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Bitcoin

El Salvador is Giving Away Free Bitcoin To Its Citizens (fortune.com) 68

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Millions of Americans received stimulus checks in the past year, but Salvadoreans will be soon be receiving one paid in Bitcoin. From a report: The Central American country will give U.S. $30 worth of Bitcoin to each adult citizen that downloads and registers on the country's new cryptocurrency app, Chivo, President Nayib Bukele said during a televised speech Thursday. The $30 promotion is the nation's latest effort to push adoption of Bitcoin as legal currency. Bukele announced via video at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami earlier this month that he would be introducing legislation to make Bitcoin legal tender. His "Bitcoin Law" goes into effect on Sept. 7.

"This law is made to generate employment, to generate investments, and at no moment will it affect anybody, like opponents have tried to say with their dirty campaign," Bukele said during the hour-long speech Thursday. Chivo, the crypto wallet whose name translates to "goat" in English, will be compatible with both dollars and Bitcoin, and will be available on both iOS and Android devices, Bukele said. Since former Salvadorean President Francisco Flores passed a 2001 dollarization law, the U.S. dollar has been the most used legal tender in the country.
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El Salvador is Giving Away Free Bitcoin To Its Citizens More

El Salvador is Giving Away Free Bitcoin To Its Citizens

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  • Qur Chivo (Score:5, Informative)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday June 25, 2021 @02:22PM (#61521154) Journal

    Chivo, the crypto wallet whose name translates to "goat" in English

    In El Salvador 'chivo' is slang that means 'cool.'

    • If there's one way to prevent adoption of something it's to have the government tell you it's "cool".

  • Pure optimism (Score:4, Funny)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday June 25, 2021 @02:24PM (#61521160) Journal

    "Are there benefits? Yes, lots,' the president said. 'Are there consequences? No, none."

    I need some of whatever he's on.

    • Name some consequences then.

      • Let's see:

        1) Being forced to download the official government app to take part in this.

        What could possibly go wrong with that?

    • Benefits would still be consequences, even if positive ones - so his statements stand in direct conflict with each other. IF, of course, the translation of what he said is accurate. Which I wouldn't count on given that they failed to translate Chivo to "cool" and instead translated it to "goat".

    • He means "consequences for himself". The country's f@%$ eight from Sunday.

    • "Are there benefits? Yes, lots,' the president said. 'Are there consequences? No, none."

      I need some of whatever he's on.

      You mean the money that bitcoin exchanges are bribing with? Yeah, me too.

  • Really bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Friday June 25, 2021 @02:29PM (#61521178)
    It's a really bad idea to use digital commodities like Bitcoin & NFTs as currencies. If you like buying & selling & speculating with them that's fine. That's just your 'play money.' It's another story when your rent & food money drop in value dramatically overnight or when you can't pay at the supermarket or petrol station because the transaction won't go through & there's a long queue of angry customers behind you because this has happened to several people ahead of you already.

    • Currencies gain stability though backing as actual currency. That's the reason that prices of Bitcoin fluctuate (not sure why you mention NFTs, that has nothing to do with payments), it's not traded against anything physical which peggs its value.

      It's like saying it's a bad idea to use a Euro as a currency since the price may change releative to the US Dollar. Providing the price is set in a currency then the fluctuation is on a microeconomic scale irrelevant. I don't care how much bitcoin is worth in your

      • Just to put this into context, there are only 7 currencies in the world that are internationally traded, i.e. you can exchange one for another outside of the corresponding country. The vast majority of currencies stay within their own countries. One of many practical reasons for this is that opening them up to speculative trading, i.e. as a commodity, would introduce price fluctuations which would in turn disrupt international & therefore domestic trade. Hedge funds were first created to manage the pric

  • They need a reliable and low fee way to exchange bitcoin to dollars in the app ... and that way is USDT. They talk a big game of working with the banks and money exchangers to phase Tether out, but I doubt those have any interest on working on as low a cut as international cryptocurrency traders do.

  • Did they give people less money in bitcoin than it takes to make a transaction in bitcoin today?

    I recall bitcoin transaction costs being around 50-60 USD equivalent. Am I wrong?

    • Strike uses subsidized Lightning service providers (who also hide all the other fucked up mechanics of Lightning). So bitcoin fees are irrelevant for the moment.

  • Press X to doubt.
  • The average transaction fee for the last 3 months was around $35. So it'd cost $35 to send people $30. Now right now this second it's like $7 USD equivalent but I think 5000 transactions can fit in every 10 minute (on average) block so how many people live in El Salvador and how close to each other are they going to roll out all these transactions? And let's say everything stays the same and they roll out the credits automatically via an online wallet service instead of literally sending BTC balances to peo

    • Seriously, you need to learn about lightning network. I'm not saying lightning is great, but it completely solved the problem you're talking about.

      • Lightning is a joke. All it does is add a layer so you make like 2 overpriced transactions instead of 10 and each smart contract only works between you and one receiving address. You need 2 sends per "vendor" in the real world. You want a real solution? Litecoin's transaction fee is current 2 cents. Btw even that has a 2.5 minute to register and like 15 minute to be safe payment confirmation. Nobody is waiting in line that long at the grocery store. There are altcoins that confirm in 3 seconds and have long
  • Kind of volatile for a currency, unless everyone to agree to ignore a loaf of bread going 1 -> .75 -> .50 -> 1.50 etc.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
      This us the point thst gets me spdownwoted by the bitcoin fans every time, I don't object to BTC as a high risk financial instrument ( not sutabke for me, but that's neither here nor there), but iI question it's usefulness as a currency at this time.

  • He's giving away $30 vouchers to a percentage of a bitcoin that is held by the government.

    Can you imagine being the guy who discovers their keys on some random insecure server? Then proceeds to rob the entire country of its bitcoins while their citizens go broke over night?

  • Quantum machines will make crypto-currencies worthless in the next few years. The holders are starting to wise up this threat which is why they are desperately pumping them up and dumping them. Expect them to halve in value each of the next few years.

  • going to inflate it? It's not fiat money.

    • El Salvador has been using USD as their primary currency for two decades. They haven't had the option to inflate for a long time.

  • If they were serious they'd have withdrawn from the Paris Agreement.

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