Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Bitcoin

El Salvador Angrily Rejects IMF Call To Drop Bitcoin Use (go.com) 84

Posted by BeauHD from the thanks-but-no-thanks dept.
The government of El Salvador on Monday rejected a recommendation by the International Monetary Fund to drop Bitcoin as legal tender in the Central American country. ABC News reports: Treasury Minister Alejandro Zelaya angrily said that "no international organization is going to make us do anything, anything at all." Zelaya told a local television station that Bitcoin is an issue of "sovereignty." "Countries are sovereign nations and they take sovereign decisions about public policy," he said.

The IMF recommended last week that El Salvador dissolve the $150 million trust fund it created when it made the cryptocurrency legal tender and return any of those unused funds to its treasury. The agency cited concerns about the volatility of Bitcoin prices, and the possibility of criminals using the cryptocurrency. After nearly doubling in value late last year, Bitcoin has plunged in value. Zelaya said El Salvador has complied with all financial transaction and money laundering rules.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

El Salvador Angrily Rejects IMF Call To Drop Bitcoin Use More

El Salvador Angrily Rejects IMF Call To Drop Bitcoin Use

Comments Filter:

  • Mom I'm my own man! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

    You can't tell me what to do!

    El Salvador is angry? It sounds like an angry teenager. Of course the IMF can't tell you what to do. It's a recommendation dumbasses. Why are the countries most hell bent on destroying themselves also the ones that shout "sovereignty" the loudest?

    • Re:Mom I'm my own man! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by NotEmmanuelGoldstein ( 6423622 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @02:06AM (#62232893)
      Because previous dealings taught them the USA, the IMF and other economic agencies are not benevolent giants. Like most teenagers, when he realizes you're a hypocrite and a money-grabbing arsehole, his only power is to rebel and to rant.

      • Because previous dealings taught them the USA, the IMF and other economic agencies are not benevolent giants.

        If Hitler told you to not put your hand on the hot stove, do you shout "fuck you! sovereignty!" and go burn yourself in spite? Just like a teenager rebelling it doesn't actually work out well in the end.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Because previous dealings taught them the USA, the IMF and other economic agencies are not benevolent giants. Like most teenagers, when he realizes you're a hypocrite and a money-grabbing arsehole, his only power is to rebel and to rant.

        The IMF was created based on the realization that when one country sneezes, others catch a cold - economic trouble in one spot can lead to it rippling elsewhere. Plus, the multitude of humanitarian disaster that can accompany economic collapse - you're economy collapses, you

    • Why are the countries most hell bent on destroying themselves also the ones that shout "sovereignty" the loudest?

      It's pretty high up there on the list of red flags that you're being scammed. (Similarly to when someone invokes "the children" or "state's rights".) As a bonus, it pulls the conversation away from the internal rot and corruption. Then, the eventual collapse of the scam can be blamed on outside actors.

      But as far as the finance minister, or whoever else is pushing BTC, they're not actually hell-bent on destroying El Salvador. It's just not something they care about. They could be running Paraguay or Florida

    • LOL mods are having a field day over this post. Well field multiple days.

  • Crypto may be surrounded by more grifters and security issues, and recently everyone is starting to notice how much energy it uses. All of that pales in comparison to the evil carried out by the banking cartels of which the IMF is a member however, so it's unlikely that they'll be successful in suppressing it.

    It's unlikely that bitcoin (or even better actually anonymizing systems) can separate one from the global finance market, but the leaders of that system speaking against it if anything will bolster con

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @11:46PM (#62232707)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • It's so much more than what you describe. Banks have repeatedly and consistently caused bubble markets in things like housing which pushes the price above what reasonable buyers would pay. The manipulation on the extreme end causes some reasonable and prudent buyers (if anyone can be accused of being prudent while accepting a loan) to be stuck upside down in a mortgage due to faults exclusively not their own.

        An effective decentralized currency system is quite the weapon against the banking cartels, if it

  • or maybe ETH since more useful for finance.

    That might help stabilize cryptocurrency, and give them one less thing to whine about.

    • or maybe ETH since more useful for finance.

      That might help stabilize cryptocurrency...

      And why pray tell should we do that?

      Next you'll tell us to put hoisin sauce on a mud pie so it'll taste more like General Tso's Chicken...?

      • Well, hoisin smells like wet dog but makes things taste amazing so maybe it's not such a bad idea ~ average crypto simp trying to justify their own bad decisions
      • Oh I think I get it. You've accepted the trite trope that cryptocurrency is fundamentally bad for the environment.
        That's just wrong but I'm too tired to keep explaining why to simpletons.

        I like your apt slashdot username though.

  • IMF Angrily Rejects El Salvador's Call for Aid (Score:4, Interesting)

    by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @08:05PM (#62232243)

    That will be the headline in a few years time.

    Nothing against BitCoin, tough, just that as a Latin American, I know how these gimmicks go.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tyr07 ( 8900565 )

      Except they won't reject it, just make a big deal out of it.

      That's completely the concern though, that they'll shoot themselves in the foot with it.

  • The summary omits a critical detail (Score:5, Informative)

    by imidan ( 559239 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @08:17PM (#62232271)
    One pretty important detail that TFS left out, FTA:

    El Salvador and the IMF have been negotiating $1.3 billion in lending for months.

    The IMF isn't just bored and trying to come up with something to do, and lit upon the idea of criticizing El Salvador. They're suggesting that if El Salvador wants to take a billion dollar loan from the IMF, maybe they should stop gambling their treasury away on speculative crypto.

    • or they are saying, dont go with crypto, heres $1.3 billion reasons why.

  • "NO! I want to be rich and you're just trying to take it away from me! I saw the news about all the rich bitcoin people!"

    It has the potential to cause a lot of damage and I think the international comity is just concerned they're going to learn the lesson the hard way.
    Rightfully so as well, because wealthy countries are always spending money to help countries running into problems.

  • Good (Score:3)

    by nocoiner ( 7891194 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @08:58PM (#62232371)

    Now it means the IMF doesn't need to be polite to El Salvador anymore.

  • Sounds like El Salvador is about to get some help with their democracy.

  • How is it working in practice? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by steveha ( 103154 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @09:29PM (#62232443) Homepage

    I'm interested in the details of how it's working.

    One objection to Bitcoin is that it doesn't scale. The answer I have seen from Bitcoin proponents is "when you need it to scale you use a network such as Lightning Network." So I did a Google search for "El Salvador Lightning Network" and found that: sure enough, El Salvador is using Lightning Network.

    So now I want to know how well this practical test of Lightning Network is going. I did a Google search and found almost nothing. I found a hit piece saying "Bitcoin is tanking the economy in El Salvador" and I found lots of news to the effect of "so-and-so says that El Salvador's adoption of Bitcoin will be good/bad/whatever". I found one article saying that the ordinary citizen in El Salvador is mystified by this technology... I kind of felt like it was insulting them. ("Shiny! Like fire! Fire BAD! Me no like fire!")

    This is Slashdot. So there will be political posturing and trolls and flaming, but I'm hoping there might also be a discussion of the technology and how well it is or is not working.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      but I'm hoping there might also be a discussion of the technology and how well it is or is not working.

      You're setting your hopes way to high.

    • These details are usually left clear as mud. I'd say it's likely that El Salvador is leaning heavily on large exchanges to manage the transfer latency and simplify the difficult transactions.

      Of course, this over-reliance on exchanges was ineviatable due to BTC's poor early choices making the scaling and transaction cost/delays far too high. Despite that rationale, what's left is far less anonymous and decentralized than what anyone hoped.

    • Population: 7 million (42% rural)
      GDP per capita: $4k USD

      I somehow really doubt that, on average, their population is going to be as tech savvy as a developed country with relatively wealthy & well educated citizens. How comfortable do you reckon the average US/EU boomer is with crypto?

      I understand the government has run a few programs to improve accessibility, including giving every citizen a digital wallet with $150 USD worth of BTC, but that's nowhere near enough to prepare a poorly educated populace

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      It's not surprising the ordinary citizen is mystified, most people have no idea how bitcoin works. In fact many people have no idea how most banking systems work, and only understand little bits of paper with numbers printed on them.

      El salvador made bitcoin legal tender but they did not mandate it, citizens are still free to continue using other forms of currency and that's exactly what those who don't understand bitcoin or don't want to use it will do. All the government has done, is given them a new choic

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by danda ( 11343 )

      As I understand it, El Salvador created an "official" wallet software called Chivo Wallet. It enables users/merchants to instantly exchange between USD and BTC for free.

      iiuc, this is a custodial wallet, meaning that the BTC keys are held on the government's servers. This means that btc payments between Chivo wallet users can be made quickly without even touching btc blockchain or lightning network. It also means that government could confiscate user's money at any time.

      Users can opt to use other wallets

      • So in other words the decentralized blockchain currency works fine when it's not decentralized and doesn't use the blockchain.

    • This is Slashdot. So there will be political posturing and trolls and flaming, but I'm hoping there might also be a discussion of the technology and how well it is or is not working.

      AFAIR the Govt. Delevoled their own crypto wallet (called chivo), and pre-loaded it with some Satoshis (equivalent to U$D 20 at the time) to incentivize the people to use bitcoin.

      That was a mess, but mostly because of the inmaturity of the wallet, not because of lightning.

      If you need more info about the behaviour of Lightning in El Salvador, your best bet is to (temporarily) reconfigure your google instance to be located in "el salvador" and the language being spanish, and use Google/Bing translate.

    • LN kinda sucks.

      https://cointelegraph.com/bitc... [cointelegraph.com]

      There's more out there if you do your homework, but compared zk-rollups LN is just a mess. Right now, its functionality rests on generous parties being willing to foot routing fees and then leave channels open indefinitely.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Thom34 ( 6232932 )

      I wanted to find it out too, and yesterday I found a Bitcoin Italy podcast site, where two of them traveled to El Salvador with a goal to live only with Bitcoin 6 weeks. Their story is here [bitcoinitaliapodcast.it]. It is divided to 43 stories (one story for each day), so reading it takes quite much time.

      If you don't have that much time then end result was that they succeeded in their test. Economy in El Salvador is still rolling around the cash dollars like earlier and there is no rush to use the new method. Ordinary people don't

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by splutty ( 43475 )

      Almost everyone in El Salvador is still using the old "official currency", the US Dollar.

      So that pretty much answers your question.

  • Treasury Minister Alejandro Zelaya angrily said that "no international organization is going to make us do anything, anything at all."

    While he completely ignored the entire history of the country he lives in.

  • Everyone should be glad they sent their monetary drug dealer packing. Anyone shilling for a global unipolar monetary system is an idiot; there must be a free market of ideas, even for nation states currency definition. Singular global hierarchy only equals misery for billions and eventually global war. Which is funny because the IMF thinks of itself as a peaceful organization.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Ninety percent of baseball is half mental." -- Yogi Berra

Close