El Salvador Will Keep Buying 1 Bitcoin Daily Until BTC 'Becomes Unaffordable' With Fiat Currencies, Says President Bukele – Featured Bitcoin News

AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to Technology@lemmy.world – 272 points –
El Salvador Will Keep Buying 1 Bitcoin Daily Until BTC 'Becomes Unaffordable' With Fiat Currencies, Says President Bukele – Featured Bitcoin News
news.bitcoin.com
  • El Salvador will continue buying 1 Bitcoin daily until it becomes unaffordable with fiat currencies
  • President Bukele's statement highlights commitment to cryptocurrency adoption
  • Move demonstrates belief in Bitcoin's long-term value and potential as a global currency alternative.
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Imagine your president being a 40yo cryptobro version of Trump. No wonder people are leaving

He's winning against the gangs though - every Salvadorean I know supports him.

Talk to families of unjustified imprisoned people or to the people itself. His 'fixing' was done by basically imprisoning everyone, which just happened to be close to any suspect gang member. There where even cases where a mailman was imprisoned because he just happenend to deliver a parcel during a raid.

Yes, he fixed the gang problem for now. But at a high price – the loss of a fair justice system. He imprisoned 1.2 % of the total population in just 2 years.

I know that freedom vs security is a fine balance and once security suffers significantly, you are willing to give up quiet a lot of freedom. But since he just imprisoned everyone and their relatives, its only a temporary fix – unless he wants to imprison them for life.

I don’t think you understand how completely gangs had effectively taken over El Salvador until recently. Despite the obvious issues that you’ve pointed out, the situation is genuinely miles better than it was before for the vast majority of the population who were simply trying to live their lives.

Thats what I meant with 'if security gets really low, you are willing to sacrifice a lot of freedom'

My major complaint is, that he doesnt have a plan for the time after they will eventually get out of prison.

Considering how strict he is, doubt they're getting out of prison soon.

Wait. There was a plan to release anyone? I thought the guy who invites an armed military observers to the parliament voting session wouldn't bother with that.

Talk to families of unjustified imprisoned people or to the people itself.

Do you actually know & speak to people in El Salvador? Pretty much everyone I know there (family/friends) are ecstatic that there are no more gang members running around unchecked. The country is safer now then it has been in years.

Nothing is perfect of course, poverty is still a major issue, but not having to deal with gang members every time you ride the bus, go out shopping, even just drive around, it's a huge deal over there.

Sure I get what you're saying but for most people there it's been a positive development.

But since he just imprisoned everyone and their relatives, its only a temporary fix – unless he wants to imprison them for life.

True.. to be honest I suspect those people are imprisoned for life. No one expects gang members to be let out of prison while Bukele is still running the country, that's going to be something that gets revisited when/if he's out of office. It's a massive human rights issue but at least for now the majority of Salvadorans consider it a net positive.

The funny thing is that this article is about bitcoin & most Salvadorans don't particularly care about that at all, it's just kind of a headline that isn't going to win/lose Bukele any support in the short term at least.

You seem to underestimate the gang problem. I was in Ilobasco a few years ago and my family that lives there urged me not to go outside past 7pm because I can be a target or even kidnapped. Like wtf why do the gangs get to dictate curfew in 2017? Past nightfall you have to turn the lights off so people in the streets can't peek into your house through the metal guard rails on all the windows. It was eye opening to say the least. Since Nuevas Ideas I have only heard good things and good changes to the area from my family. There were so many people associated to the gangs that I have little sympathy for those 'innocently accused'. I would rather a few loosely incorporated get caught than let the gangs do what they want freely.

Until it's you who get wrongfully put in jail, but I get the point. I think everyone agree it's better now and also they should do everything they can to speed up the release of innocent people.

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Not to mention there's a very obvious racial component of who's probably bearing the brunt of all these arrests even with the policy of "we swear it's only criminals bro trust us bro just let us keep at it bro we're fixing crime bro!"

I hope he does that. Us citizens wouldn't want that criminal lowlife and their families to return to society

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Since every Bitcoin transaction is traceable, it makes it easier to see where the money goes...

And also stealable with a single passcode. Which they totally didn't give the president's nephew, no sirree

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Bukele and his government is nothing like Trumps. He doesn't want El Salvador to use USD as the standard currency, that's it..

Which is understandable, but I don't understand his plan. If 1 BTC is unaffordable, then people will buy 0.1 BTC. If that's unaffordable, then people will buy 0.01 BTC. And so on. You have to go down to 0.00000001 BTC before the limit is reached (0.000633158 USD at current prices, which is smaller than a mill). Since every zero there is another order of magnitude, I don't see how a small nation state could make even the smallest BTC unit unaffordable. Maybe the G7 banding together could do it.

I have very mixed feelings about Bukele but nobody is leaving because of him. Salvadorian emigration has slowed greatly under him and many people are actually moving back.

Sadly, that's also the exact description of who Canada is most likely to elect as their next leader too. "bitcoin millhouse" we call him.

Tbh we want a Bukele in my south American country. Crime is running rampant

It is sad to see people unaware of different conditions in the world. They have this feelings that one set of rules is good for everyone.

I know. Also tfw left and right is different outside of the US lol

You are very correct.

I don't really want someone who is "tough on crime"in Russia, China or Taiwan , but I can understand why people in Haiti would be in favor of it.

For a future in which Bukele unites south America under the banner of zero crime, since our local presidents are just stupid and corrupt and wastes of space.

Politicians have a bad habit of not giving up power. Hopefully, when the time comes, he graciously steps down or works on addressing the rights he had to curtail to do what he's done.

There's no question they've arrested innocent people and the prisoners are being treated poorly, but it's hard to judge when I don't have to deal with drug cartels/gangs and make their monthly salary in a couple days.

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El Salvador Will Keep Putting $71,000 into the President's Swiss Bank Account Daily

FTFY

It's tragic for the people of his country that they are being essentially forced into participating in a pyramid scheme

Yeah, this basically gave away the whole country to the USA, but now with Bitcoin, this is over!

TBH Bukele is more likely to steal the country's finances than the USA. The USA doesn't have the power to seize decentralized currency from across the equator, at least not without empowering the CIA but every time we do that they destabilize a region, create a theocracy, or trick us into another war so we're getting pretty sick of their shit.

Quadrupling down at this point, right? I feel like this will not end well for him.

He will be alright, the country not so much.

I have a hunch he is personally in charge of a large number of coins to guarantee his safety...or escape lol

Isn't current price of Bitcoin 71000usd?

Yes. It's absolutely insane, and this guy's history with it is doubly insane. Read up a bit and prepare to feel super duper sad for the people in that country.

Buy high, sell low

He started buying at 50k, continued at 20k and it's now 70k fyi

Oh, so buy, buy lower, buy higher? That's the strategy? I guess someone's gotta be on the bottom of the pyramid.

...El Salvador has decided to transfer a large chunk of its bitcoin holdings to a cold wallet and store it in a physical vault

What are we up to now, like Ocean's 15 or something?

Whatever your thoughts on cryptocurrency might be, this is borderline gambling addiction.

Just put the whole economy on black.

No, red!

NO, BLACK!

And what happens if the government needs that money and Bitcoin price is down?

I don't see how putting national reserves on such an inestable "asset" would be a good idea.

Worse, what happens if cybercriminals are able to successfully steal a large number of the countries bitcoin, or if they somehow lose access to their bitcoin wallet(s)?

He said 'until it's unaffordable' I guess he's using reserves like the way the US does on weapons and military, some of which isn't even for them.

He's investing in what he believes is a profitable investment. I'm guessing that he has financial advice from people that have studied this to a level that can understand it better than most people, and consider it a sound investment. With the intention at the other end being to use for the country. Everything accounted for, nothing going into senators back pockets, could be used to boost their health service and hospitals and whatever else. With countries less built up currently looking more favourable in the future, they're already in a good position.

As opposed to their national currency... oh, wait! :D

And then some hacker will get into that wallet and empty it.

The presidency will act all shocked at the news pretending they did everything to secure it...

"some" hacker.

Totally not involved with the government at all.

Totally not tipped off about how to access it and where to put it.

Totally just some random hacker that managed to make off with all of that government money. Oh well, we tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.

Apologies citizens, your money is truly gone.

If this is legit and not corruption and bitcoin eventually takes off to ungodly levels, imagine the biggest bet in history paying off and their country turns around as an economic powerhouse. Risky and stupid but would make a good movie.

The only thing keeping them a powerhouse would be a number on a computer that can be stolen. Question is, would people try to steal from a nation rich enough to be a powerhouse and how sophisticated would those theft attempts be?

That number is protected the same way gold is. Reminds me you americans stole us 1000 tons of gold during ww2

That's my point. If a country really did build up enough Bitcoin it became a world power, those Bitcoin would probably be stolen. If it can happen to gold, it can happen to Bitcoin even easier.

It's ability to be stolen really comes down to was the password to it ever written down or did they not use a password.

If they didn't write it down, you could conceivably keep it safe from theft as long as the people that know the password don't give it up if tortured.

Also breaking it up into multiple wallets with different passwords that not everyone knows would limit a complete theft.

Edit: in the scenario where it can't be stolen, killing everyone that knows the password would still leave the country with nothing though.

It has to be easy enough to move the Bitcoins that it can be done when needed. For example, if you split the password up among too many people, then you could "disappear" one of those people and then the Bitcoins suddenly cease to exist (or practically so).

So there's a balance. If it's easy to move the Bitcoins, then a thief can find a way to move all the Bitcoins into their own wallet. Or, if it's very difficult to move the Bitcoins, then an adversary can find a way to make it impossible to move the Bitcoins, essentially destroying them.

I think they should do something dramatic like having a room where the NOC List was stored, but with an air vent on the door instead of the ceiling.

Why faster? The gold was in a ship because the gold had to be carried, which isn't the case with bitcoin. If there is no ship you can steal, you won't get anything

If I can steal your cryptographic key (a number), I can write to the Bitcoin ledger "I Mubelotix give Buttons840 all my Bitcoin", and then it's done, the transaction is complete, it's written on the immutable public ledger with your own private key. If I can get your private key then I can take all your Bitcoin and you cannot stop me, nobody can, no court, no nation.

What I'm saying is that if a country did built up a world altering amount of Bitcoins, a James Bond 007 Super Secret Agent Man would come and steal the cryptographic key associated with your Bitcoins and as soon as they have that it's over, all your Bitcoin are gone.

Sure but it's easy to secure cryptophic keys. Way easier than securing 1000 moving tons of gold

Is it? Like, when any one of the people with access to the key has a standing offer of 1 billion dollars and a life a luxury in another country, are you sure none of them will take the offer? What about when their families are threatened? What about when they get kidnapped and hit with a wrench?

I'm just saying, if we're talking about so much Bitcoin that it alone makes a country a world power, that's enough Bitcoin that things have moved beyond law and order and is in the ugly and dangerous realm of war and espionage.

That's why we have multisig and timelocks. Bitcoin doesn't lack any security feature tbh

I'm not familiar with those, I'll do some research. How would you explain what those are?

I really wish for them to hit the jackpot and break the cycle, but so far, everything valuable in the region was quickly turned into poverty and famine. It's like a bad magic trick.

It's kinda hilarious that the soft dictatorship and prison state that makes even America look like a prison abolitionist paradise isn't what's going to sink this idiot, it'll be the fucking bitcoins

Venture capitalist Tim Draper believes that bitcoin will transform El Salvador into one of the wealthiest nations in the world

Or one of the poorest? To the moooon 🔻

What does ‘unaffordable with fiat currencies’ even mean? This guy knows you can divide BTC right?

The headline said 1BTC, so I take it to mean "until the price of 1BTC is too high to buy with real money". They're not saying they'll buy $66000 worth of bitcoin per day indefinitely, just 1 whole bitcoin per day, regardless of how the price fluctuates, for as long as that's viable.

El Salvador doesn't have its own currency; they use USD and recently bitcoin. I don't know enough to say whether this makes sense.

Right but you're missing the point. It doesn't matter if 1 BTC costs $1,000,000 when you can just buy 0.0001 BTC for $100. They would need to drive the cost of 1 BTC into the quadrillions of dollars before it would become even remotely unfeasible to purchase.

Depends on the budget he decided to put into this.

At the end it's investing, he has decided let's say a budget of 200k per day on this, he will but 1 full btc until the price of 1 btc is 200k. After that probably the money will go on something else.

Yeah, I haven't been able to parse what that phrase means in a real sense.

El Salvador needs to offload bags of BTC, loud and clear

cool, here's the plan:

  1. see el salvador announcement
  2. buy one bitcoin
  3. wait for el salvador to buy a few bitcoins
  4. bitcoin price skyrockets to a few million
  5. sell your one 50k worth bitcoin for 500k dollars
  6. profit1!1!1!1!

That might be exactly what he's trying to achieve by announcing it like this. Kinda sounds like a pump and dump tbh.

Even if bitcoin wasn't just a pyramid scheme and all but right now there are 900 new bitcoins each day, after the next halfing around the corner it's still 450/day. So each day there will be more new bitcoin then he would buy in 1 year. Even the easiest numbers don't add up even if he is just a 40yr cryptobro Trump version.

It has zero purpose as currency support, but makes great sense for money laundering. Whose wallet do you think those bitcoins will end up in?

Just to explain it to people who don't understand how it works.

The point of the mining rewards is to make the Bitcoin supply infinite, while giving the price time to rise and Bitcoin to gain adoption. Once that 21m coins is created, no more can be created, so the price should stabilize and rise over time as less and less Bitcoin is around.

I know how bitcoin works. But this cap of 21m will be around 2100 or even later if the mining power stays the same as today. So nobody reading this post will be alive around that time. And the same for El Salvador. Should all the people alive right now suffer, cause in around 100 years a theory of a new way for money could succeed? (And no, I don't think bitcoin will ever be more than money laundering and daytraiding craziness ending in more money for the people laundering)

As far as a currency or store of wealth, Bitcoin is shit. Satoshi was/were an idealist(s), and for them it wasn't about the money, it was about the idea. Decentralized proof of concept that anyone on the internet can access and can't be censored without extreme global geopolitical cooperation. They chose to make it like a currency (Bitcoin) for adoption purposes, but the mathematical and technical concepts behind it can be used for any transfer of information that needs to be reliable, proven (signed), and decentralized, which makes it ideal for some things we are already using, and concepts we can't even imagine yet.

The idea sparked other blockchain concepts such as Monero which is actually designed to be used, like digital cash with tiny fee of pennies, not as a store of wealth or prospecting. It is essentially anonymous as the sender, receiver, and amount are never known except to those with access to the wallets.

Smart contracts still have a long way to go but have some very interesting uses as well.

Why does being around in 100 years matter for Bitcoin, though? It's unlikely that Bitcoin will even be around in 100 years and Satoshi likely knew that or would have made the halving rates longer. Last halving was 2020. In about a month (next halving) block rewards will be halved from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, which puts upward pressure on miners to innovate (find new ways of reducing energy consumption and increasing hashing power), increasing scarcity, and, historically, increasing price.

It's actually insane how low the Monero fees are, you can make a transaction that takes less than 5 minutes and the fees are gonna be way less than a cent

Say he achieves his goal (which doesnt make any sense but lets ignore that), what then? The day they need to encash it and they start selling the price will crash

I don't think the plan is to sell it but to be able make accept payments of good and services in it.

This guy has the will to at least help to usher in a world of no more government controlled currencies and that's fantastic.