Topic: Bitcoin and the failure of El Salvador - page 2. (Read 496 times)

I live in a country where bitcoin is banned and not legal yet, so I really admire countries that accept bitcoin and especially El Salvador that made bitcoin the first legal tender. I wish that one day my country or many countries around the world can follow El Salvador to bring bitcoin into mass adoption.

I am a supporter of El Salvador, I am quite annoyed that many people are laughing at El Salvador. Those people are even investing in bitcoin, they mock El Salvador as a terrible failure, but they don't know themselves they couldn't get better.

when people sell their BTC to fiat currency then it will become a separate value it can be high or decrease in value, but actually what they don't realize is 1 BTC is 1 BTC and never changes, there is no need to determine a price value of 1 BTC with currency fiat money then it might be a panic in itself when the market is bear like this, so I don't think el salvador will fail they will benefit from holding their bitcoins, just need to wait 1 or 3 years from now

El Salvador hasn't failed. You seem to be supporting bitcoin, but why did you have to set the title of this thread like that? You make it sound like bitcoin and El Salvador, both has failed. You are only spreading FUDs through your clickbait title.

I haven't kept myself updated with El Salvador, but as far as I know, they haven't sold any bitcoins yet. So they haven't lost anything. You are only going to lose if you are going to sell your coins!

I think el-salvador has its own strategy and they know how to make a proper action on this bear market, they are smart and has a plan to buy when bear season so i think they are buying or holding, just remember that we will only loss if we sell at loss if bitcoin fall into 1$ per coin then we will not sell our holding we still not in loss because time will come that the price will back to bullish again and holders always earn in crypto.

Ah, I remember seeing these pics on Twitter. It seems like the protest only seemed to consist a really small number of (misinformed) people though. Probably the very small subset of people that doesn't read and that makes everything a conspiracy theory.

well yea now in hindsight after the events of last year people in el salvador knew that fiat was still used..

but...
check the news of last year(before/at the time) .. there were PROTESTS
so, read why they protested(not after the adoption, but before/at). they were protesting against bitcoin because they thought crypto was a compulsory REPLACEMENT legal tender not a second option extra legal tender. they were initially calling the president an authoritarian for implementing a change of legal tender which was unconstitutional.

translate: "wake up el salvador no to the dictatorship no to the reforms"
"total rejection of bitcoin

they feared not being able to continue using fiat
(once it was legal tender they realised they still used fiat.. where there then became other issues people experienced)


translate: "The Bitcoin bill must be repealed, it will bring more corruption and poverty"

within days of then using it. one protest reason stopped. and then the next one started.
it escalated to other things about the exchange rate losses as the international price of bitcoin dropped from $50k to $40k. also the problems with using the wallet where the bottlenecks were happening.
where they were saying the wallet was not fit for retail and couldnt cope with buying most popular stuff. etc etc

El Salvador accepting Bitcoin as legal tender isn't a failure, talking about price is the main reason of failure is a baseless opinion.

When Bitcoin become legal tender, it's mean it's used as a currency for daily spending. Not like other countries which accept Bitcoin as an underlying asset that mainly for investment or trading. El Salvador never failure to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, even the price decrease for 95% it can't be said as failure. It's failure when there's no citizens on El Salvador didn't ever use Bitcoin!

This is a flawed narrative! Unless and until we value bitcoin using a fiat currency, bitcoin is not going to be adopted by the mass. Bitcoin has not yet reached to a position where we can value goods and services in bitcoin's unit. So when the value of bitcoin is going down, El-Salvadorians can't cheer about its investment into bitcoin.

It's just one year El-Salvador had adopted bitcoin. So it's too early to conclude if they have failed or not. When bitcoin will reach 100,000, I will revisit such arguments.

Yes, it is true, as long as there is no selling, there is no loss because Bitcoin remains the same. Whoever sold at the current price is the loser. As for El Salvador, they are still clinging to the dream they started. Temporary loss does not mean loss at all. The results must be looked at in the long run, then it can be judged whether the experiment failed or No, we all wish El Salvador success in its bold step.

1 year is so short for HODLERs, bitcoin has been around for 13 years and it hasn't reached mass adoption anywhere so we shouldn't expect it to reach mass adoption in el Salvador just because it is legal tender there.

The fact that there is critical thinking against bitcoin in its development in el salvador does not indicate being against the project and everything that is being developed in El Salvador, but without a doubt the data by which this project should be measured cannot be hidden. These results, in fact, and celebrate such a date should not be points of conflict.

That bitcoin has finally become legal currency is a fact that we still believed was far away, and it is happening, and that fulfilled idea is already beginning to gain experience, although it is a pity that it cannot be strengthened in this mandate of Bukele, who in reality He is the one who drives it and maintains it.

I find no reason why El Salvador is said to have failed for their bitcoin adoption. El Salvador managed to adopt bitcoin as a legal tender and as a currency, it was a success not a failure. If you think that El Salvador is failing its bitcoin adoption, then I think that's the wrong decision to think about.

El Salvador has provided a good choice for every citizen about financial freedom especially regarding the payment system. Almost every citizen has a bank in his own hands to spend his bitcoins at any time, it was the greatest success for El Salvador to get out of the centralized financial system. We don't judge a failure just because their investment is now lost due to a drop in the bitcoin price, it's something that has nothing to do with their successful adoption. If their investment loses today, it doesn't mean that adoption is also failing and vice versa, if their investment is successful in the future it doesn't mean all citizens will adopt bitcoin. Two things should be assessed differently, investment and adoption.

When faced market with bearish I think many people claimed the failure and mistake made by El Savador after one years made bitcoin as legal currency transaction, will have different opinion when bitcoin and market on bullish condition all people minds said El Savador become most important country after bitcoin become legal currency transaction. Ever when first time El Savador announce about bitcoin as legal currency transaction success made new all time high although later bitcoin price drop drastically. All human attitude when getting profit from bitcoin investing they will silent, then talk more and looking fault when faced with bitcoin price drop drastically. Who ever countries want to make bitcoin as legal currency transaction or not need to make our research before investing in bitcoin and know the right time have to buy or sell.

How sure are you with both of these? You'd think someone that's actually from El Salvador knows that BTC was only an alternative, due to the fact that most people still pay with fiat money.

El Salvador's problem is not with Bitcoin or their adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender. Thats just the symptoms of their real problem, which is crappy PR for Bitcoin. They at first were able to generate a lot of hype and a lot of excitement. And then? Then nothing. They completely failed when it came to marketing Bitcoin to their own people as well as to the world. They just hoped the hype would continue on its own and somehow Bitcoin would gain value and the people in El Salvador who held Bitcoin would be so grateful for their profits they would spread the adoption of Bitcoin even more. The president of El Salvador counted on that and did not take into account the fact that his people are mostly poor and would rather cash out without hodling so they could pay for stuff they really needed.

But this Pr problem is very fixable. Lets see what El Salvador has to show us.

here is the jist of things. wrote calmly without BS. without embellishments or exaggerations about how things actually went

elsalvadors first attempt into crypto didnt go well last year(sept-jan) because they didnt enter the crypto realm via bitcoin as bitcoin using the bitcoin network

they entered via a bridged sub network with pegged value for transfers(LN) which has known bottlenecks and liquidity issues and a peg that has no consensus security, that could not support 50k(<1%) citizens let alone 6 million people(el salv pop).

they learned this within a couple months. and shifted away from that subnetwork that was being used as the backbone transfer of their wallet system, and moved more to a CEX custodial service to do internal swaps and then actual bitcoin/fiat withdrawals to avoid the locks/liquidity and bottlenecks and peg issues

their other issue was when promoting a new legal tender many citizens thought it was about stopping the utility of fiat in the area to be 100% crypto. which many citizens thought was an impedance to finance not a new extra option/freedom

again those first few months were hit with resistance due to bad promotions where people thought they were being forced to only use crypto in a manner that was not actually the true crypto they were mentioning.

the last kick in the leg that hindered movement last year was the calling it a "bitcoin" project even though the wallet and its backbone network was not the bitcoin network. so again they felt lied to or misinformed

all these 3 things stirred into a unsuccessful adoption due to payment problems and misinformation about what they were actually using, able to use and had access to.
...

this year they are trying it a different way. and progress is more organised, timely and positive. yes this year may be different than last years first couple months. but they are now actually trying to concentrate on bitcoin and not the other subnet that caused them problems

it will take time. but already in 1 year they have more citizens using crypto in the area(120k+(~2% pop (its more but i wont embellish))),  which is more than say the whole of bitcoin had gained in 2010(its first year)
so its progress. just slow

It’s a work in progress, and although I don’t favour the term failure to summarize the year, it’s likely pretty shy from the expectancies that were deposited on the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender there.

From the perspective of bitcoin it’s certainly been a success so far, enhancing bitcoin with a real life case use of adoption as legal tender. That alone gives food for thought to many other countries which had never even considered there being an option outside their status-quo. Whether that moves on for any more of them eventually, is yet to be seem, but it’s on some of their radars. It’s also put El Salvador on the radar, which should do them some good.

The country itself has not (allegedly) sold any of the government held bitcoins, so they are not at a realized loss, but obviously the hopes were set in a completely different direction. Not having a realized loss does not mean that there aren’t at a loss in bookkeeping terms.
Out of the top of my mind, I recall they created a Trust for the Chivo System with around 150M $, to provide liquidity to the overall system. Bukele’s Bitcoin purchases allegedly come from that Trust (though there is a lack of transparency as to where the funds for each purchase came from), so on the paper, the Trust does have a diminished current value in USD. The Chivo Pet Hospital (and some schools) were paid with alleged bookkeeping surpluses (yet no realized) due to BTC raise during the first months. A bit of one-way magic there.

But I wouldn’t just stop considering government based BTC purchases. After all, they’ve likely got a way better position to hold and not realize the losses that the segment I’d be more concerned with, which is the general population. It’s not really that trivial to play along with the Hodl mantra for them, and lacking any real data, I can only guess that quite a few have sold at a loss, or at least refrained from saving in bitcoins due to its descending value trend. The reported abundant failures with the Chivo Wallet, the default bitcoin wallet the people there will use, constitutes additional unwanted hassle and reputation loss to the Chivo System.

In addition, remittances through bitcoins are rated currently by the government at just under 2%, which is low for what was one of the key arguments in favour of its usage in the country.

One year is not that much though, and the current conjuncture of multiple macro aspects has not helped at all in getting the local population’s mind-set more into bitcoin usage (and savings). I would have like to see a year of rolling on wheels, but instead we got one full of bolsters in the path.

The timing is just really bad. If I remember correctly, the announcements happened when BTC was around like $30k-$40k; so after BTC rose then dropped, negative press was to be expected regardless how much usage BTC is getting in El Salvador.

Funnily enough, people are trashing on Bitcoin and El Salvador as if BTC is their only payment option.

This is always true but does it help your or any entity if you can not hold your Bitcoin long enough to get profit?

You don't know how long you will have to hold it to the profitable date so don't bet. El Salvador President bet that Bitcoin will rise in near future and his country is in serious debt crisis. This is his mistake and collapse can occur if his country has to sell all Bitcoin to get cash for paying debt interest or other reasons.

However I disagree to anyone accuse El Salvador. They just made a history for Bitcoin and the world and we should appreciate that. Especially if the argument or accusation is from people (I don't say it is you) who got profit with the bull run of Bitcoin that is partially contributed by El Salvador legal tender news. They should say thank you to the President and El Salvadorians.

Over the years such developments come in the bull,just to keep the momentum but I always think the bear is more appropriate for such adoption where they can pick up bitcoin at cheap price and store. I also think those countries also need to have their stable coin, maybe with backup from by dollar made as profit from the bull and stored bitcoin. A volatile coin at the moment does not make provision of other assets although it make better return on investment than others.