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by jc_811 1835 days ago
So the president of a country:

- Whose minimum wage is between $113-$242 dollars per month [1]

- Where 26% of the population is living on less than $5.50 per day [2]

Wants to use a digital store of value, as a means of exchange, whose transaction fees have ranged from $6-$60 in the past 2 months [3]

How is this anything except an attention/headline seeking PR move?

[1] https://www.minimum-wage.org/international/el-salvador

[2]https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SLV/el-salvador/povert...

[3]https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f...

2 comments

When I checked 6 days ago, the median Bitcoin transaction fee in the last block was US$0.25, so it looks like you picked an unreliable source for your transaction-fee information: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27337189

(Also, there were transactions in that block that paid much lower fees than that, but some of them might be CPFP or something.)

That comment also explains how people in poor and middle-income countries use Bitcoin in practice, at least in some cases, even though transaction fees are usually higher than that. If you read it, you will understand the answer to your question to some degree.

The Strike app uses Lightning network and uses open source protocols. I believe this is the app they are promoting. I think this will be a good experiment because everyone is talking out of their ass - either this will help El Salvador, hurt them, or be neutral. Let’s wait a few years and see what happens.
So they want the citizens to not actually have access to their funds and instead rely on a government promoted private business to run all of their banking for them.
Well unless the financial institution is state-run then everyone uses a private business. I assume any private business could enter the space, but Strike spearheaded the laws / regulations. In the US I can’t park my funds with the federal reserve.