World Bank slams bitcoin, declines to help El Salvador's cryptocurrency plan:
Last week, El Salvador's government passed a law to accept bitcoin as legal tender alongside the US dollar. The country receives $6 billion in remittances per year—nearly a quarter of its gross domestic product—and the hope is that bitcoin's lower transaction costs could boost that amount by a few percentage points.
The move was first proposed by the country's president, Nayib Bukele, who said he hoped that in addition to facilitating lower remittance fees, the bitcoin plan would attract investment and provide an avenue for savings for residents, about 70 percent of whom are unbanked. (What Bukele didn't say, but what Bloomberg has reported, is that he and members of his political party have owned bitcoin for years.)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @04:16AM (8 children)
Their only "valuable" exports are mercenaries and gang bangers. They need Bitcoins to hide their illegal shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @04:45AM (5 children)
Turning the whole region into banana republics.
And now America is trying to stem the tide of refugees from Central America, just like Europe against Middle East/Africa.
What goes around, comes around. Shits have consequences.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @05:20AM (4 children)
Yeah, the Americans and Europe definitely have to close the border. Letting these people in is insane. Probably ruined the planet for good, no civilized places to go anymore. Maybe Japan
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @05:33AM (3 children)
Japan? "Civilized?" The one place that got nuked, and probably deserves to get nuked again? That's a good one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @06:16AM (2 children)
Compared to what? How are those honor killings, acid attacks, and genital mutilations going for you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @06:19AM (1 child)
Asia is not Muslim, dumbass.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @09:02AM
Tell that to the Uyghurs and countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, retard.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @08:40AM (1 child)
Better than a MAFIAA ran country.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 19 2021, @04:43PM
*sheesh!* Comparing your torrented Ricky Martin records to a bullet in the back? If you lived down there, you wouldn't be saying such stupid bullshit.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by krishnoid on Friday June 18 2021, @05:34AM
I'm ... kind of ambivalent [youtu.be] about this news.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday June 18 2021, @07:17AM (5 children)
THe World Bank is not a true bank in the way many think of banks. It is an institution made up of banks in the 186 member nations that make it.
It is comprised of and controlled by mostly private banks.
And private banks HATE any currency they don't control. I still expect that if El Salvador doesn't backtrack on using bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies something will happen that will cause a coup, revolution, or other event to overthrow the current government and take the country back to only using currency controlled by private banks.
I found this to be very interesting, and informative about private banks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfEBupAeo4 [youtube.com]
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @09:22AM
Using bitcoin will be worse for their population. So unrest may happen for absolutely different reason.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @11:02AM (3 children)
Thanks for the conspiracy troupes here. Really appreciated. Banks actually don't care about any of that. The World Bank is mostly an American branch of lending for poorer nations. You may want to read about it a tad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Bank [wikipedia.org]
The bottom line is, no one in their right mind would lend money to El Salvador. Just like no one would really lend money to Congo. Of course, if you wish to gamble your 401k, go ahead, buy some El Salvador bonds. I'm sure they will not default!
Fitch Ratings affirms El Salvador at "B-" (LT Int. Scale (foreign curr.) credit rating); outlook negative
Rating Action: Moody's confirms El Salvador's B3 ratings, changes outlook to negative, concluding review for downgrade
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/b3-b.asp [investopedia.com]
Any nation that then makes something used for money laundering and crime, like Bitcoin, their primary currency, while at the same time having major problems with corruption.... alarm bells are going everywhere. Funding institutions like World Bank sure don't want their investment leached by some bureaucrats to some Bitcoins. It's just common sense. Even funnier is that El Salvador doesn't have its own currency - it's using USD. If you have problems with remittances, it has nothing to do with losing money on exchange rates. It makes it even more likely that the bitcoin move is just as a corruption play by the current corrupt regime
But for anything common sense, there are the conspiracy weirdos.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @03:24PM
Oh, wait, they already use USD. Which makes your whole "money laundering and crime" bit complete bullshit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 19 2021, @04:36AM (1 child)
The real reason they hate things like bitcoin is that there is no way to manufacture more of it by dodgy practices like fractional reserve banking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 20 2021, @02:16AM
Sure not everything is perfect with FRB, but the simple fact is that with population growth a flexible money supply is a requirement. With rigid structures it becomes much easier for economic warfare to take down entire countries, the US knows all about it.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @08:40AM (1 child)
...so they're not including the electricity bill in the costs of the transaction?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @09:07AM
They betting on nearly free electric generation from their volcanoes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @10:19AM (4 children)
Bitcoin costs, IIRC, about $20 per transaction in actual money equivalents. Not a big deal if you're sending a few million dollars, prohibitive for small transactions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @01:14PM
That's why they're pre-arranging a $150 million bailout from the IMF. Smart thinking!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 19 2021, @04:38AM (2 children)
Which means that it beats credit cards at somewhere between 500 and 2000, depending on the card.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday June 20 2021, @12:44PM (1 child)
What does this mean? What do these numbers refer to?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 20 2021, @01:09PM
Units of currency. Dollars, pounds, euros, whatever. Credit cards charge between 0.5 and 4% of a transaction. Depending on your card, even at the lowest card rate, a fixed price of $20 per bitcoin transaction become cheaper at $4000.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 18 2021, @02:03PM (1 child)
The core of Bitcoin is strongly transparent, irrefutable records - which could be a major strength if it were developed to enhance that.
Unfortunately, early adopters wanted the opposite - and the majority even believed that BTC was untraceable. You can't have untraceable cryptocurrency - if you did, you could double (or, actually, infinitely multiple) spend a single token.
The strength of proof of work is primarily in recruiting the transaction validation network. Replace that with something that doesn't require excessive work and you really have something. Something like Ripple - which I assume is why Ripple is so dogged by the regulators, because it actually has a shot at being a broadly adopted disruptive technology, if the regulators would back it instead of attacking it.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @03:24PM
Finally Ripple is getting some love after all these years as being known as the quaff of choice for the hobo class.