El Salvador’s Embrace of Bitcoin Didn’t Bring Prosperity — It Rode in With...theintercept.com/2022/07/22/bitcoin-crypto-el-salvador-nayib-bukele/
230 sats \ 22 comments \ @keeftronics 24 Jul 2022 bitcoin
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195 sats \ 1 reply \ @om 24 Jul 2022
Of course it didn't bring prosperity YET because El Salvador rode bitcoin from 40K to 20K. But 1 year is an extremely short timeframe for grading such a decision.
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16 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryptocoin 24 Jul 2022
And I don't remember seeing Bukele (or anyone) say bitcoin would bring prosperity to El Salvador within a year.
But the authors (and the publication in which their piece appears) are trying to paint Bukele as negatively as they can as in two years there is an election, and Bukele currently has an incredible level of support yet. So they list everything they can to help take Bukele down a couple notches.
Even so, they had to share some bright spots.
Garcia is used to pushing a cart through the sunshine, lugging around supplies, selling sweet ice treats to locals and tourists, including Bitcoiners, some of whom are buying up property in the area.
Bitcoiners are buying property in El Salvador? That sounds like economic activity that came a result of the adoption of bitcoin.
No one we queried thought that El Salvador, a country about the size of New Jersey, needed another airport, except perhaps as a place to bring in private jets of crypto elites or anyone else favored by the regime.
I've got no opinion one way or the other on the economic viability of the airport, but did the article mention that the airport is also to (eventually) accommodate a military base? They did mention that the area is currently used heavily by narcos for cocaine shipments. Using eminent domain for expansion of military footprint is something the left almost never chastises.
Airport of the Pacific https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airport_of_the_Pacific
Remittances accounts for as much as one-quarter of the country’s economy. Less than 2 percent of remittances sent to El Salvador now use bitcoin.
The article given as the source for that 2% number says the figure comes from the "Central Reserve Bank (BCR)" showing that $96.3 million entered the country via “digital cryptocurrency wallets". Presumably, that means through Chivo -- the only bitcoin remittance method operating there, I believe. Unless BCR also has visibility into Strike accounts. But that $100M is actually a win. That's $100M that didn't go through Moneygram, Western Union, or whatever other banking-related remittance methods are used there.
The authors do not even acknowledge how bitcoin remittances can be sent person-to-person and thus there's no way to know how much bitcoin has been received from outside the country, how much of that is converted to cash via P2P trading, how much of that is spent at local merchants, etc.
So that 2% number is really just the lower-bound.
Now if the question is instead "Is bitcoin helping in El Salvador?", I think the answer can only be: "it's too early to tell to what degree, but there's certainly reasons to remain hopeful it is helping."
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123 sats \ 3 replies \ @keeftronics OP 24 Jul 2022 freebie
Take this article with a grain of salt as it comes from a left-leaning publication, interesting nonetheless. They link to another article saying only 2% of remittances are coming in via BTC.
"Despite a reported $425 million spent by the Salvadoran government, the bitcoin project has not gone according to plan: After a botched rollout, bitcoin adoption is exceedingly low. The vast majority of merchants prefer cash, not only because it’s easier to make transactions, but also because many of them don’t understand how cryptocurrency functions, the bitcoin point-of-sale systems don’t always work, or they have no internet access."
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151 sats \ 0 replies \ @sb 24 Jul 2022
Thanks for sharing! It's good for us to be intellectually honest. I was stunned that El Salvador made the move in 2021. I wasn't really expecting a nation state to get involved until later this decade. We need to build tools and educate faster, especially in the Spanish language. We've gotten started on the wrong foot, but I guess we had to start somewhere?
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @notgeld 24 Jul 2022
It went from 0 to 2% and the big question is how they count it.
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5 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryptocoin 24 Jul 2022
The article given as the source for that 2% number says the figure comes from the "Central Reserve Bank (BCR)" showing that $96.3 million entered the country via “digital cryptocurrency wallets". Presumably, that means through Chivo -- the only bitcoin remittance method operating there, I believe. Unless BCR also has visibility into Strike accounts.
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130 sats \ 5 replies \ @faithandcredit 24 Jul 2022
Cbdcs will have the same problems if not worse. I think el selvador deserves credit for pioneering this move to digital currency with bitcoin which is the best digitil currency rn.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @sb 24 Jul 2022
Yes, it definitely deserves credit. But saying that "the other thing" will be worse is a form a political whataboutism that does not help the current issue at hand. CBDCs are going to be evil, malicious and tyrannical - no doubt about it. That should serve as motivation for all of us to help El Salvador succeed with Bitcoin adoption. It appears that it's not gotten off to the smoothest of starts.
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @faithandcredit 24 Jul 2022
China also tried to roll out the e-yuan but ppl just didn't want to use it. They were happy with cash and whattsapp I believe.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @KingZing 24 Jul 2022
E-yuan adoption probably dont mean much since every chinese use wechat pay or alipay for everything. They are more cashless than anywhere else
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20 sats \ 1 reply \ @faithandcredit 24 Jul 2022
Thanks it was wechat pay I was thinking of. Imagine if wechat pay adopted btc.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @sb 24 Jul 2022
The CCP exercises massive authority over the Chinese tech companies. I would be absolutely stunned if they allowed WeChat to integrate Bitcoin or Lightning.
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30 sats \ 1 reply \ @selfish_gene 24 Jul 2022
это пилотный проект... эксперемент выявляет плюсы и минусы. так что любой результат это уже опыт которого нет в других странах...
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @south_korea_ln 24 Jul 2022
this is a pilot project ... experiment reveals the pros and cons. so any result is already an experience that is not in other countries ...
True. A con is that this was a project coming from the top-up. IMHO, grassroots projects might have a better chance of succeeding...
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryptocoin 24 Jul 2022
Here's a link to an archive of the article. An archive has no paywall, no subscription requirement, and can be easier to read:
El Salvador’s Embrace of Bitcoin Didn’t Bring Prosperity — It Rode in With Waves of Repression https://archive.ph/AMsKN
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @1sats 25 Jul 2022
El Salvador has a brain drain problem. By adopting bitcoin, it brings new talents to El Salvador.
Will it bring prosperity to the country? We don't know. But it is better than donothing
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @takaponka 25 Jul 2022
Chivo is total garbage and don't solve anything. It's just an IOU and they were not honest with it. The "legalisation" of bitcoin by a state doesn't matter imo, it just needs to be used and we need no permission. Sure it makes talk, and the IMF is not happy about it because of it.
The state giveaway was scammy, 99% of the population use the 30$ by dollars for dollars. Education is key.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @02174b3c39_lntxbot 24 Jul 2022
What do you expect from a 🐷but a grunt. The Intercept, where Glenn Greenwald doesn't work anymore, joins the trample lead by NYT, it which any failure by Bitcoin to achieve some "set up to fail" goal, impugns the entire protocol.
JOIN THE INTERCEPT WE'RE INDEPENDENT OF CORPORATE INTERESTS-AND POWERED BY MEMBERS. JOIN US.
Yeah, right.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryptocoin 24 Jul 2022
There are a lot of good comments in this related post from earlier this month:
Are Bitcoiners too uncritical of El Salvador and Nayib Bukele??? #41563
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 24 Jul 2022
I got a pay-with-your-email-wall, but it doesn't show up on the onion address: https://27m3p2uv7igmj6kvd4ql3cct5h3sdwrsajovkkndeufumzyfhlfev4qd.onion/2022/07/22/bitcoin-crypto-el-salvador-nayib-bukele/
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150 sats \ 0 replies \ @DeezSats 24 Jul 2022
12ft.io
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SaToSHiWoMaN 4 Mar outlawed
stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.