I have frequently asserted to newbie bitcoin adopters that they should not be too preoccupied in the very beginning of their starting to get exposure to bitcoin in terms of learning how to hold and manage their own keys, even though it should be an aspiration for each of us, and especially the more value that we put into bitcoin....
When holding your own keys the important thing is to get it right, there is some time window someone can afford to take their time to learn these things and leave them on 3rd parties. In the initial stages, how much Bitcoin was bought can also be a factor, because if a newbie starts out with lets say 200$, then it makes little sense to get a hardware wallet that might cost something in the range of 150$. But over the course of dca this ratio will change, and then it will make a lot of sense to get one. Also in the beginning it might be overwhelming to learn about Bitcoin, and to self custody your money for the first time ever, so people might be more comfortable with sticking to something they know. The important thing is to get it right and not lose your keys, than rushing to hold your keys and possibly losing them. And then sure if someone wants to leave a certain % of their holdings onto exchanges, there might be practical reasons to do so. It will probably highly depend on the individual financial situation of El Salvadorians to consider taking self-custody or not. If someone doesnt even have any kind of savings, it might not even make a difference to get something more secure, as there is nothing to lose. But for someone with even as little as 1000$ it might actually make sense, to take self-custody over it, especially in Bitcoin. As it could grow over time and doesnt have the inflation, confiscation, censorship, banking problems of fiat.
Bitcoin might still help them build any kind of wealth as they can get access to payments that are not controlled by central entities. Oftentimes in countries with high degrees of emigration, people that left might want to send their family and friends some remittances, but most of it will be eaten by banks, governments or smugglers. This is a huge barrier that was almost impossible to overcome, and still is in countries where Bitcoin education is lacking. The problem is getting this knowledge to people that barely have access/ knowledge about technology and live in hostile/ controlled environments, just making Bitcoin legal tender makes this whole process a whole lot easier and safer already. And could help some people out of poverty in the long term.
Let's say for example, a BTC HODLer in 2015 was not very worried about having had bought $2,500 worth of bitcoin in 2015.. (which would have been about 10 BTC for $250 each), so that HODLer was not keeping track of his her bitcoin security and how his keys were held, but then pretty soon in early to mid 2017, those BTC have become worth way more than $25k and then currently they are worth $250k, and they had gone up to $690k in November 2021.. , so sometimes there could end up being justification to start to pay way more attention to how much value is in the bitcoin based on changes in the price, and there might be some needs to rethink security and even rethink the various locations that the coins (private keys) are held. Are all the coins in one place or are they in different spots? Are the coins connected to each other in terms of privacy? Various kinds of concerns can develop if either the BTC changes in price or if more value is invested into BTC.
We saw this all the time with even older hodlers who just forgot they had some significant amount of Bitcoin on hard drives and didnt take any care of backing it up and then losing it. As Bitcoin grows in price, people can afford/ have to take greater security measures to save them.
We seem to be somewhat on the same page here, tadamichi, and in that regard, you and I are acknowledging the existence of both centralized and non-centralized services while at the same time recognizing and appreciating that some of these are more tied to directly being pegged to bitcoin than others, so for sure there are needs to start somewhere - including that some advantages are likely coming to a large number of people in El Salvador - even if some of the various services might only be tangentially connected to bitcoin - while at the same time, just having more options and opportunities increases the potentiality that El Salvadoreans are going to be able to learn more about bitcoin and maybe even to be able to move some of their value into completely self-custodian options.. but they have to start somewhere in their process of learning about bitcoin and learning about bitcoin-related services and even learning about various differences and risks that might associated with each in terms of privacy or convenience and other possible trade-off factors that they might consider to be potentially relevant to their circumstances and/or whether they benefit in the present or might they also consider possible future benefits too.
There is some kind of balance between the two. If someone is completely dependent on centralized services the tyranny starts, but in a healthy environment, where people took care of having enough access to decentralized services, centralized services would simply start to get abandoned if they tried some iffy things and only the good ones would survive, if people decide to only use them. There will probably always remain some kind of demand for some centralized services, for various reasons, or simply because many people dont realize the difference decentralization makes until its too late. The important thing is that we have enough decentralized services in use for people to have secure alternatives where its possible.
The state is attempting to be bitcoin-friendly.. so sure the state could do the opposite, too.. and create burdens on the citizens in regards to bitcoin, but they are not.. and in some sense we are lucky that Bukele is not distracted into shitcoins and exerting a large number of controls in regards to how people can or cannot use bitcoin.. Sure some additional burdens could develop later - but the way Bukele seems to have a pretty decent grasp of what is bitcoin probably would not happen under Bukele .. and it will be interesting to see if there is a transition of the leadership and then how will the bitcoin matter be handled during and after such a transition in the leadership.
Good point, it kinda defeats the fud that Nayib Bukele is only trying to get investments from the outside into El Salvador, that was brought up by people. The shitcoin world would be happy to pump a lot more resources into a country, that they could make their playground, as they have billions in backings from VCs. And they could play into the trendy narrative that shitcoins are so much more energy friendly etc. But we see this is not happening, which makes these accusations look ridiculous again, any country wants investments, but this is obviously not a scheme to maximise money being brought into the country, as shitcoinery would bring in a lot more and be easier than just sticking to Bitcoin.
I doubt that we need to entertain those kinds of stupid frameworks. Of course, there are dumb fucks in this thread and in other parts of the forum who propagate those kinds of mostly dumb ideas, and sure they have the burden to produce evidence and also the burden to persuade that their evidence supports their points, and we already know that a lot of times they do not bring very good facts and/or arguments, and bitcoin's ongoing growth and performance largely negates their overall points even if from time to time, they might be providing some concerns that are worthy to address.
In other words, it seems to me that everyone has a right to participate and even to bring some lame game facts and arguments to the table, but we should not allow those lame game facts and arguments to distract us from understanding and appreciating what is more likely going on presently and how the future seems to be more likely to play out.
So for example the dipwit trolls and bitcoin naysayers (or shitcoin pumpers or fiat pumpers) frequently want to get caught up on what about this and what about this and what about that., and sure sometimes they make decent points, but frequently they bring up pie in the sky bullshit that is very detached from reality and they want to present a 1% or 10% scenario as if it were a 95% scenario. So sure, we may well want to consider the various 1% or 10% scenarios, but not be giving them way more weight and/or attention than they deserve, unless the dipwit trolls can actually show us that the thing deserves more weight and attention.. so the burden is on them to present evidence and arguments to show those outlier scenarios in terms of having more weight than we had considered them to have... and sure there is no problem with giving them some attention, but we can also tell them to fuck off with their nonsense because I would rather be focusing attention on this thing that has a 60% scenario rather than the various lame 1% scenarios.
True.
