So the key reason for btc adoption in El Salvador is cheaper remittance payments, I find it odd that an article that sets out to criticize btc in El Salvador doesn't even mention the original intended use case.
This may work for smaller payments <$10, like when I had to split a restaurant bill with a foreign friend and paid him using the lightning network. (I wasn't carrying cash, and she no longer had a bank account in El Salvador, and other options would have been more expensive).
What I've seen is that Salvadorans in the U.S., that have bought or sent bitcoin using their U.S. credit/cards with the Chivo Wallet App based in El Salvador, is that have been hit by 1%-3% foreign transaction fees or cash advance fees from their U.S. banks.
So for some larger amounts it may end up being more expensive than a normal remittance.
I'm sad to hear that, I have been optimistic about this helping people actually. Good news is that there are other options besides Chivo, so hopefully conditions improve as the market develops.
Bitcoin doesn't solve the remittance problem any more than any government subsidized app solves it. People still end up using dollars for buy things with. This means for imported goods, dollars still leaves your country. However, only Bitcoins are coming into your country, so government ends up being a bigger and bigger bagholder.
author here. It got dropped for space reasons (it's overlength already), but Chivo didn't get US money transmitter licenses in order as yet, so sending remittances over Chivo is attracting conversion fees from people's banks, even as Chivo doesn't charge them.
I mostly think of Chivo as a real wasted opportunity as a payments system. A government-backed electronic dollar system that worked well, and which subsidised remittances from the US, could have been excellent for El Salvador. Instead they came up with semifunctional rubbish with a massive fraud scandal.
I believe the previous Chivo developers have been fired and a new team is being hired (based on LinkedIn job ads). Trying to find out more about this.
Yeah, isn't it a legal requirement subject to penalties, as you say? Then surely it's fair to measure success of the program on those terms as well -- i.e., is it being used as a currency for daily life? The answer is seemingly not (for technical, social, and speculation reasons), meaning it's fair to comment that this part of the project seems to be a failure. OP can't carve off criticisms they don't like or _personally_ care about.
Cost! And speed! I did a transfer wise last week and it cost me $15 in fees. What is this, ethereum?(a joke cos ethereum is too expensive to be useful for the retail user). I could have sent BTC and it would have been quicker and cheaper.
BTC fees does not include the conversion from currency1 -> btc acc 1-> btc acc 2-> currency 2. Where conversion from 1 currency to another would be more expensive than the BTC fees itselve.
From which currency to which currency did you transfer?
This isn’t true at all. Right now, the actual network costs would be $0.07*2 on chain, and 0.15% for the actual sale at the receiving end on an exchange, and the “true” BTC/foreign currency rate. This beats the bad rates being offered on the forex leg of the wise transfer.
I would rather remit funds by BTC any day, but not everyone at the other end has the competency to handle this yet. One day.
Also, it took days to clear. Most of that time was waiting on the local side for cash to clear. BTC settles every 10 minutes, with a 60 min window for 6 confirmations for security. The markets are 24/7. For countries where withdrawals from exchanges hit the bank account quickly, it can be in the order of days faster…
Wow. That site is very wrong. Their historical data is wrong too. It’s all the same value!! It’s about 100x off reality.
It’s been known since 2020 that it is fiction. Bitcoinfees.net appears to be correct (1-2 sats/vB). https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/ Also shows vast majority in last 24 hours paid <10sats/vB.
I notice that earn is also reporting way way too high numbers. The fact is you can send 1sat/vbyte right now and it will confirm. 7 cents. Anyone actually using BTC will agree with me here.
Look at the mempool. If it’s empty, BTC is super cheap. It is empty right now and frequently is on weekends.
I think in thia case remittance is more of a way to create organic currency supply for btc. If you have btc from your son and the store owner you buy your fruits from has some btc from his son, why not to use btc for trade?
Currency has a gigantic network effect and this is seeding the network.
What I've seen is that Salvadorans in the U.S., that have bought or sent bitcoin using their U.S. credit/cards with the Chivo Wallet App based in El Salvador, is that have been hit by 1%-3% foreign transaction fees or cash advance fees from their U.S. banks.
So for some larger amounts it may end up being more expensive than a normal remittance.