Topic: El Salvador has become the first country to make #Bitcoin legal tender! 🇸🇻 - page 108. (Read 43222 times)

Well, I glanced at your profile aylabadia05, and I see that you have been registered on the forum since mid 2017, and maybe I can infer from that about your learning about bitcoin and wanting to learn about bitcoin since that time (so right around 5 years of learning, no?)  

I started in bitcoin in late 2013, so I am a bit more than 8.5 years of learning about bitcoin, yet I also had a decent amount of living back ground that included personal investing prior to my getting into bitcoin, too.

Each of us comes to bitcoin with our own set of experiences, and sure if we are younger, then we might not even have had any exposure to bitcoin at all, but bitcoin continues to grown in the world, and so more and more people are learning about bitcoin and learning about different ways that bitcoin might be helpful to their lives on an individual level and so those kinds of learnings have been moving into the spheres of various kinds of institutions and even countries too with the El Salvador example that only goes back a little more than a year for when El Salvador (as a country) announced that it had a plan to get into bitcoin more BIGGEDly by passing laws to make it legal tender and other developments that are associated with that (including but not limited to that El Salvador would spend some of its resources to buy bitcoin, too ... for its treasuries and also for some balancing of funds purposes too.. I don't claim to know the various ways that El Salvador is merely HODLing the bitcoin it bought or using some of that bitcoin in working ways to facilitate some exchanges that might end up going back and forth to dollars or stable coins).

In some sense your summary of what bitcoin is, and your rendition of its "main purpose" comes off as overly-simplified, even though you are providing an intro to bitcoin link, and sure if you are attempting to figure out some of the differences between bitcoin value and bitcoin price, then surely you are correct with any implication that you were making that people might not even be sure about whether bitcoin is overvalued or undervalued at its current price, and those assessments of value versus price can sometimes motivate people in terms of whether they believe that it would be fruitful for them to get involved in bitcoin through purchasing bitcoin or maybe trying to earn bitcoin.. or on the other hand to sell or to purchase items with whatever bitcoin that they have if they believe that the value of bitcoin is less than the current price.

For the past 8.5 years that I have been learning about bitcoin, I have also attempted to incorporate bitcoin into my life in terms of allocating a portion of my investment portfolio into bitcoin, and then considering that bitcoin has various kinds of value and potentially increases some of my options in terms of how I have attempted to balance my various bitcoin strategies and practices and ongoing learning more about bitcoin at the same time - while sharing some of the learnings in the forum or even getting some of my information and ideas about bitcoin through the forum.

Part of my point remains that you are not necessarily wrong in your attempted basic description of what is bitcoin aylabadia05, but your seeming reliance on getting a description from a basic introductory links gives me some sense that you may well have not been spending a lot of time building experiences around bitcoin in the last 5 years or so, which could possibly help you with your own attempts to summarize what bitcoin is from your perspective and how that might relate to topics being discussed in this thread (and surely every thread on the forum may well have deviance from its topic, but it seems to be the responsibility of members to attempt to stay on topic or to bring their deviations back to the topic of the thread, if possible).


Currently, I hold right around 10% of my various BTC value on various third-party platforms/exchanges, and there were times that I held quite a bit more through various third-parties, and when I first got into bitcoin, I had not realized the various ways that it would be better to hold some of the value separately, and I even had some value on blockchain.com (blockchain.info back then), and had not completely appreciated that I had generated my first wallet backup through them and kept that in my e-mail, and then I had some subsequent back up seeds that were in e-mails that I had ended up archiving - but still not even clear about the extent that some of those back ups had been vulnerable, too (even though in theory the third-party was not really holding those keys).

Surely there is a bit of a gradient in terms of how any of us might choose to hold our keys and/or to keep them with third parties, and there are trade-offs and even some governments and/or institutions may have requirements to hold their keys through 3rd parties which can create vulnerabilities, too.

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....

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.

There also can be questions about what storage locations are available and how frequently is it expected to use those coins and are there advantages to attempting to have some kind of multi-sig set up or how much work and learning is needed to run a node for even better potential for privacy.  The various tools and options continue to develop, and some of the need to learn more might have to do with how much exposure is going into bitcoin , and surely some normie newbies into bitcoin in El Salvador might start by just various basics in using various lighting wallets.. but then advance into feeling some needs to keep some coins in cold storage and/or as long term savings - even if they might have economic circumstance that ONLY allow them to save $10 per week or even less sometimes.


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.


I don't have any problem with throwing out various criticisms, but of course, in this thread we get naysayers who harp upon the negative, so many of them do not really have any intention to engage in any kind of meaningful discussion regarding what is really happening in El Salvador in terms of various kinds of systems and options that are being built and surely seem to be good investments from a bitcoiner perspective... including potentially being very empowering to a lot of El Salvadoreans.. even if it may well take a decent amount of time for them to learn about bitcoin and some of them might not want to learn, too.


Yep.. surely a lot of innovation has happened and becomes possible by the sheer creation of space for private sector to attempt to develop in El Salvador and the El Salvador government putting resources and focus in the direction of various kinds of bitcoin investments and developments too.

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.


It seems space is present for those kinds of teaching to already be happening and ongoing in El Salvador, and even some of the government promotion of bitcoin seems to be ok. with the development and promotion of various bitcoin services that are not necessarily connected to the services that the El Salvador govt is providing, such as the Chivo wallet.



It does make sense that a government wallet would retain several centralized aspects, and yeah maybe like a traditional bank that is not compulsory but just is there in case people want to use it or find some convenience in using it.


Well, so far, there do not seem to be very many jurisdictions that even come close to El Salvador in terms of both bitcoin-friendliness and trying to embrace a kind of comprehensive approach in terms of covering a whole country, and El Salvador even seems to have a decent sized population.

In this thread, we have been getting a lot of seemingly vacuous proclamations to bash on El Salvador, yet at the same time, we are still waiting to see if any other countries might go down some kind of a similar path in order that we might be able to engage in a bit more comparing and contrasting - and again, I am not opposed to criticizing various ways that maybe improvements could be made or if their might be some problematic aspects in terms of how bitcoin is being implemented in El Salvador - and surely more and more information is coming available with the passage of time, so there might also sometimes be criticisms that El Salvador is not sufficiently sharing some of its bitcoin related information, and how much they decide to share is discretionary too.

By the way, I am not even going to get upset about arm-chair criticisms, even though it does seem that El Salvador has been attracting quite a few more bright and innovative folks who are challenged in both their wanting to see the building of bitcoin infrastructure and systems, and to share information in public ways, and a decent number of those kinds of people and companies are going to El Salvador temporarily or even more permanently to invest, investigate and innovate in regards to these kinds of matters, and a decent amount of that information is going to end up getting shared in wider ways because even if there are some possible proprietary ways that bitcoin can be developed, there are also a lot of open source aspects in the various ways that bitcoin continues to be developed, built and information shared.


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.

Nayib Bukele Ortez is considered insane for his decision on the Legal Tender of Bitcoin in El Salvador. The IMF urged this country in Central America to withdraw Bitcoin as legal tender because it considered El Salvador to be experiencing an economic crisis. To this day, the news about El Salvador's Bitcoin Legal Tender is still very much reported because it is considered a failure but Nayib Bukele remains optimistic about this idea.

Why should it? Haven't there been sources they rely on for the generation of IGR before the adoption of bitcoin? Moreover if they fefided so then i can tell you it really worth it because bitcoin is a good source of investment, go online and check the list of cryptocurrency investors worldwide and see that they all have their investments made on bitcoin.


If that's your own personal assumption then fine, but the reality is that Nayib Bukele is working out different means to help established the country into full independency yet people like you aren't getting it, if am to burst you with this could you believe that "It is better to invest on bitcoin that is running dip because sooner the season will end and bull run will begin which is certain than investing on fiat currency that got overcomed by inflation and left one with no choice over time".


This gives it the more reason why Nayib Bukele should invest more on bitcoin because when the recession eventually landed, many countries will be affected but i can assure you that thise with bitcoin adoption and investments will scale through without been affected, by now i expect you to understand that Fiat and bitcoin does not work thesame lane nor perform thesame role in the economy, of which bitcoin is an improvement to that which fiat has left undone.


Unrest from where? Let me tell you if recession is to come, El-Savador isn't among the first countries to be affected, while the solution to that from happening is bitcoin.

In terms of the purpose of Bitcoin, I don't think it needs to be corrected because those who already like Bitcoin will definitely find out about the purpose of Bitcoin and its uses and what can make it easier for its users. And I'm sure that President El-Salvador also knows this so he is still very comfortable owning Bitcoin and will also try to apply it to things that can benefit his country. That's what makes me a little amazed by President El-Salvador for wanting to own Bitcoin regardless of its current price.

Sure, if this is the concern i can completely understand it. When people use it they should put in the same mentality as with any centralized service and never trust it, no matter what.

This is something not unique to chivo and many people are still using centralized services for various practical reasons. But we also gotta look at the unique situation El Salvador was in, with 70% of the population being unbanked and not having access to easy financial services at all. Now he introduced a state banking like app, that gives people access to fiat, bitcoin main layer and lightning payments for people that had nothing beforehand. Then there’s practical reasons that make it necessary to convert between all these and make them interoperable. And people here are complaining about gambling and centralisation for using money and building infrastructure to introduce these services, what do they expect politicians to do? What more practical solutions could a central entity have offered in this situation, as they can’t even build something decentralized? Put emotions to the side and this is a huge opportunity he gave to people, who didn’t have access to anything beforehand. This is actually their opportunity to even use decentralized services easily in the first hand, as they now have access to the main layer and lightning, even if chivo wouldn’t use these in their daily operations. It’s just another side network.

People can only use decentralized services themselves, this a burden the state can’t take from them. It’s also important to have realistic expectations and look at how/ why things are being used. The state will do its job, and people need to do their own. Not your keys, not your coins. If we’re concerned, we should maybe teach El Salvadorians how to store their Bitcoin safely/ run nodes and not use centralized services when they don’t need to. Chivo might still offer utility, in the same way bank accounts and central exchanges still offer some kind of utility and we’re using one of the two too, without complaining to our politicians that these services are centralized, what else should they be? Should they start lying to us and just make it seem like it’s decentralized, when it can never be, to make us feel better?

I completely agree, like i said, people shouldn’t get too comfortable with any centralized service and we should try to teach them now, to prevent further damages. The criticism on the state specifically are unjustified tho now, as no one before this government had made any considerable attempts at banking this huge part of the population, and the app is there to solve this task. It’s easy to bash anything without context, like some people here do again and again.

The simple question in the end is, would El Salvador have been better off without making Bitcoin legal tender and introducing Chivo? If yes, how and why weren’t they better off before? Constructive proposals are the only thing that could help them.

I don't want to go in the political direction, but I want to convey a little understanding that I know about the purpose of Bitcoin.
The main purpose of Bitcoin in general as I read in bitcoin.org or other article is to facilitate transactions. The first decentralized per-to-per-payment network that is only fully controlled by each user. It will automatically be completely opposite to the basic purpose of Bitcoin if anyone values Bitcoin at its price.
*Please correct if I am wrong

Dancing in circles is surely going to get us a long ways.

I made whatever points I had planned to make, and your last couple of posts did not raise anything beyond what I had already responded to therein.

Do you have some specific area or issue that you would like to discuss?

To know what claims you made, read your first paragraph.

You talk about how what I have found could be wrong and isn't credible, but you fail to prove it wrong or provide anything to back your own claims 

You are the one who had made a claim.  I did not make any claims except to suggest that your claims may well have a bit more persuasive power if they had an actual source(s) besides "found on internet."  

Of course, you do not really need to provide sources if you do not want, but then your claims may well have little to no persuasive power if they either depend on facts or some kind of analysis of facts that you had not provided.

What are you wanting me to provide sources for?  What claims did I make and fail/refuse to adequately back up?

By the way, I don't even recall disagreeing with you in any kind of meaningful way, yet... but yeah, if you want to argue about things for the mere sake of it, then surely I might feel up to it.. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself.. gotta give you a bit of a chance first, no?  You have not said too many things that were outrageously dumb - only just a little dumb so far.. besides your seeming to show tinges of wanting to insist that you are the smartest in the room.. . .. but sure.. it's possible that I could be reading you wrongedly.. just barely getting to know uie-pooie.

Sure, prove me wrong then.
Cite your sources. I am waiting. You can write paragraphs all day long. It still won't change the reality in your favour lol

Last time I checked, proclaiming that you found something on the internet does not give that information credibility merely because someone on the internet said something with which you agree and believe to be true - instead you should name your source, in order that there might be some abilities to attempt to figure out what kinds of sources that your source might have (if any) for their factual assertions, instead of just making up purported facts.. .which sometimes happens and is even more likely to happen if we get into habits of not even trying to figure out the sources of information that any of us rely upon when we are wanting to make arguments or to verify which arguments we are more inclined to agree.

Yes, technologically there might be difficulties in verifying which transactions might be attributable to El Salvador and then whether some of the transactions might be done on the main chain or over lightning network or a combination of various ways that bitcoin transactions might be carried out on the base layer or on second and/or third layers.. and sure the further out, the more likely that there are going to be centralized dependency points that are not exactly the same as bitcoin, even though the values might get resolved on the main bitcoin layer from time to time... and for sure, I think that any of us should be skeptical regarding claims that transactions are being made and sometimes we cannot really verify the truth of the matter or even if we might be being mislead in one way or another regarding how closely the transactions (and interactions) are related to bitcoin or pegged back to bitcoin or even sufficiently collateralized if they happen to be further out on the layers and really no longer bitcoin transactions. 

I personally wonder about how some of the monetization matters work in terms of services like Strike..what are the costs of transactions and who's paying for the costs (and at some point are there interactions with legacy systems), so is the whole systems what it claims to be and are various aspects sustainable and backed up by adequate collateral too.  Sure if there is some system that is being built, then maybe it does not need to be profitable and/or sustainable right away, but surely we need to be skeptical if there is some system that ends up being like Luna/Terra/ DoKwon (scammer dweeb) that is using bitcoin in one way or another, but then really not even sufficiently backed up by collateral or has various centralized points of failure - while holding itself out and claiming that it does not.. Those can end up being tragic failures and then have some system wide negative ramifications when those systems end up failing and then causing folks to either sell a lot of BTC or lose confidence in BTC which may end up contributing to further cascading negative affects on BTC... Regular BTC holders do not likely appreciate when those kinds of systematic events happen and seem to contribute to the lessening of the BTC price (and even lessening of the perceived value of BTC).

I don't have any problem in terms of some of the skepticism that might exist in regards to what is bitcoin and what is not and what is sufficiently backed / or pegged to bitcoin and which is not, and we should be skeptical. but at the same time, if there are assertions that we are all being duped, then those seem to need to have some basis rather than just failing/refusing to actually look into which aspects of the transactions can be shown.. because there is some evidence that exists to actually show various base layer bitcoin transactions and even a variety of ways to measure lighting network transactions too (transaction volume and number of nodes).


That would suck.  I hope that BTC spot price going down to $12k and failure/refusal to recover does not happen. 

With BTC prices bouncing down in the $19,200 to $19,600 today (and as I type this post), we are already bouncing around with BTC prices that are approaching 15% below the 200-week moving average (which is currently just below $22,600), and the 200-week moving average has historically been a pretty strong BTC bottom price indicator bitcoinlandia.... so for sure, there are many BTC HODLers who are already nervous about such ongoing low BTC prices over the past several weeks - and even a lot of the fall out since early May has been quite a challenge to the BTC spot price, too.

In early to mid-May, BTC prices fell below the 100-week moving average - which was then at $35k - and then more and more bad news regarding some of the level of gambling that had been taking place by some others who had then expected the BTC price not to go below certain prices (including but not limited to falling below the 200-week moving average that first happened about month ago, around June 12) and thereafter contributing towards more and more cascading falling of BTC prices.


Of course, we have a variety of wallets that are available and a variety of ways that bitcoin transactions are being done in El Salvador and other places.  I would not proclaim to have had studied the details of the matter - and I do understand that there are some possible centralized points that could contribute to various kinds of failures and even ways that folks are being mislead about either how transactions are being made and the extent to which people have options.

We do know that people do have options, but at the same time, it is quite likely that some newbies might  end up getting stuck using various kinds of custodial services, and surely some of them will also learn how to hold their own coins at the same time, and we know that holding your own coins is a preferable way of attempting to protect yourself on a personal level..  and even if there might end up being some systematic risks that come through various unknown third-party custody risks, then those might be valid concerns - even though they do not validate the case for bitcoin and they even justify why more and more user-friendly self-custody systems should be built and used..   Surely there are going to be some losers in this whole process too, and some of those are likely attributable to some of the growing pains of ongoing development and early stages in bitcoin. .which can also be considered as exciting times, too..

I didn’t mean be to be disrespectful, but the volatility will lessen over time as it grows in market cap, one day it could be a way more stable currency and actually be useful to price things in it. For now in practice it doesn’t matter as we’re still pricing things in fiat anyways and businesses can simply convert without any volatility drawbacks. The real gain might be the option for people to have a currency that’s promising to be saved in the long term, and that many people would have the access to a kind of banking app, even if it’s centralized, as they can switch to decentralized alternatives from there.

This wasn’t the reason and i never called you stupid, the cringe thing is that you accuse Naybib Bukele of not grasping basic concepts, when you’re the one who doesn’t grasp some basic things. Also El Salvador uses LN, it doesnt matter if just chivo does not, as you can still use LN everywhere.

This is the cringe part again, as you would have ever trusted a state wallet to be truly trustworthy. And youre talking about all of El Salvador, even tho it’s just an app and people there can use any alternative they want. If they wanna bank people with this app and the state is a central entity anyways, that could never be trusted to have the authority over a „decentralised“ app, they might as well go the centralized route and be honest about it and more efficient at it. This app is built for fiat and bitcoin after all. Also if you’re not running your own lightning node, idk how you would consider it decentralized in the first place, this is a custodial solution from a centralized entity and you’re expecting decentralization and talking about Bitcoins philosophy, from a product that could never deliver it and isn’t supposed to deliver it.

Because El Salvador doesn't have its own traditional currency, the government of El Salvador is making it a little easier to adopt Bitcoin as legal and being able to use Bitcoin as legal tender in the El Salvador environment itself and I think that's a very also good for El Salvador and its citizens. After all, Nayib Bukele, who already loves Bitcoin, is always more patient when he sees Bitcoin falling in price and is also still trying to buy it at a low price like now.

Sure dude. Keep on bargaining. From calling me cringe and stupid because apparently according to you El salvador was using LN,  to defending El salvador for using a centralized app(they are not even using bitcoin lol but something which is exact opposite of bitcoin's philosophy and smearing its name).
You are delusional. Take your meds.

I prefer utilizing my time somewhere lese rather than discussing something with a disrespectful 12 y/o kid with zero undertanding about economics.

They spent 2% of their government spending on Bitcoin last year. Is this gambling?

Then they tried, but it doesn’t matter as Bitcoin is legal tender now and they have to keep the trust fund. These 2% would have been spent anyways, what else would have been more promising economically?

Then i dont get your point, any state wallet couldnt be trusted as decentralized, so they might as well use a centralized approach that fits their needs better. If people can still use any lightning wallet, then what is the shocking thing? We’re all also still using bank accounts even tho it’s centralized and untrustworthy.

What else did I say in my post?
Read twice before you comment.

You can still use any lightning wallet, that is the point. Even if chivo doesn’t do it apparently.

The merchants can convert to usd right away trough chivo, maybe thats why did they did it.

I am not talking about profit or loss and I am also not saying that taking risks in bitcoin is bad if done properly. I am saying that it will not look very good if El Salvador goes into an economic crisis while their president has boasted on social media of buying bitcoin dips which only go lower. Also, the cheers from the community on a president who is using taxpayer's money to buy a risk asset is head shaking. What if bitcoin falls to $12,000? What if it does not recover?

Sure dude. Maybe do a google search before you act so cocky on the internet then it will be less humiliating for you?lol