Should El Salvador Fork Bitcoin?

[Hydrogen]

What you proposed is a country spending money on subsidizing miners in the same country and then having them sell these coins to investors who would buy it... because ...why? Why would outside investors buy Salvador Bitcoin and not Bitcoin or Ghana Bitcoin or 600 West Third Street Mansfield issued by the Mansfield council in Ohio?

And if wood was a good investment, it would have been so without any token, right? So, there was no need for named token in the first place.
Second, you might want to check those prices again, lumber is taking a tumble and firewood will soon follow once things settle down and all the fear about freezing finally becomes what it was supposed to be, a debunked myth.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/lumber-prices-hit-lowest-level-since-2020-housing-market-slows-2022-12
https://www.investing.com/commodities/lumber

If you would have bought lumber in 1993, you would now have a loss, a 30 years asset that is in red hardly sounds "outperforming", what you're looking for is more speculation or, since we're talking about crypto, pump and dump behavior.

#1.  Lumber and firewood are two completely different things. Many types of lumber contain arsenic based poisons intended to kill termites. These types of lumber cannot be burned as firewood without exposing people to arsenic fumes that could be harmful to their health. In that sense it is inaccurate to use the terms lumber and firewood interchangeably. The market value and price trends of lumber and firewood are also completely different due to these reasons.

#2.  Why would outside investors buy an el salvador based fork of bitcoin, rather than bitcoin itself? Do you really want me to answer that? Ok.

Look at current market trends for gold and silver. Central banks owning the vast majority of good and silver in the world, make it easy for them to set prices off of their high holdings and liquidity.

The same precedent applies to bitcoin. Hedge funds and large institutional speculators currently hold the majority of bitcoins and liquidity, also making it easy for them to set market prices.

If el salvador forked their own distribution of bitcoin and blocked wallstreet and hedge funds from owning a large majority of coins to influence market prices. Then perhaps you might see the potential for price trends being more reliable and stable in contrast to bitcoin's recent price history.

In short, one motive behind forking bitcoin would be to eliminate price interference caused by large speculators and institutional investors.

In practice, this could be impossible. Wallstreet and big institutional investors are the most catered to demographic in all financial and investment assets. But in terms of long term price stability, it could be necessary to avoiding some of the negative trends we have seen in recent times.

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[stompix]

#1.  Lumber and firewood are two completely different things. Many forms of lumber contain arsenic based poisons intended to kill termites. These types of lumber cannot be burned as firewood without exposing people to arsenic fumes that could be harmful to their health. In that sense it is inaccurate to use the terms lumber and firewood interchangeably. The market value and price trends of lumber and firewood are also completely different due to these reasons.

So are gasoline and diesel but you can see that since they derive from the same thing, oil, and in our case trees the less demand from one would trigger enough cheap oversupply for the other, all companies that deal with that would either have to fire their staff or try to refocus their activities, supply and demand, the trees are still there, the demand for lumber is not, what are you going to do?

Look at current market trends for gold and silver. Central banks owning the vast majority of good and silver in the world, maing it easy for them to set prices due to their high holdings and liquidity.
The same precedent applies to bitcoin. Hedge funds and large institutional speculators current hold the majority of bitcoins and liquidity, also making it easy for them to set market prices.

No, they do not.
The Central Bank of Russia can't freeze my gold, it can't print 100 billion tons if it wants, and can't shut down the gold trade.
See the differences between a nationally controlled currency and an internationally traded asset?

If el salvador forked their own distribution of bitcoin and blocked it so that wallstreet and hedge funds could not conceivably own a large majority of coins to influence market prices. Then perhaps you might see the potential for price trends being different in contrast to bitcoin's current price history.

What would stop people in Salvador from selling their coins to these infamous Wallstreet investors?
Or do you want to put a limit to the number of coins each one is allowed to sell and to the persons he is allowed to do so?
Oh wait, but just above we were talking about incentivizing investors to buy SalvadorCoin and now we talk about restricting them, common, Hydrogen, you can do better! 

In short, one motive behind forking bitcoin would be to eliminate price interference caused by large speculators and institutional investors.
In practice, this could be impossible.

Finally!

[franky1]

having a currency of their own domestically within their own borders has some local advantages of controlling their currency via their own rules which their merchants inside the country follow. it allows for things like price control.

however putting up a border wall not allowing cross currency transfer has its own disadvantages.

as for why other forks/altnets fail

its simple. they are just copies trying to offer the same services the first/main currency already offers.

BCH fails because exchanges and merchants prefer and enjoy bitcoin better and thus more people use bitcoin. thus no need for BCH to shadow bitcoin.

as for ETH, it wanted to be a network offering something completely different. but looking at how its price chart shadow traces bitcoins price wiggles(lower price bracket, but same wiggle path). it shows it doesnt really have much independent use for its own separate market demand/price discovery of a different sentimentality of differnt users.

in short its price is being held up to speculative high amounts compared to its underlying value due to bitcoin trading or arbitrage giving it a premium it does not deserve. ether changed to POS which reduced its value of acquiring coin down by 20x and so the price should have followed ethereum down. but it didnt because there is not much independent ethereum utility of its own price discovery sentiment from its own independent userbase

when altcoins dont have their own independent markets offer enough independent niche services to have its own price discovery market of differing price wiggles. the altcoin is becoming pointless need for users.

..
if el salvador needed its own independent market away from international markets . then they could fork their own "ready-to-run" CBDC but that would depend on how much their domestic userbase would use/need it

so far el salvador see the benefits of wanting to be part of international trade, but not via fiat. so staying with the international bitcoin network has all the advantages, without needing to cut all ties from international influence

[NotATether]

• El Salvador forked pre taproot bitcoin and adopted it as its native digital currency
• Limited mining of their forked alt to IP addresses in El Salvador, to guarantee 51% attacks could not be made from outside territories
• Offered incentives on mining equipment and electricity to allow citizens in the country to experience the early golden years of low difficulty bitcoin mining
• Offered incentives on crypto wallet supporting smartphones and the infrastructure necessary for businesses and consumers to use the forked crypto exclusively
• Implemented caps on outside speculators such as large hedge funds from accumulating a significant portion of the forked alt, while allowing foreign small parties to buy and sell freely

Mighty ambitions, but that's never going to work. For one thing, the IMF and world bank have already isolated El Salvador for investing in Bitcoin in the first place. Why should they isolate themselves from the bitcoin community as well? They would become like Venezuela then.

We're the only air support they got.

[franky1]

Mighty ambitions, but that's never going to work. For one thing, the IMF and world bank have already isolated El Salvador for investing in Bitcoin in the first place. Why should they isolate themselves from the bitcoin community as well? They would become like Venezuela then.

We're the only air support they got.

many countries put in some amount of value into the IMF to use as credit for loans to other countries. where by the IMF cut El salv out of the ability to get loans from IMF bank. however El salv has and does just ask for loans directly from counties, thus by passing the IMF

so not much love lost it also helps because el salv can then negotiation better deals with countries direct. and have less sanctions to obide by too

being dropped by the IMF turns out to be a good thing
el salv can instead of asking for $100m at a 2.8% rate from the IMF
with IMF mandatory repayment rules and penalties.

el salv can ask for $10m form 10 countries and trade goods/produce at a $10m per country rate of wholesale for that loan depending on what goods that country needs, where the country can the sell those goods for more then 2.8% and make even more money. meaning better for everyone

[The Cryptovator]

I'm curious why you suddenly believe El Salvador needs to fork Bitcoin. I don't believe they need to fork Bitcoin because they fully support it and accept it as legal tender. If they require native cryptocurrency, they can create a new one without forking. How many Bitcoin forks have gained popularity? I do not see much there. If they don't like Bitcoin, they will fork it. Otherwise, it's unnecessary to me.

[Leviathan.007]

El Salvador unnecessarily forking an already fully functional blockchain aside — if any country would want a cryptocurrency, they're a lot more incentivized to fork something like USDT/USDC — which are stablecoins with "freeze"[1] functionalities.

Bitcoin is an open source project and available for anyone in the world regardless of what they know about bitcoin and if they own any bitcoin or not, since it's open source anyone can fork the project and commit some changes to the project and then push it on the project he forked for the original repository of GitHub, but there is no reason for people to use this new forked bitcoin, even if the government of El Salvador for the project and start doing some changes there is no reason to see other people in the world will use that project.

[dansus021]

Your idea actually can be very good, but the real idea of forking bitcoin is not really good.

THe best way to the country right know is creating some sort of Central Bank Digital Currency of making their own stable digital coin so they have control and keep decentralized in some way. Like USDC or USDT

[Despairo]

THe best way to the country right know is creating some sort of Central Bank Digital Currency of making their own stable digital coin so they have control and keep decentralized in some way. Like USDC or USDT

When you have mention the coin is central and then said it's decentralized, you're just confuse anyone here. When it's created and controlled by single entity, it's centralized and there's no way it can be decentralized. USDC and USDT are centralized scam stable coins since they're not pegged with 100% of real USD. The only trusted decentralized stabnle coin that have a good volume is only DAI right now.

[pooya87]

Your idea actually can be very good, but the real idea of forking bitcoin is not really good.

THe best way to the country right know is creating some sort of Central Bank Digital Currency of making their own stable digital coin so they have control and keep decentralized in some way. Like USDC or USDT

All central banks of almost all countries (except a handful like El Salvador that don't have their own national currency) are already doing that when they print their local fiat (eg. FED printing USD, UK printing Pound, Russia printing Ruble, etc.). Creating a new currency like CBDC is not a good idea at all unless they have a real plan otherwise it will fail like how Venezuela CBDC failed.

The best way is actually to adopt bitcoin and start some sort of regulatory body that eases bitcoin adoption in the country instead of slowing it down or pushing it underground.

[yhiaali3]

I don't think this will work because in the first place you will get a new coin different from bitcoin as a result of the fork such as bitcoin cash, bitcoin gold or other forks.
People simply did not accept these coins generated from these forks as the original Bitcoin.

So El Salvador can succeed in creating its own Bitcoin but I don't think it will be accepted globally, it will only be accepted within El Salvador.

Also, if other countries accepted Bitcoin and then each created its own fork, what would we get? We will get several more worthless coins.
This is not what everyone wants, we want to reach a state where the original Bitcoin (as created by Satoshi) is accepted globally as the main method of payment.

[dansus021]

When you have mention the coin is central and then said it's decentralized, you're just confuse anyone here. When it's created and controlled by single entity, it's centralized and there's no way it can be decentralized. USDC and USDT are centralized scam stable coins since they're not pegged with 100% of real USD. The only trusted decentralized stabnle coin that have a good volume is only DAI right now.

my friend i said centralized because the government can print the money via contract just like usdt or usdc that have control of their stable coin in other way decentralized is they need to deploy in publick blockchain so anyone can really know what happen who is burning who is minting the token.

They way you said DAI seems the best and usdt and usdc seems scam, but do you understand that dai is backed by two of what you are saying scam  



Here you read the article https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-looking-to-acquire-1-6b-of-makerdaos-usdc

 "MakerDAO is the largest single USDC holder.

The stablecoin makes up 35% of dai’s collateral, roughly $4.8 billion. "