Bitcoin law has been met with skepticism and worry by essentially every financial institution on the planet, starting with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Bitcoin’s volatility, exemplified by its plunge to about $30,000 this week, after grazing $65,000 in April, has been lambasted as a recipe for financial disaster. Citizens will be allowed to pay taxes in a currency that might depreciate in hours, suddenly draining the government’s coffers
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).
I think it is a good initiative that Nayib Bukele has taken, but I also think that maybe it has been a bit hasty. The population (most, not all) of El Salvador is not informed or educated about Bitcoin and blockchain, and that should have been the first thing the president should have thought of. My opinion on the Bitcoin Law is positive, but I think El Salvador still has months ahead for this test.
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).
I checked some of the news portals to know what is now the mood in El Salvador and they are flooded with anti-Bitcoin articles. It is not surprising, since Bitcoin is now officially a competitor to the US Dollar in that country. There have been a few protests from people with vested interests, but I don't think that we need to give much importance to them. These protests will gradually subside as the exchange prices rise. Anyway no one really expects that everything will be very smooth. The road ahead will be full of obstacles.
That's one thing regarding the bad news articles, but they also conducted some surveys among El Salvador citizens. Many of them don't even know what it means or what it is supposed to be useful for to make Bitcoin legal tender, but here is the thing: change will always meet resistance. We have seen that with Bitcoin right from the start. People need time to understand their options and how it could help them or maybe not help them. How should you have an informed opinion about something that you don't understand?
If you have no idea about something, you don't need to say so in every post. The forum is full of information with which you can learn from the things we talk about, the network also has a lot of information. Learn the basics about blockchain and cryptocurrencies so that you understand things better. All the information is available to everyone, take advantage of it.
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.
That's one thing regarding the bad news articles, but they also conducted some surveys among El Salvador citizens. Many of them don't even know what it means or what it is supposed to be useful for to make Bitcoin legal tender, but here is the thing: change will always meet resistance. We have seen that with Bitcoin right from the start. People need time to understand their options and how it could help them or maybe not help them. How should you have an informed opinion about something that you don't understand?
I don't trust these opinion polls. The numbers can change a lot, depending on the language that you use. For example, you can ask a question like this -
1. Do you support the recent move by the El Salvador government to make Bitcoin as the legal tender? This would mean that each and every business has an obligation to accept Bitcoin, which is a very volatile currency that can swing up or down by as much as 30% in a day.
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.
The same question can be asked in a different language, like this:
2. Do you support making Bitcoin the legal tender in El Salvador along with the US Dollar? Do you support giving the merchants an additional payment option in the form of Bitcoin?
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.
Now if you ask the first question, then the vast majority would answer NO. But the response would change, if you ask the second question. And the media channels which conduct the poll will never tell you about this. They will never provide the full questionnaire in their article.
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.
