Topic: El Salvador has become the first country to make #Bitcoin legal tender! 🇸🇻 - page 118. (Read 37174 times)

The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, said on twitter that after the bitcoin price fell to $45,000, the government acquired another 150 BTC and now owns 700 BTC.

Not all residents of El Salvador approve of President Bukele's policy of legalizing bitcoin, so radical opponents of bitcoin burned a bitcoin ATM during protests in the capital of the country, San Salvador, many were in fitballs with the inscription "No to bitcoin".  https://apnews.com/article/technology-elections-bitcoin-nayib-bukele-el-salvador-b4ca6f06417074dbd254a205a452b426

yes, first experience in real terms of bitcoin use.
This probably illustrates the need of something like lightning network for practical use.

Here are the latest information updates for today from @Bukele’s twitter account (translated by me):

Needless to say that the above, on twitter, does not tend to be as clear as it should be, and more thorough explanations would be appreciated, at least by us outsiders. Local context would probably be needed to fully understand some of the above comments.

I read about some articles complaining about some grave functional issues to get some context (although the source I believe is sponsored by the opposition):
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&u=https://www.elsalvador.com/noticias/negocios/criptomonedas-nayib-bukele/878661/2021/

Damn !
First they announce volcano steam powered BTC mining hubs, now tax exempt... hope they have enough "volcano" for all the ASICS sailing their way 

Javier Argueta, legal adviser to the President of El Salvador, reports that the government of El Salvador will exempt foreign investors from capital gains tax and approach tax on transactions with bitcoin. ""If a person has assets in bitcoin and makes high profits, there will be no tax. This (is done) obviously to encourage foreign investment"- states Javier Argueta.  https://news.yahoo.com/foreign-investors-exempt-tax-bitcoin-202653347.html

I have hardly any clue about the various matters that a world leader has to consider, but off-the-top of my head, it seems that strategically and in the spirit of openness, it would have been a good thing for El Salvador to formally ask for assistance, even if they already expected that the chances of actually getting assistance was going to be quite low.. maybe in the less than 30% odds (am I being too charitable) of getting some kind of a favorable response, but El Salvador still may have been served well by having had formally asked.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a fiat-based organization. It will be ridiculous to expect them to approve this initiative. And this is also the reason why I was surprised when El Salvador asked the World Bank to help them with the implementation of Bitcoin as the legal tender. IMF, World Bank.etc are organizations that deal with fiat currency. What is the point in asking them to get involved with cryptocurrency?

Now regarding the Bitcoin purchase by El Salvador, in the long term it will obviously bring benefits for them. But I am more worried about short term fluctuations. The next presidential election is due in 2024. Hopefully BTC will be in six digits by then.

Undoubtedly, this is another landmark in the history of Bitcoin. I'm almost sure the government of El Salvador made the right decision. I believe that these 550 BTC which were purchased at the current price of 45000 USD will double their dollar value over the next four years. Nayib Bukele is a great Bitcoin proponent.

Now El Salvador has begun to diversify its financial assets and reserves. Perhaps other countries will follow suit. I think the International Monetary Fund is unlikely to help them with this.

On September 7, a law on recognizing bitcoin as a legal means of payment came into force in El Salvador, President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele said on Twitter, El Salvador has already purchased 550 BTC.  https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2021/09/07/bitcoin-now-legal-tender-in-el-salvador-marking-world-first/

other alts arriving at the same time: LTC, BCH ?

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/pakuhg/bitcoincash_is_also_there/

salvador president going on with his BTC project
so 14 salvadoran officials have been sanctioned by us

https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1428802786054004748

salvador seems to have a good leader team, will get btc legal tender, but also a modernized country.
i am judging that from outside...

How can you be so sure? One or two opinion polls involving a few hundred people is not enough to gauge the public mood regarding cryptocurrency in El Salvador. If I am not wring, the rollout hasn't begun yet. How can someone oppose a measure, when they don't have first time experience about it? That means that they are going by the rumors that are circulating around. And I heard news from some of the Latin American countries as well, regarding the acceptance by the governments there. I am feeling quite optimistic right now.

it's true as you said my friend, this is a new step for bitcoin, because el salvador has become the first country to make bitcoin legal tender, over time bitcoin is getting more and more interested by everyone, even countries have started to think about how to get profit through bitcoin, maybe in the future there will be many countries that legalize bitcoin..

It's going to bring bitcoin adoption to millions of people who may have otherwise not chosen to engage in the crypto space. This can only be a good thing for bitcoin and for crypto in general.

This is the first time I am hearing about Panama. If they make Bitcoin as the legal tender, then it is going to be huge. Panama's case is not similar to El Salvador, as they have their own currency (Panamanian balboa). In El Salvador's case, the rollout was easy because the national currency (Salvadoran Colon) existed only in documents and the US Dollar was trade currency inside the country. And that is the significance here. If a country places Bitcoin at the same level as it's national currency, then it is a huge boost for Bitcoin.

But then again, how reliable is your news?

Hey Bryant, the guy posting before you obviously didn't fully get what I said! Anyway...

You are of course right and it is not that I take this poll at face value. My comment sounds one-sided and lacks room for interpretation, my bad.

What I wanted to convey though is that even people who have a basic understanding of Bitcoin can't really grasp the implications of Bitcoin becoming legal tender. It is quite similar to the fact that at least 8 out of 10 people can't explain what money is, how it is created and what its functions are. They just can't. They use it, but they can't understand let alone explain it. Now the question goes towards causality. If you don't understand something, you rather tend to say "I don't care" or "no". From a socially desirable respond perspective, you would say no because there is less to lose than if you vote for the introduction of something you have no idea about. This just shows that a lot of people don't sufficiently understand the scope of implications that comes with the introduction of Bitcoin as legal tender AND they probably don't understand Bitcoin itself sufficiently in the first place.

That is why I say it needs time. The introduction is the right step and only through usage and word-of-mouth will people realize the upside effects of having an additional option which they are not forced to use, but could if they wanted to. It is good to see countries take the initiative and give Bitcoin further reasons to exist. With time comes adoption, very similar to personal computers that were once said to be useless for individual households.

The best part about this thread is that the word "first" is included in it.  While Paraguay, Brazil, & Mexico all are likely to see some sort of bill put together involving Bitcoin it looks like next up for full adoption may be Panama.  I don't have any inside information or anything like that, but from what I've read it appears that Panama may see adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender before the end of the year.  I can only imagine things may accelerate from there, especially if adoption by these counties is showing a positive effect on their population.

Huh?  do you even bitcoin?

Just making up shit?

Sure there was a plunge from $65k in mid-April that largely took about a month to play out in mid-May and then has caused the BTC to get as low as $28,600 (a 56% correction) and then to largely range in a correction zone in the $30ks.. (let's call that the 35% to 50% arena) .. .and we are still within that BTC price correction range.

Likely El Salvador will serve as a pretty interesting use case in terms of the various was that having such an option to hold value in bitcoin or in dollars and even to have some quasi-banking abilities for El Salvador citizens/residents (as long as it lasts) will affect them... There might be some abilities for disparate impacts, but people do not necessarily tend to be as dumb as you might be wanting to ascribe them in terms of how they might hold their value, and even if uneducated plebs might not really know what the fuck is Gresham's law, they do tend to know aspect of it by intuition and experience, especially if they live in a society that has quite a bit of changing of values of one asset or currency as compared to other assets and/or currencies, and sure El Salvadoreans might not feel that they are being screwed by the US Dollar so they may well want to keep a decent amount of their value in USD, especially if they hardly have a sufficient quantity of income in order to save significant amounts, but they might also tend to appreciate (with the passage of time - and there is some speculation with this matter too based on historical BTC performance and also projections of BTC future performance) that they might be in better shape if they do try to save and to keep some of their value (to the extent that they are able to) in BTC.

Nice to have options, no?  instead of just projecting that volatility is always going to be bad, and we have seen a decent amount of tendencies in bitcoin that it can be volatile as fuck, but with the passage of time, it has also tended to quite considerably outperform to the upside any other asset or currency in existence, and little bit little, even when people are being misinformed, they are going to see for their selves that there is likely decent security (and even investment abilities) in keeping some of their value in bitcoin and HODL for the longer term (again, if they can).


Yeah.. right...  

I agree with you that the overall population of El Salvador is probably pretty damned uninformed or ill informed about bitcoin, but they are likely going to get a crash course.  Lucky them.

In other words, this seems to be a pretty damed good time to be learning about bitcoin.,. they can learn along with their president and their various members of parliament.. and if they need to tweak along the way, then so be it... the overall sentiment seems to be quite good, but sure there are likely going to be a lot of implementation developments along the way that are good, bad and ugly, and in the meantime, lot's of people learn about bitcoin, about the lightning network, about various services (apps) that are built upon the lightning network and perhaps other unknown unknows that will become known with the passage of time and with the likely developments along the way.

They seem to be pretty damned lucky people from my perspective to have some potential for some ways out of their various fucked up systems with (and relations to) the dollar.  Surely, we will see if the developments are positive for the country economically to cause some more opportunities for people in the country, and of course, if matters do not seem to be going well then there could be some considerations if the system (or applications/implementations) can be tweaked along the way or whether some kind of scrapping of the legislation would be the better course of action.  For sure, they would not be locked into some kind of inevitable train-wreck in the event that they might see that there are possible BIG problems to continue down the course, and if Bukelle's leadership is necessary, he does seem to have 3 more years left in his term of office (they have 5 year terms and he has already been in office for 2 years as of June 1, 2021).


From my perspective, it is way the fuck better to attempt to learn about bitcoin and to focus on bitcoin first before getting caught up in ideas about "blockchain" and "cryptocurrencies", whatever the fuck that is.

It can take a real long time to learn about bitcoin and not get distracted into various nonsense ideas.. and one of the great aspects of El Salvador's law.. at least up until this point, is that it is focused on bitcoin, and was largely influenced by the bitcoin focused developments of bitcoin beach .. and so of course, some of the El Salvadorean leaders seem to be getting some recent lobbying in regards to shitcoins and we have even seen some information circulating regarding how they could end up getting involved in some shitcoins too (including creating their own crypto)... but sure, we will have to see how some of that might develop and whether it might cause some problematic applications of their bitcoin law that seems to be bitcoin focused in its current form.


Even your formulation is misleading, bryant  (o.k.. when I read further down, I see that the misleading aspect of your formulation of the question is part of the point that you are wanting to make).

For sure, there is an obligation for businesses to accept bitcoin (except if they are technically incapable of it), but they do not have to hold any value in bitcoin whatsoever.

Another implementation likelihood is that El Salvador is likely going to be involved in trying to get businesses in a position in which they are "technically capable" of accepting bitcoin.  Of course, it could be argued that it may well be much better for a business to try to get to a position in which they are technically capable of accepting bitcoin, but surely there might be some businesses that do not want to get to a position in which they are technically capable of accepting bitcoin.  Surely, the BIGGER businesses are going to have more difficulties in trying to squirm out of accepting bitcoin.. even though, as we all already know, they have no obligation whatsoever (at least not so far) to keep even one iota of value in bitcoin.. and probably it would be many years before those kinds of capitalization requirements might become feasible - even if the El Salvador government does seem to be creating some of their own systems that require some bitcoin capitalization requirements - and it seems that those capitalization requirements for themselves (I think a trust or something like that that was created) in order to assist with bitcoin implementation facilitation matters.


I guess we are considering some of the same issues in which better formulations of questions or issues can help to better understand what is actually happening with the vagueness sometimes actually causing people to come to the wrong conclusions or even for the information gathered to be less accurate than it could be through the formulation of better questions or framing of issues.
 

Cannot disagree with your assessments here... the ways of the world frequently comes through a lot of misleading in regards to a lot of matters whether we are talking about history, current events or even speculations regarding probable future events.