I’ll bite. What is the solution if not Bitcoin? Maybe they should wait until the bottom 70% of their citizens have enough money to entice the big banks?
The solution is to get their economy in order, reduce corruption and establish a functioning banking system.
In 1993, my home country had inflation of 313 000 000 % per month (yes, that's millions and yes that's per month). Average salary was $10/month. More than 50% of people worked in black economy. We had only national (public) banks, all of them were totally non-functional. Corruption was so high it's almost unimaginable for "normal" people in the west - if you needed to visit a doctor, you'd have to bribe him, if you had a traffic ticket you'd just bribe cops, if your kid needed good grades you'd bribe teacher...
28 painful years later - almost 80% of people work regularly, i.e. they are legally employed, inflation is far less than 10% per year, almost everybody has a bank account which costs like $3/month (but almost all banks are now private), averagy salary is $400/month or so, by corruption we're at least in the upper 40% of the world...
I’m with you on the answer being to root out corruption and for the country to get its affairs in order. As for establishing a new banking system, isn’t that exactly what they are doing - albeit using Bitcoin and Lightning instead of fiat. El Salvador is a poor country and 70% of it’s citizens lack a bank account (but most have a phone.) The reason most don’t have bank accounts is that there isn’t enough profit for the bankers at the moment. Bitcoin and Lightning fixes this with better technology.
I don’t see how giving the citizens of your country the option to save their wealth in a peer-to-peer alternative to traditional currency, powered by a hard inflation policy that cannot be manipulated by any politician or central banker impedes that solution. If anything giving the citizenry a Plan Bitcoin option would seem like a honking good idea to fight inflation. Just look at Venezuela, Libya, Syria et al for recent examples of how Bitcoin helped citizens of those countries.
Is the argument that Bitcoin won’t help them at all or that Bitcoin alone is not the whole solution. (I agree with the latter)
Yup, that's exactly what I meant. BTC (or any other cryptocurrency) alone is not a solution, but it might be a part of it. But I also think it will not be the biggest nor the most important part.
In 1993, my home country had inflation of 313 000 000 % per month (yes, that's millions and yes that's per month). Average salary was $10/month. More than 50% of people worked in black economy. We had only national (public) banks, all of them were totally non-functional. Corruption was so high it's almost unimaginable for "normal" people in the west - if you needed to visit a doctor, you'd have to bribe him, if you had a traffic ticket you'd just bribe cops, if your kid needed good grades you'd bribe teacher...
28 painful years later - almost 80% of people work regularly, i.e. they are legally employed, inflation is far less than 10% per year, almost everybody has a bank account which costs like $3/month (but almost all banks are now private), averagy salary is $400/month or so, by corruption we're at least in the upper 40% of the world...