Agree, except that the LN network works very well. It's Chivo that is buggy and causes people to mistakenly think bitcoin is broken. Blink, on the other hand, as well as most good LN-capable wallets, works pretty much perfectly.

Moved there a year and a half ago, spending time between the beach (mostly El Zonte), the mountains and the city (San Salvador).

Bitcoin is often seen as marginal or a flop, and something mostly used by foreigners, by many. And yet, depending on where you are in the country and/or if you put in some effort, it's possible to use bitcoin for almost everything. Including buying land, building a house, renting and buying surfboards, renting or buying cars, motorcycles and related accessories/gear, food/restaurants/drinks, etc. Even for paying rent if you find the right owner.

The bear market of 2022 hurt adoption. With the price action since Nov 2022 to now in early 2024, things are slowly improving again. Price and profit is how most people first become interested. It's becoming -- occasionally, but more frequently -- easy to onboard businesses. Often new places I want to shop at, that haven't yet accepted bitcoin, begin to do so with my help: they install Blink on their phone and are quickly good to go. A few weeks later, some then ask how to start with cold storage. It does take some time, but can be worth it. Even in places where no one seems to use bitcoin, scenic restaurants in the mountains for instance, I've onboarded some places (and made friends there). It's possible.

I unintentionally moved there a little more than a year ago. Went for Adopting Bitcoin, then prolonged for six weeks, and found it so compelling that I ended up more or less staying. Didn't do the tourist stuff, just working remotely and surfing. There is a very high degree of soft freedom in the areas that matter to me. It's very safe in the places I've been. The visa-free tourist stay of 180 days is flexible and really handy. The police have never hassled me and have been friendly and warm, like almost all of the people. The weather is great, particularly to escape winter in the Northern Hemisphere. Most of all, you can live entirely using bitcoin, including for buying property/real estate (and ES has no property taxes), the waves for surfers are world-class, and the mountain roads and scenery are amazing, especially on a motorcycle. When I went home (to Europe), I found myself back in ES after a month. It's not perfect by any means, but it works for me. We'll see where it goes.

"I'm not sure what I think about the forced acceptance of Bitcoin."

In practice, people and businesses in El Salvador freely choose whether or not to accept bitcoin. The country essentially just encourages and makes bitcoin use possible.

After more than a year of basically using only bitcoin there, it's very compelling to be able to do that, and I don't have any desire to return to using fiat.

There are quite a few bitcoin circular economies developing around the world now. One can visit and maybe move to these and help move adoption forward. Or one can start a new one at home.

In these places, there is less or no need to "cash out" -- it's feasible to live mostly, or completely, using bitcoin. Sometimes that means in part building a microeconomy around you for things that you need. For many, this begins to really make sense when they earn in bitcoin rather than fiat.

The future is now.

France has often had higher official unemployment than that. IIRC a few years ago the government also changed the criteria for unemployment stats to make it look lower than it was.

Bitcoin Core peer connection unit tests and bug fixes.

This is very sad.

I remember when we met at the Chaincode Labs Summer Residency in June 2019.

Bitcoin needs independent-thinking developers and vulnerability researchers like you -- even if, and perhaps particularly if, they are from different cultures and languages.

Yes, and the same seems true for many bitcoiners as well.

My humble opinion is that if you're in the west and value your freedom, consider getting out while it's easier to do so, or still possible. Or at least develop an option or two away from the US/UK/EU/AUS/NZ.

Particularly since 2020, the writing has been on the wall.

In countries in the global south (El Salvador, for example, for bitcoiners), a common denominator among all the foreigners moving there is that it is an exodus from the decline.

An escape, an opting out, from a home country/system/empire where things are heading in the wrong direction, to a less-developed, often smaller country where things aren't perfect, but are going in a more positive direction, and where these emigrants from the west have more freedom, particularly soft freedom. And this makes all the difference.

Vasil Dimov did an excellent review of it! One of the best <3

Working on hopefully adding test coverage for a half dozen bug fixes in the Bitcoin Core peer connection code, that I've proposed here:

Anyone interested to review or test is very welcome.

Last 3 transactions today were for breakfast, then lunch at another place, and a double espresso at a third place.

Last week made a small down payment for real estate with bitcoin. The upcoming payments will be in bitcoin as well.

No. In ES.

Almost bought land using bitcoin this week. But I'm holding off for now.

I use it for almost everything since living in a (work in progress) bitcoin circular economy. Rent, food, cafes/restaurants, shopping, motorcycle/car rental, buying surfboards, paying for things online, reimbursing friends for stuff via LN invoice, etc. Only still use cash for the fruit/veggie/eggs truck and sometimes the bus.

I've been looking at the peer connection behavior in the Bitcoin Core peer-to-peer network code, identified a half dozen issues, and proposed fixes for them along with the logging improvements that helped uncover them:

Anyone interested to review or test is very welcome to do so. A big thank you to Vasil Dimov for his initial review.

Exactly.

Great post!

For Bitcoiners who run nodes:

You can start running your node over I2P, for example in addition to over Tor, in less than 5 minutes:

My main criticism of bitcoin meetups here, and the reason I don't attend, is the organizers taking photos of the room and putting them on twitter/facebook/instagram to promote the meetup. You can see/recognize nearly every person in attendance.