Even though the IMF loan restricts El Salvador from accepting tax payments in bitcoin, there still is the dynamic in El Salvador, as far as I remember, that transacting in bitcoin does not create any taxable event in El Salvador, such as a capital gains tax.
I must agree with you on this. IMF cannot stop the country from using Bitcoin by lending. El Salvador is an independent country and they have the power to take any decision regarding financial and technological matters from their independent country. Maybe the IMF can temporarily create pressure, but they cannot intervene in what they like.
You seem to be saying something different from what I was saying, since I was mere attempting to highlight that from my recollection El Salvador does not have capital gains on bitcoin transactions, so that creates a positive dynamic in El Salvador for anyone wanting to transact in El Salvador in bitcoin.
You seem to be going another step further, which I surely think that you are making an inaccurate statement when you are proclaiming that the IMF cannot intervene in a sovereign country. For many years, one of the main practices of the IMF is to both intervene in various countries and to create exploitative conditions through their loans.
This case is no different, and I am not even proclaiming that the situation is correct, but the fact of the matter is that the IMF can describe loan conditions, and El Salvador can choose to take the loan or not to take the loan, and so if El Salvador accepts unjust loan conditions, they may or may not be able to get out of those loan conditions. The IMF can also have a more strict reading of the loan conditions than El Salvador, so they might even end up having a dispute over a difference of interpretation of what the loan conditions are...and whether the IMF can do what they do or not, they still might attempt to be overly bearing on El Salvador in order to get El Salvador to comply with the IMF's interpretation of the loan conditions, while at the same time interferring with a sovereign nations rights and abilities to govern itself.
There was various international pressures before allowing the use of Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021, and El Salvador is moving forward, ignoring that pressure and this will continue in the future. El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele is still standing by his policy, they are adamant about accepting and using Bitcoin.
You may or may not be correct with your prediction of what El Salvador will do, whether they will not cave in and whether they will be successful in their abilities to continue to promote bitcoin and to buy bitcoin with funds that might be interpreted to have had been part of the loan that they received from the IMF.
El Salvador has already caved in in regards to a few aspect of their legal tender law that seems to go beyond mere symbolisms, at least from my understanding of the situation.
The most significant thing is that the country is in a stronger position to use Bitcoin. They are thinking long-term about Bitcoin. Even if the IMF refuses to lend them money, that's fine.
How do you know that it is fine if the IMF chooses not to loan El Salvador additional money? For some reason, El Salvador just recently entered into an agreement with the IMF which seems to imply that El Salvador was not in a position to get similar kinds of loans from some other place without having to agree to stifle various aspects of bitcoin adoption in their country, whether that stifling was merely symbolic or actually substantive. I get the sense that the stifling of bitcoin in El Salvador through the IMF loan terms was more than merely symbolic, and surely I hope that I am wrong and bitcoin adoption and/or promotion continues to go on with little to no stifling based on IMF intervention attempts.
There are many rich countries in the world that can lend them money without discouraging them from using Bitcoin. El Salvador and its people are not left behind, but they are dreaming of a better future with Bitcoin.
No rich countries, nor rich bitcoiners had ended up lending El Salvador money, so that seems to be part of the reason that El Salvador entered into new loans with the IMF and apparently agreed to placing additional conditions on their bitcoin adoption and/or promotion.
Even though the IMF loan restricts El Salvador from accepting tax payments in bitcoin, there still is the dynamic in El Salvador, as far as I remember, that transacting in bitcoin does not create any taxable event in El Salvador, such as a capital gains tax.
A decentralized economy cannot be taxed,
I am not sure if I understand what you are saying. Each country chooses how to treat bitcoin and other crypto currencies in regards to taxes, and so far, it seems that El Salvador had announced that transacting in bitcoin was not going to be a taxable event. They could have had chosen some other policy, but so far no taxes on bitcoin transactions seems to be current status of the country.
because they are not regulated under the government authority and this was part of the major reasons that sparks the aggressive reaction and warning from IMF to El-Salvador then, because they know that this bitcoin network will not permit for all these, now the questions is, are this our leaders actually working towards the interest of the people or their own selfish interest at the expense of the people when giving ideas like this.
Enforcing various kinds of taxes on bitcoin is a different story, so I agree with you that there may well be challenges regarding enforcing bitcoin related tax laws, but it does not mean that governments will not continue to try to tax bitcoin transactions or even bitcoin ownership in various ways.
But i also appreciates the confidence in the President, Nayib Bukele for not given up on what was ahead of him as a challenge for adopting bitcoin as legal tender.
So far, he seems to have back tracked a bit on the legal tender matter.. .hopefully, the backtracking does not continue. I personally think it would be better if El Salvador were to say that they are going to resume allowing people to pay their taxes in bitcoin and perhaps continue to have some requirements that businesses (especially relatively larger ones) make sure that they can accept bitcoin for anyone who would like to pay in bitcoin. I don't think that is such a BIG deal to have those kinds of requirement (even if they might not be heavily enforced), since it seems to make it more difficult to proclaim that bitcoin is legal tender in El Salvador when neither the government is accepting it for tax payments and/or businesses are also not required to be able to accept it.
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It's a never-ending struggle between the interests of the people and the interests of centralized institutions.
And we know for sure which one comes on top, usually.. If it's about government-related cases, that is.
I think that in the case of El Salvador, they seemed to have had been putting more and more systems in place to make it easier for people in the country to transact in bitcoin, yet it seems that the IMF does not like that kind of people empowerment.. so the IMF already has a track record of trying to control various governments, and it would be hard to argue that IMF policies are people-friendly, so it seems pretty strange for you to be juxtaposing a dichotomy between the government and the people since some rules/laws are more people-friendly than other rules/laws.
As a bitcoin enthusiast, I'm happy to hear that a country is considering Bitcoin as legal tender, which is a big deal. However, what surprised me more was that 70% of people do not have a bank account, which indicates that they are either extremely poor or do not make enough money to open one or make any trades to open one. In that case, what benefit would legalizing Bitcoin have? Let them permit it, and we'll observe how many El Salvadorians have adopted Bitcoin and whether its use will rise only as a result of official pressure.
You and your post seems to be quite out of touch with actual happenings in regards to El Salvador's bitcoin legal tender law.
As you can see from OP, in around June 7, 2021, El Salvador announced that they were considering bitcoin as legal tender in their country, and so a law was passed in which bitcoin became legal tender in El Salvador on about September 7, 2021 (90 days after the legislation passed). So it has been about 3.5 years that bitcoin has been legal tender in El Salvador.
