Topic: El Salvador has become the first country to make #Bitcoin legal tender! 🇸🇻 - page 54. (Read 39048 times)

Intriguing how your assertion just lit a light bulb in my brain! True, you could say there's a chasm of difference separating Bitcoin from the motley crew of cryptos often derisively dubbed 'shitcoins'. Bitcoin has demonstrated its muscle, bounceback-ability and capacity for disruption. However, does it totally nullify the use-value of the other coin-kids on the block?

Sure, Bitcoin may be the cool kid now that El Salvador gave it a nod, but does that imply the entire crypto-crew is nothing but deadweights? Some of these so-called 'shitcoins' have gone through a metamorphosis, finding their own corner in the vast crypto world. Ethereum, with its smarty-pants contracts, is breaking molds left and right in numerous sectors. Are we so quick to ignore its worth?

Moreover, 'crypto' isn't just some buzzword millennials love to throw around. It's a power-packed term symbolizing the revolutionary ability of blockchain tech. So, shouldn't we emphasize the gap between Bitcoin and its counterparts, but also push for a thorough grasp of the richly varied crypto-sphere?

"Strike" CEO jack Mallers announced...

Jack Mallers Announcement at #Bitcoin2023

Jack announced new plans for @Strike, including expanding their reach to more than 65 countries while moving their headquarters to El Salvador.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/GbbRSsp4ocs

Source: The Bitcoin Conference

Nayib Bukele took all the steps for his country so that they can advance economically. At one time most of the people were against him for these steps but he made his steps successful without taking people's word. He officially recognized Bitcoin and adopted Bitcoin as the currency for his country. After he recognized Bitcoin, most of the people feel benefited in all the areas for which people are currently attracted to it. President Nayib Bukele EL Salvador established various things by Bitcoin and all the steps he has achieved success. Even those who opposed his work now support him because people have benefited the most from adopting Bitcoin as his country's currency.

It sounds like you are giving me an assignment.  I have only recently started to use lightning network myself, and I have not used Chivo wallet or any custodial wallets.. So I am not even sure that I know the extent to which the wallets used in El Salvador are supposedly problematic, as you are asserting them to be.. and you seem to be implying some kind of corruption that's beyond my understanding of how there is both the acceptance of BTC as legal tender and some abilities for transactions to be promoted using lightning network and those payments would be optionally done on the main chain or through lightning network... so yeah.. maybe you are just way smarter (and aware of facts than me... I am not necessarily opposed to considering the matter more.. to the extent that there might be some important facts that you are suggesting that I am missing)... but I am not necessarily just going to take representations like the ones that you are making.. even though you are telling me to research and giving me assignments.


I did not even know that bitcoin failed in el salvador.  It seems to me to still be pretty early days in terms of the announcement of El Salvador adopting bitcoin as legal tender merely being 2 years ago, and it's actually going live as legal tender did not start until September 7, 2021.  There seem to be good things still happening in El Salvador in regards to bitcoin, and Bukele still has very high approval rates, and whether that is due to Bitcoin or crime reduction or some other factors, I don't claim to have any knowledge on the ground that is greater than anyone else... or what I get incidentally, rather than specifically studying matters that forum member like you might want to assign to me in terms of your saying that my sources or reliance on the wrong people is not helping my knowledge, since you seem to believe that I am brained washed.. which just comes off as distracting and what trolls do.. rather than really trying to engage in any kind of meaningful discussion of this matter..

I don't follow anyone in particular.. and if people say dumb and crazy shit, then I might be triggered into looking into the matter.. perhaps?  no guarantees. 

I am not going to be dissuaded merely by your assessment that I supposedly don't know enough or that your claiming that you know how I get my information (which you seem to imply to know that I am relying on bad sources, and suggesting that you are a good source, when you have already shown yourself to tend to not be a very good source when it comes to some of your anti-segwit and anti-lightning network biases that you have spread in a lot of threads and now you are coming over to this thread to proclaim some of us might not know enough because you are smarter than the rest of us... and we need to do our homework in order to catch up to uie-pooie.


That does not even sound right.. even though you want to characterize the matter in that way..

Whatever.. you do you.


You think that El Salvadorians are being tricked into losing money?  None of them hold BTC self custody?  The same self-custody issues exist in a lot of places, and so sure, people are learning more and more about the need to keep their own private keys, so whatever you are saying in regards to custodial systems is a problem everywhere. not just in El Salvador.

Nonetheless, there is always going to be a certain level in which people (bitcoiners or otherwise) need to take some fucking responsibility in terms of not leaving their shit with third parties, and you are trying to suggest that El Salvadoreans are specifically being tricked into leaving their shit with third parties, and I just don't buy it.. even if there might be too many folks using custodial wallets. and they likely need to get their shit into self-custody.. so I don't disagree with the need for self-custody.. but I do disagree with your assertion that implies that they are being taken advantage of because some third-party custody wallets and services are being made available to them.


There are custodial and non-custodial services developing and growing at the same time, and yeah some of the matters are confusing in terms of the various current governmental attacks, too (that are mostly seeming to be coming out of the USA recently and maybe even some other developed countries.. the EU too).. ... but those governmental attacks do not seem to be happening in El Salvador.. even though you seem to be suggesting that the way that El Salvador has allowed LN exist (or to be promoted) is problematic for bitcoin adoption is taking place in El Salvador (and perhaps setting a bad precedent by facilitating LN).. and you have some weird ways of framing these matters.. as if LN and El Salvador were the problem or the place where battles in bitcoin are currently taking place... so yeah.. maybe you are suggesting that the battle against bitcoin in El Salvador is a more subtle one, and you just come off as a goof.. but yeah, I should look into the matter more in order to really understand the reality of what is happening, when you are not even making very good arguments in the first place.. but still I need to research the matter, no?


From my understanding LN is ongoingly being developed and expanded.. and improved upon.. therefore, it is not dead.


Well good luck highlighting the various issues.   When are you going to start with such highlights that you believe need to be carried out?

@jayjuangee

funny part is i am saying that bitcoin should stick to what it did best.. you seem to be siding with the cult that want bitcoin to go into a different direction of making people not use the bitcoin network and instead be pushed over to other networks.. where said other networks have been proven by the el salvadorians to not be fit for purpose

im not promoting something different. im for fixing bitcoin and evolving bitcoin.. not some other network.

seems you are stuck to much in being spoonfed into the social diatribe of a certain few idiots that love altnets,  rather than actually look at the real stuff thats been happening and the real stuff i have mentioned people should really look into.

but hey.. seems you want to not mention that the screw ups were LN related by you diverting the attention away by not mentioning LNs involvement via your "variety of ways" and your "whatever system that El Salvador put into place"

might be worth you actually reading what actually occurred and what networks were actually involved and start to have the confidence to actually mention the other networks by name to actually highlight their flaws and real world limitations and failures. instead of being soo excited to keep promoting LN as a solution..

LN gave bitcoin a bad name to el salvadorians. even when el salvadorians troubles were nothing to do with the bitcoin network at all.. nor were the el salvadorians even making payments on the bitcoin network.. the LN experiment failed el salvador but it seems the LN lemmings want to push a narrative that bitcoin failed el salvador..
shameful misrepresentation yet again from the LN cult

yep they snake oil sold their LN scheme to EL salvador as "bitcoin" (facepalm)
and when it went wrong they then pretended the LN experiment didnt happen and that it was the bitcoin network that failed el salvador.. (facepalm)

..
what makes it worse is the CEO of strike is trying to do it once again. but this time coming with bitfinex as a partner to be a custodian/(hub factory) for users LN inbound balance
again falsely promoting it as "bitcoin".. even though the el salvadorians yet again wont own any private keys to any real bitcoin network UTXO funds

..
ofcourse there will be a future of subnetworks for "circular economy" of closed systems to keep value within a smaller niche community.
but if people ignore the fact that LN is not fit for purpose, many years will be wasted promoting broken crap and nothing real actually changes for the actual bitcoin network to grow. or for better subnetwork options to come about

its like flogging a dead horse repeatedly. LN has had 6 years of chances to fix their screw ups and instead they just keep repeating their screw ups.. so its time we highlight their screwups especially ones that occur on a national scale of a country

It seems to me that there are levels of concern that come when referring to bitcoin within the concept of crypto or cryptocurrencies, and even if none of us can really figure out what the term crypto means, there should be some kind of an obligation of the person who chooses to use such word to be clear about what is the references.

So the first level is merely just clarifying what is meant, and if someone is trying to suggest that there is some kind of an amorphous idea out there that involves crypto and bitcoin happens to be part of that, then even if they might be technically accurate, many times they are inaccurate an misleading by failing and refusing to clarify what they mean exactly - or alternatively if they are trying to suggest that various shitcoins are kind of like bitcoin, then that is also misleading... .

..so when it comes down to El Salvador, we know that they emphasize bitcoin and not crypto and not shitcoins, but to some degree, there likely needs to be some level of tolerance to shitcoins and other various products that might overlap with shitcoins, crypto and even sometimes it might not even be clear exactly how much any other party, person, business or other government is wrapped up into or confused by shitcoins, and so part of the process of promoting bitcoin and expanding bitcoin is going to have various overlaps with shitcoins that are affinity scamming bitcoin - .. so frequently it is not going to be clear where to draw the line exactly, even if some cases of promoting shitcoins or naysaying upon bitcoin are more clear than others and there needs to be some forced clarifications when some folks are either sloppy in their use of language, even if they might not be purposefully trying to promote shitcoins or to naysay on bitcoin and even sometimes there might be some useful products or ideas that they might have that might not be exactly bitcoin related, but in the end, likely bitcoin is going to end up touching upon all areas of life, even areas in which people are scamming and involving themselves into using bitcoin, too.


You sound a bit distracted Franky.

Yes.. sure there are some aspects of bitcoin that are not exactly straight-forward and are being developed - including various second layers and companies that are working on bitcoin also various players who might sometimes have various personalities that we may or may not like.

Maybe El Salvador should hire you as one of their advisors.. but for some reason I doubt that they would do it, since you seem to be going down a road in which you are promoting some vision of bitcoin that is not bitcoin, either... and it is not even clear what you are promoting - since you should already realize that segwit is one of the solutions in which it is easier to have various second layers that are settled on the bitcoin chain later down the road, even if there are problems along the way.. and if you really believe that some variation of bitcoin would really be able to expand in its adoption by ONLY having on chain transactions, then it seems that you are really handicapping the role of bitcoin..

I am not even going to suggest that I know how to resolve the various conflicts and the balancing of choices that likely need to be made when expanding bitcoin's usage whether some of that usage is going to happen somewhat onchain, or through various second or third layers and sometimes involving some levels of custodianship in terms of both making sure that there is a decent amount of pegging of the value (fractional reserve risks) while at the same time allowing for some expanding usage of bitcoin, even if some of those coins may well be being held on third parties and tokens are being exchanged that might not always be completely backed up by bitcoin.. so yes.. there seems to be some tensions in the various ways that people put bitcoin into practice, even if they may well be trying to ensure that normies are able to take self custody and that the bitcoin's that third parties claim to have are actually there.. and I doubt that we can completely get rid of some of the fractional reserve matters - even if there might be aspirations towards getting into circular economies - since we likely realize that people/institutions with excess wealth also like to put their money to work and sometimes might well want to earn money on the bitcoin that they hold... which can end up devolving into problems in which the coins are not there (or the same coins had been lent out twice - or even 100 times).


Of course, when free money is given out, there are a variety of ways in which there can be screw ups, and you would imagine that there are goals for the government to want to be able to verify that ONLY eligible people are getting the $30 and that they are also not getting it more than once, and yeah, it seems that whatever system that El Salvador put into place for their $30 promotion (to try to get El Salvadoreans to try out the Chivo wallet) did not end up working out very well.

I have to agree with you in some part that the El Salvadorian's experience with the Chivo wallet was worse than the worst since the $30 airdrop from the government never actually get fully to the citizens due to network congestion and unavailability during that period and beyond, and even as the time goes on the President discovered that he had a bad shot at the Chivo wallet and quickly suit for better alternative and solution instead of adopting bitcoin network in full but then this is government and there control tendency.

Nothing has failed in the El Salvador Bitcoin experiments and the only thing that has failed is the chivo wallet which make led to huge losses on the side of the government since the airdrop process was manipulated giving citizens a bitter test of the Bitcoin experience by choosing the wrong network.

But what should you do other than implementing of lighting network in order to move the whole country on bitcoin ecosystem? Traditional bitcoin transactions aren't fast, mempool gets clogged very often and sometimes fees are getting tremendously high. I don't think anyone will find it normal to pay $10 in fees for $5 taxi ride. In taxi, supermarkets and stores you need instant payments, LN gives that possibility.
What El Salvador wants and says is easier said than done, it's not that simple to massively accept bitcoin payments in real life.

2 years ago Salvador & Bitcoin Mining



Now Salvador's president Nayib Bukele investing more than $1 billion into bitcoin mining.

Source: https://twitter.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1666771111286120449?s=19

the problem with el salvador in 2021. is when they legalised bitcoin.. they consulted with an idiot who was not promoting bitcoin but promoting another network pretending it was bitcoin..
yep the owner of "strike" was promoting that el salvador should not use bitcoin network but instead his software gateway into LN.
and so el salvador did trial this, to use LN as the payment routing. promising citizens bitcoin but giving them LN msats..
within 3 months el salvador experienced the flaws of LN in regards to liquidity issues of payment amount limits(it didnt 100% process payments successes above $100).. also when trying to close channels to get thier "free $30" of value. they hit the other LN problem of the channel owners not wanting to close the channels of the customers.

thus el salvadorians gave up using the chivo wallet that was using LN as the payment rail..

el salavador by january 2022 swapped out the LN function and instead relied on a CEX as a bank manager of custodian value. but it was too late the citizens already had a bad experience and so the damage was done

all because el salvador was told LN was bitcoin. even though the 2 networks are very very different

There is a big difference between Bitcoin and shitcoin and shouldn't be used interchangeably and both terms should be clearly differentiated, but many members have misunderstood this fact and ended up. Making that mistakes each time their make comments, and also shutcoinairs have constantly and consciously used the term crypto to mean and promote the coins in the same category as bitcoin which is something we constantly discredit in our various discussions as related to Bitcoin or the entire cryptocurrency.

But when it comes to El Salvador's Bitcoin adoption, the discussion there is no way we gonna accept the term crypto to be used in our discussions since El Salvador was specific in their approach to the adoption of Bitcoin and no other coin so shitcoinair can gain any place in this discussion and we must consciously and our words while having this discussion.

We are visiting Complejo Educativo Teotepeque. This upcoming friday, we are going to teach the  #ABC of #Bitcoin    and talk about  opportunities for the future’
Dm us and join us 🙏🚀🎉🇸🇻
@Bitcoinbeach @Btcforevery1



https://twitter.com/romanmartinezc/status/1666493050950934542?t=95V9BDfHiGiw4JW5MvJzrA&s=19

The word crypto is a vague word that can be misused by many shitcoin promoters. They hid under the word crypto to promote their scam projects while telling unsuspecting clients that their coin and bitcoin are in the same category. So many people in my country assume that there are no differences between Bitcoin and other coins because they have been deceived that all of them are the same. This is why I always support it when people argue that the name of the coins should be mentioned because hiding under the term crypto can be abused and misused.


Central African Republic couldn't withstand the pressures from some anti-Bitcoin forces so they had to throw in the towel. It will take bravery and willpower to pursue a policy that is designed to break the hold of some economic imperialist because these forces will do everything possible to frustrate this positive move. These power will use every weapon at their disposal such as threats like sanctions, restrictions to access loans and even canceling of grants or aids.

It is natural that most of the people will oppose you when you take any religious initiative. They will not only oppose your opinion but will do whatever is necessary to prevent your action from being implemented. This is also the case with Nayib Bukele. Before accepting Bitcoin as their country's currency, many people opposed this decision but President Nayib Bukele did not stop, he remained steadfast in his decision and accepted Bitcoin as their country's currency. He did not stop at recognizing Bitcoin as the currency of his country, he is slowly implementing all the steps related to Bitcoin. Those who opposed his implementation of this move are now praising his work.

Everything needs a process and proof with real work. Yes. This extraordinary journey serves as a compelling example for countries around the world, illustrating the potential of digital currencies to revolutionize economies and redefine societal norms.

El Salvador's transformation from a Bitcoin skeptic to the world's first Bitcoin City is a testament to the power of visionary leadership and a strategic approach to change. It can be seen that the president's unwavering dedication to educating, empowering, and incentivizing the population has succeeded in destroying the original reservation, allowing Bitcoin to take center stage in El Salvador's economic landscape.

When the president of El Salvador first discussed Bitcoin legal tender, over 80% of the people of El Salvador opposed the president. But later when the President of Salvador started to take various important steps on Bitcoin, the people slowly started trusting Bitcoin and now 80% of people in Salvador accept Bitcoin as a legalized currency. And the world called El Salvador the world's first Bitcoin City.

FUN FACT: Miss El Salvador wore a #Bitcoin outfit to Miss Universe 2023 🇸🇻



https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1666466125389897730?t=8MedLP0LjPFAyI65yC13Vw&s=19

El Salvador has shown real work by demonstrating the innovative policies adopted by the government and their efforts to encourage the adoption of blockchain technology with a focus on bitcoin. I think what @JayJuanGee outlined earlier makes a lot of sense, meaning In this way, we can see a clearer picture of the steps being taken in El Salvador and their impact on the acceptance and use of bitcoin as legal tender.

Unfortunately the way of the world Bitcoin adoption is not going to be easy. The Central African Republic first made Bitcoin a legal tender and then revoke recognition in a year. And that's one of the reasons why we are so interested in the success of El Salvador on its Bitcoin way. If they will steadily and sequentially show positive results of Bitcoin adoption then some other countries will become more bitcoin friendly to get their parts of a Bitcoin pie. Majority of us are nor Salvadorians but we sincerely happy for them when we see any good news from their country these days.

The situation is the same in my nation. Bitcoin is not recognized as legal tender, few people believe in it, and those who do adopt it do so discreetly. They are unable to use bitcoin openly due to the law prohibiting it, even when conducting transactions. When paying for bitcoin purchases, you do not need to disclose to your bank that the payment is related to bitcoin or cryptocurrency. if you do, the bank will freeze all of your funds, the government will get involved, and the offender will be penalized.

Police officers even go so far as to inspect people's phones, usually those of young people, to check for cryptocurrency-related apps like Binance, Trust Wallet, KuCoin, etc. Anyone caught with such apps will face punishment. Being a bitcoiner in my country comes with a significant amount of risk, but we do it out of love for Bitcoin and with the hopes that one day it will be legal in my country, like it is in places like El Salvador.