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Bitcoin The Almighty Buck

Salvador Street Protest Breaks Out Against Bitcoin Adoption (reuters.com) 75

Posted by BeauHD from the bumpy-rollout dept.
More than 1,000 people marched in El Salvador's capital on Tuesday to protest the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender, amid a bumpy initial rollout of systems to support the digital currency. Reuters reports: The protesters burned a tire and set off fireworks in front of the Supreme Court building around noon local time, as the government deployed heavily militarized police to the site of the protest. "This is a currency that's not going to work for pupusa vendors, bus drivers or shopkeepers," said a San Salvador resident who opposed the adoption of the cryptocurrency. Pupusas are a traditional Salvadoran corn-based food. "This is a currency that's ideal for big investors who want to speculate with their economic resources."

The protest came as El Salvador's government was rushing to iron out technological snags in bitcoin's first-day rollout. Earlier on Tuesday, Salvadorans trying to download the Chivo digital wallet found it was unavailable on popular app stores. Then Bukele tweeted that the government had temporarily unplugged it, in order to connect more servers to deal with demand. A group of people in Chivo tee-shirts at a stall to train people interested in using the app milled around waiting for it to be reconnected. It later appeared on Apple and Huawei's stores, and Bukele used Twitter to ask users to let him know how it was working. El Salvador voted to adopt bitcoin as legal tender in June. Yesterday, one day before the Bitcoin Law was put in effect, the country bought roughly $20.9 million worth of bitcoin, sending the price of the currency above $52,000 for the first time since May.
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Salvador Street Protest Breaks Out Against Bitcoin Adoption More

Salvador Street Protest Breaks Out Against Bitcoin Adoption

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  • Who is Satoshi anyway? I guess it's just one of those funny "computer guy" quirks! I don't really understand computers, but my grandson told me to invest in Bitcoin!

    • Who is Satoshi anyway?

      If you knew anything about deep-crypto-chain, you'd realize that Craig Wright is Satoshi. It's obvious from the timezone stamps of Satoshi's messages which are never in Australia time. Also he can't remember any of his wallet keys but I guess that's ok because geniuses are always forgetful and prefer lawsuits over facts. Bragging is better than facts anyway. Only a true master could create Bitcoin without knowing anything about cryptography and since his degree is in theology it was probably revealed to him

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      He's probably this guy:
      https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]

      • When people go by exotic one word aliases, it's time to start questioning their legitimacy.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Entrope ( 68843 )

          The pseudonymous author(s) of the early Bitcoin works used the alias Satoshi Nakamoto, not just Satoshi. It's a relatively unremarkable Japanese name otherwise, so not very exotic unless you think anything Japanese is exotic.

          • It's a culture/cool thing and he used it purely for image reasons.

            Satoshi might not be a remarkable name in Japan, but it sounds exotic to most Westeners.

  • They are aboslutely right.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RemindMeLater ( 7146661 ) on Tuesday September 07, 2021 @05:57PM (#61773561)
    This was a money and time-wasting endeavor. Bitcoin offers nothing as a currency to El Salvador. Especially when you consider how many small transactions take place there, most of them under $10. But the young president wanted to prance on the world stage.

    • Re:They are aboslutely right.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Mal-2 ( 675116 ) on Tuesday September 07, 2021 @06:03PM (#61773599) Homepage Journal

      They wanted a place to stash whatever they can skim off the actual Salvadoran economy, a place that will be relatively unaffected by that economy completely tanking from the rot.

    • Re:They are aboslutely right.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Lanthanide ( 4982283 ) on Tuesday September 07, 2021 @06:16PM (#61773651)

      They're mainly doing it because the government is deeply in debt and so they want to pay government employees using bitcoin. The plan seems to be to keep the bitcoins issues within the L2 lightning network, so that the government doesn't actually really 'pay' anyone, but just gives them tokens they circulate amongst themselves.

      This is because El Salvador doesn't have its own fiat currency, their only official currency is the US$ and now also bitcoin. So paying people US$ for their wages requires the government to source US$ internationally, since they can't print it themselves like the US government can.

      Also the other argument is that bitcoin will save costs for remittances, which make up a big part of El Salvador's income. Firstly it's not actually true that bitcoin will be cheaper for remittances than traditional methods (several other cryptos can be much much cheaper for remittance purposes, though, just not bitcoin).

      Secondly it's a non-starter because El Salvador buys imports with USD because people who sell stuff to El Salvador want USD, not bitcoin. If the remittance flows into El Salvador change from USD to instead be Bitcoin, they won't be able to use the bitcoin to buy the imports they need, because the sellers accept USD, not bitcoin.

      The whole experiment has been woefully thought-out and under-prepared, the official government bitcoin wallet wasn't even approved on Google Play and the Apple store only just approved it but warns that it might be a fraudulent app because of all of the permissions it asks for. It is likely to fail in a speculator way, within 12 months.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      But the young president wanted to prance on the world stage.

      He could've done that by keeping Julian Assange around, too.

    • Search the webs for lightning network - it is Bitcoin- and you can see a man buy a beer worth (~$1.50) nearly instantaneously

  • ...what have you got to lose?

    • El Salvador literally does not have their own currency. US$ is their official currency, and now also bitcoin.

    • As I said, this just smacks as an attempt for ES to look like a high tech cutting edge country, but it backfired dramatically.

      Instead of lame ass bandaid "fixes" like this, they need to clean house. But scince corruption is so profitable for ES's government, don't expect this to happen.

      ES's government will fly away in their escape jets and leave their 'own people' to get maimed and killed in the next civil war to break out there.

  • Protestors wearing mardi de gras masks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lanthanide ( 4982283 ) on Tuesday September 07, 2021 @06:11PM (#61773629)

    In the main photo on the linked story, the protestors are all wearing mardi de gras masks to protect their identities, because the El Salvadorean government has already tried to suppress people speaking out against their bitcoin plans: https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]

    This is ironic when you consider the guy fawkes mask from V for Vendetta was used early on by anarchist bitcoin proponents, and now people are using disguises when protesting against bitcoin in the first country that has made it legal tender.

  • Violence capital of the world with a massive gang/violence/murder problem. And corruption. And extreme poverty.

    Their government adopting Bitcoin might have been an attempt to look 'high tech' and advanced to try to wash away it's sordid image but all it really did was bolster this image even more as Bitcoin itself looks shady.

    They need to fix their deep rooted social problems before even thinking of messing around with stuff like Bitcoin.

    • Their government adopting Bitcoin might have been an attempt to look 'high tech' and advanced to try to wash away it's sordid image

      It's not. It's a young president who got caught up in the Bitcoin hype. He thinks he's moving into the future.

      In addition, the trajectory of Bitcoin has been solidly up for a long time, and there's no particular reason to believe that it won't continue in that direction, as more people buy Bitcoin. The hypetrain has a lot of track.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Well, after peaking at 52 after El Salvador's announcement it's now down below 47 again.

        Since the country's name means "The Savior" perhaps they should ask Jesus for help managing their finances, the IMF and World Bank hasn't done them any favors.

      • "t's not. It's a young president who got caught up in the Bitcoin hype. He thinks he's moving into the future"

        Pretty much what I just said. But the "moving to the future" was more for image than anything else.

        "The hype train has a lot of track". A lot of people believed that about the dot-com bubble right before ot burst.

        The fact that ES' president. jumped on that train indicates that his country is thoroghly fucked, and is desperately trying anything to get it unfucked in a hurry. Maybe his gamble

  • It simply isn't made to operate as currency. There are many other viable options that can handle such.
    If I get paid at noon $40 , buy 2 o'clock it could be worth $20 or 100.
    Who knows.
    Storing value means what it says. If I can't reliably store value. It's not money.

    • Even the US dollar fluctuates agaist the Euro. By much less of an amount and you have people rarely doing cross border buys than intercountry buys. But the fluctuation is still there. Go to European eBay. That good you want is 100 pounds. You looked at it today and it's $105. You look tomorrow and it's $110. Still want it?

      • What are you saying? That a 5% to 10% fluctuation is the same as a 50% to 150%? Just asking as a math teacher that obviously missed something in the curriculum.

        Everyone knows that any currency have fluctuations, but what people rely on is that these fluctuations are minor so that you can plan for them. Sure, some profit margin might get eaten away if you are unlucky, but with huge price fluctuations, it is not a decreased profit margin that you risk, it is total annihilation of your funds. Suddenly the sale

  • The protestors are bang on the money about this not being a development that benefits the majority.
    It only benefits a small minority.

    Case in point, yesterdays "Flash Crash" - over leveraged positions - sent BTC crashing down.
    Imagine what that means to someone with very little money, being pretty much forced to adopt BTC?

    You get paid in BTC, say, $500 - and within an hour, a crash could see that worth $400 or $350 or ... nothing.

    Sure, FIAT suffers from hyper-inflation in many third world countries and failed

  • The protesters burned a tire and set off fireworks in front of the Supreme Court building around noon local time

    I have it on good authority that the tire acquiesced and agreed not to allow the plan to go ahead.

    "I don't know what I was thinking, but this was a huge wakeup call, and I apologize to anyone who may have been offended", the tire was overheard saying.

    The protestors broke out in a spontaneous victory celebration until someone remarked that the tire actually had very little political influence, at w

  • Who cares about the economics of the thing? If they haven't got the pupusa vendors on board they've lost me. Those things are delicious.

  • They all received $30 in BTC and they still act like nocoiners?!
  • Why would protests break out over this? I mean, it's purely optional for anyone in El Salvador to use Bitcoin, no one is forcing you to pay all your taxes in BTC. You now simply have the option to do so.

    BTW Bitcoin dropped 10% (!) in one day after this went through. Doesn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence in the scheme.

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