a hostile force to the people, and so even if a lot of us have various periods of being bitter towards governments and governmental power, they are not necessarily any kind of force that applies the same in each location, even if frequently we might find circumstances in which a government might start out seeming to be on the side of the people but then morph into something that no longer seems to be serving the interests of the people but instead the interests of some smaller groups that might have coopted some aspects of the government (or sometimes seeming to have had coopted all of the things and then confidence will be lost in some of those circumstances, too).. 

What made Bitcoin currency and wealth protecting asset is people themselves. Not states or governments. El Salvador is obviously good experiment for Bitcoin adoption but in the end it's all about people that wanna use it or not. In my country (which is Türkiye) people get used to Bitcoin usage because inflation is so high and Bitcoin is nice option to protect yourself. Its also nice option to do exchange money.

For sure, if you have boots on the ground in El Salvador, then you will have more ideas regarding some of the various ways that bitcoin is being used there, and I would imagine that there are some locations that have more bitcoin related businesses than other locations - so surely it is not going to spread evenly throughout the country.  

Many of us likely heard of Bitcoin Beach in El Zonte.. so I supposed the capital of San Salvador might be another possible place where spread of bitcoin related transactional options increase, and surely there could be some ways that people are interacting that you do not know about such as using Local Bitcoins or Paxful.. and like I said if they are transacting wallet to wallet using Blue wallet, Breeze, Muun or some other wallets that would allow for direct interaction between bitcoin users using the lightning network or other kinds of on chain bitcoin wallets.    Bitrawr lists 6 different exchanges in El Salvador if that information might have some correctness.

I had heard that there are some bitcoin-friendly areas forming around bitcoin lake in Guatemala and another one in some cities in Honduras that has been dubbed as Bitcoin valley (link 1, link 2), and then apparently Honduras also has a Special economic zone for bitcoin on what seems to be a private Island so surely there could be circles of bitcoin users that you do not really know about but those circle of users may well be making efforts and progress in terms of expanding outwardly, too.. and maybe it is not widely know which wallets or ways of transacting might be used in each location or if some of the hype about various available transacting abilities might be overblown as compared with what can be seen to be happening on the ground.


My understanding was that there was some ambiguity in the language of the El Salvador Constitution, so sometimes there can be a reinterpretation of already existing constitutional language or like you said another possibility might be to change the language (which also might be framed as a clarification of language that is already there).  I could attempt to find a newer source, but this article from last year seems to describe that there already is an ability for Bukele to run again in 2024.


Do you have evidence to either show that El Salvador's economic condition has not been improved in the last year or at least that it is not worse off as compared with other countries of similar stature who had not adopted bitcoin.. so even if El Salvador happens to be worse off economically this year as compared to last year, do you have evidence connecting that to bitcoin, besides "other people saying that" in their wishful-thinking kind of way?

It is almost a year after bitcoin was officially declared a legal currency, but the country of El Salvador has not been able to improve their country's economic situation, most likely it is true as you said maybe they still need time to wait for the next increase, because the price of bitcoin is now falling much differently with the price that nayeb bukele bought when legalizing bitcoin in 2021 last year, although many say bitcoin adoption failed in El Salvador, opinion polls show that there are still very many people who support nayeb bukele..

1BTC = 1BTC; they have the same amount of Bitcoin. But, yes, people still believe in soft fiat money.

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I have not seen that. I have only seen a few protests in the capital ... it's mostly farmers who want seeds and fertilizer. Oh, and the media. They are negative on Bitcoin. But they are mostly negative on anything the government does.
 
They have two national legal tenders: $USD and $BTC. Puts the $USD cartel, established by A. Lincoln in the 1863 and 1864 Banking Acts, in a difficult position. It's funny. But the fun part is that SV (El Salvador) is building securities law around Bitcoin. So, it is trending toward the direction of all securities "permitted" in El Salvador need to be on Bitcoin. You cannot, for example, live on dividends from investments on a US exchange ... hence, the need for Bitcoin. People shit on El Salvador. I've even had hundreds stolen from me (likely from the FinCEN) in transmission.

What are you talking about? The protests were in 2021. The biggest danger is that Bukele changes the Constitution, so he can remain in power beyond 5 years. He has like an 80% approval rating, so many are likely to support it. He showed up in the Legislature, during session, with the military and surrounded the place. After that, there were talks of changing the Constitution but it has all been in secret. If changes were made to the Constitution, nobody yet knows.

Jack Maller was involved in getting BTC adopted as legal tender. But NOBODY uses strike nor do they hold their own keys.  


Yes. It is difficult to setup. To custody your own watchtower you need to (a) fund it and (b) have other people fund it. It tends toward money transmitters like Bitfinex who have the most liquid channels. I had to give my keys to two other organizations to try to pay my Internet bill over $LBTC. Neither worked and I paid $10 in fees to add and remove from their watchtower.



No. There is not one Lightning channel in El Salvador; it appears the closest are in Mexico and Panama: https://explorer.acinq.co/

Everyone uses the "Chivo" wallet, which is sort of like Tik-Tok biometrics meets WeChatPay in China. There is an option to pay with Lightning but there is no verification. I am convinced what they call Lightning is simply a database on the Bitso exchange. Chivo is the only regulated way to buy Bitcoin in El Salvador. There were a few BTM providers at popular spots, but the government took over the BTM business by placing them all over the country and adding a 2% spread. You need to have a +503 (Salvadoran) phone number, DUI (their state ID) or passport registered with the government to buy Bitcoin from Chivo vending machines (BTMs). Signs at stores says, "Chivo accepted here" not "Bitcoin accepted here," except Pizza Hut which prices in satoshis.

Very few understand keys, blockchain or fees. Most receive Bitcoin and immediately convert it to $USD. I hope it changes, poco a poco.


Yes, there are MANY more AirBnbs offered.

I'll keep trying to educate my friends on the difference between a government database and Bitcoin. It's a slow go. People will eventually catch on (when they have a Chivo wallet frozen). While SV (El Salvador) has its issues in implementation, it is f***ing sweet to have as legal tender. It makes life so much easier on many fronts.

What is your evidence that there is any increases in bitcoin protests in El Salvador in respect to bitcoin as compared with other reasons that there might just be regular protests in any country related to a variety of issues. 

Furthermore what is your evidence that El Salvador is cracking down on bitcoin protests in any way that is more substantial than any other protests to the extent that there may even be any reason to "crack down" on any protests, bitcoin or otherwise?

I think the biggest problem for El Salvador was the timing when they adopted Bitcoins as their national currency. In September 2021 the world was still in order and everybody believed that Bitcoin will keep rising. Nobody expected a major war in Europe again that would send the world in an inflation spiral and crush world economic growth. The Bitcoin price dropped in the one year 60% which has a huge impact on the value of the national holdings of El Salvador. The government argues that this is only a short term correction and as long as they are not selling the will not realise any loss. The big problem in my opinion is that the government is becoming more harsh in their effort to silence opposition and trying to stop people from speaking out against bitcoins. This is wrong and contradicts the principles of crypto currencies, which try to increase financial freedom and independence, and should not be used against the own citizens. And then there is the IMF who is controlled by USD and will not help El Salvador as long as they use Bitcoin as their national currency. I hope for the Bitcoin project to succeed in El Salvador, but not at any cost. If the civil unrest keeps increasing they might need to find a compromise to give into the protests. Completely abandoning Bitcoins and selling all coins at the current price seems like the worst decision El Salvador could make, it might take another year but eventually the Bitcoin price is going to recover.

Do you believe that the El Salvador government blew its whole wadd merely because it gave a $30 credit to each of it's citizens in the Chivo wallet?

Do you know if they are not going to issue another credit ?  similar amount?  smaller amount?  How do you know that the issuance of one time was a failure in terms of getting some citizen's aware of bitcoin and maybe they can change the next issuance, in the event that they make another issuance, no?


So you are concluding that adoption is currently not good?  Are you concluding that some citizens are not benefiting by using and transmitting in bitcoin, including receiving remittances into El Salvador with low fees and without having to worry about the government being hostile to their bitcoin related activities?


And, I doubt that we have all the data in regards to the various ways that people and businesses are increasingly getting used to bitcoin and also increasingly using it.


Overall it seems the amount of bitcoin that they bought is really not a whole hell of a lot, relative to the other kinds of holdings that they have.  


It is nice to be able to hear on the ground reports, and if you can see some of the changes in usage on the ground as they are taking place.. I thought that Strike was also popular in El Salvador, but yeah maybe there are some difficulties in terms of transacting between different wallets.. I personally have not even used the lightning network yet, and I have been thinking about trying out Blue Wallet, Muun and/or Breeze.  Those are wallets that allow the use of either on chain bitcoin transactions or transactions on the lighting network.. but sure they are custody wallets too from my understanding.  I wonder if any El Salvadoreans are using any of those wallets?

Regarding your AirBnb.. I would imagine that there is more demand for various hotels and Airbnb, and there might be some locations in which balances of availability, prices and even features are being figured out if you are getting more foreigners traveling to El Salvador and people are figuring out how to set up their AirBnbs to try to get them filled at a price that they believe is profitable, too...

It has not failed, though it appears adoption is slow everybody has access to the Chivo wallet and can spend at Super Selectos, Simon and other large chains. Individuals also accept it, but you do not see ... such as services rendered from the US (gardening, medical, cleaning). There was more than $50M in remittances in the past year.

A major problem is that most do not understand "not your keys? not your coins." In fact, it appears as though many of the $LBTC transactions may actually be Chivo-to-Chivo because I have tried paying two separate parties with Lightning and it did not work. I even tried both implementations and paid the $4 watchtower fee. It's a little concerning that the government holds all of the keys on an exchange in Mexico called Bitso.

But the cool thing is they can accept from any BTC wallet and send to any BTC wallet. Plus, it is ONLY BITCOIN - which is huge. That drops everything else out of the equation and they are building legal securities infrastructure (with the help of Simon Dixon and Blockstream) on top of Bitcoin.

Have a good day. And, please, visit the eastern part of El Salvador ... a place called Tropico Inn at El Cuco is a local favorite for those living in San Miguel (the largest city near to where Bitcoin City is slated to be.) Come visit the east not just San Salvador and drive via Usulutan not San Vicente, it's faster. I have an Airbnb if anyone is interested.

It was a bad thing to reward users of the Chivo wallet without encouraging their participation on the BTC blockchain. The government should've rolled out rewards at a slow and steady pace to help motivate people to keep using the Chivo wallet. Besides, not many people within the country knows what Bitcoin is or how it works. This was just an early move from El Salvador that's bound to failure within the short term. We're going to have to see if adoption for BTC in El Salvador will increase in the future as the market turns bullish. The government already approved Bitcoin as a legal means of payment so the sky's the limit to how far the cryptocurrency will go in terms of mainstream adoption by businesses and individuals alike.

So far, El Salvador hasn't sold a single Bitcoin, so it has every chance to win once the market explodes again. Who knows if government's "smart move" turns El Salvador into a developed country within the not-so-distant future? Just my thoughts

It may be best we wait until the next bull run before coming to such a conclusion of failure. These things take time and it's easy to deem "failure" in a down market.  Funny how tunes on El Salvador will change when the crypto market is on fire again.

@Ratimov I understand the point you are trying to emphasize here and you have clearly outlined the points behind your decisions, but also note, even though the news of El Salvador Bitcoin adoption is over-celebrated by the community without adequate attention being paid to the impact of this Bitcoin adoption on the overall Bitcoin market behavior and how the IMF has kicked against this El Salvador move to adopt Bitcoin which is the measure reason why the bitcoin bound project could not fly since the external contributor did not find the project worthy and stable enough to invest such huge capital on, because of the uncertainty of the future Bitcoin market condition and lack of consistency in Bitcoin price which could not be practically projected for a capital project. That is the international monetary funds/(IMF) view anyways.
Now the point am trying to make is, that even though El Salvador is passive by many to have taken a wrong decision on Bitcoin adoption, emphasis should be ace on the long-term advantage of this decision on the Economic production of El Salvador, with the growth of Bitcoin in that country a lot of other sectors we develop along with it, take for instance the Bitcoin city which was made to be one of the biggest Bitcoin development in that country will Foster a lot of economic activities that will generate both direct and indirect jobs for the citizens, and the power sector will greatly improve because the volcano will become the major source of power to the Bitcoin city and if their capacity of electricity generation increase along the way the power sector in El Salvador will also benefit from the klw of electricity generated from the volcano.
We should give some time for El Salvador to put the dots together and figure out ways to develop their master plan and I know for sure in the next coming year we will have a lot of verifiable data to base our analysis on and then we can figure out what direction this whole thing is heading either negative or positive.
What I fear most is the continuity of this project after this present administration and what becomes of Bitcoin in El Salvador after Nayib Bukele leaves office will the next president be a Bitcoin fan or will he have a dark spot for Bitcoin, this is my most worries at the moment.