[edwnj]

The bet being made by El Salvador is to get the immense benefits of being an early adopter at the cost of short term volatility and risk of bitcoin failing.

Regardless of your opinion on this, you have to at least wait till the proposition plays out before passing judgement. You have to see if they can withstand the short term volatility and whether bitcoin succeeds or not.

Calling the experiment failure before the results is silly to say the least.

[el-salvador]

> The bet being made by El Salvador is to get the immense benefits of being an early adopter at the cost of short term volatility and risk of bitcoin failing.

Salvadoran here.

It's hard to see the benefits if there is no transparency on the process.

If we could even have a dashboard and an official website were we could have access to audited reports about the results of this bet, and see how its value varies over time. Then I might agree.

Maybe just a graph like the one found Norway's Sovereign Fund website

https://www.nbim.no/

In reality we just don't. Public information is limited or contradictory. The few public information available includes a tweet about the president buying bitcoin from his phone while not wearing clothes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/26/el-salvador-...

As far as I know, the trust that holds El Salvador bitcoin doesn't have a public website. And the state wallet's website doesn't publish an address or phone number.

The only time I've seen their address is a receipt from a veterinary hospital run by the same state company operating the wallet, in which every procedure costs only US $0.25 because they are subsidized by "bitcoin profits"

El Salvador is a strange country sometimes.

[edwnj]

I 100% agree with you.

El Salvadors adoption could have definitely been handled in a more transparent and self sovereign manner. I really wasn't big fan of forcing companies to accept it..

But then again, you never get everything you want. I guess the best we could do is praise them for the good and provide feedback when they miss the mark..

[croon]

No, I specifically called it a failure regardless of results, because results of surviving a base jump without a parachute doesn't affect the merit of the decision to jump.

See: Survivorship bias.

[edwnj]

Here’s a proposition: - Gold got dethroned from its 5k year rule as the global store of value because of globalisation & speed of commerce. FDR ban & dollar being taken off the gold standard sealed its fate. - Gold is replaced by the fiat currency of the global economic & military hegemon. - Central banking & MMT is deeply corrupt & dysfunctional to the core. - Digital alternatives were attempted but failed because of the double spend problem which in turn required private centralisation - Satoshi invented bitcoin which solves double spend problem. Through the invention of Proof of Work and the use of supply limit, Satoshi puts bitcoin up as a contender for global store of value. - A decade later, Bitcoin is in the zeitgeist. 100s billion in market cap. Best investors in the world are hedging for/against bitcoin (Paul Tudor Jones). Countries are banning/integrating bitcoin. - Basically the bet is on.

Now we have a game theoretic situation where the early adopters take the most risk but are going to reap the most benefits.

To call this a "base jump without parachute" is asinine and completely unwarranted. There is a clear bet going on with the smartest people in the world on both sides.

Some believe the “rulers” of the current system will never allow this to happen therefore we will get CBDC’s instead. Others believe, the collapse of the current debt passed system is inevitable therefore bitcoin is a lifeboat.

Either way, china isn’t using the same technology invented by satoshi (without the PoS & decentralisation) for no reason. The US isn’t thinking about thinking about creating a FedCoin for no reason. India isn’t building one for no reason.

The race is on. Its a bet. There is risks on both side but its definitely not a one sided thing to say the least.

[edwnj]

Also those are not just the 2 bets btw. El Salvador still supports the dollar.

There are those who envision a world full of privacy coins, CBDC's, bitcoin, company coins etc..

In this world, bitcoin will be the ruler of rulers. As in, Bitcoin will reward disciplined countries and punish undisciplined countries. Just like gold did in the past.