El Salvador Bitcoin legal tender is much bigger news than most realize | Hacker News Reader

El Salvador Bitcoin legal tender is much bigger news than most realize

blockcrunch.co

"The responsibility of creating the plan for this bill is given to Jack Mallers, CEO of bitcoin investment and payments company Zap."

Great to see the synergy between the modern blockchain economy and traditional "bribe El Presidente to let you loot the country" practices.

Have you done any reasearch on the president of El Salvador to support your ad hominem attack. He is more popular than any US president in recent memory (1). I’m guessing the answer is no, that you live in the first world with amazing access to banking services while he is trying to build financial infrastructure for the 70% of his citizens with access to a phone but no bank account.

I don’t mean to call you names but this behavior is coming from bigotry, ignorance and hate for cryptocurrency. I think you are better than that.

(1) https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/nt8hi6/im_from_el_...

He seems quite happy to strike deals with drugs gangs, according to documented police evidence [1].

And five of his associates are known to be corrupt [2].

Pretty impressive for someone who claims/claimed to be anti-corruption [3].

On a global political scale, I think it's pretty accurate to describe him as an errant dictator [4].

I strongly suspect he is open to bribery if he believes it furthers his position, despite his claims to be anti-corruption.

[1] https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/el-salvador-nayib-buk...

[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/18/five-of-salvadoran-...

[3] https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-05-16/nayib-...

[4] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/05/07/salv-m07.html

I read through the sources you listed with interest.

Here is what I found: The first article lists vague claims of corruption by anonymous sources claiming to be from the government. They might be credible or they might be political rivals upset over losing power. It is impossible to say for sure but I wasn’t able to find any corroborating articles.

The second article again uses anonymous sources this time from the US Government. These unnamed sources are from the same US government that, according to Wikipedia, waged a proxy war and attempted coup in EL Salvador which resulted in the 12 years long Salvadorian civil war in the 1980’s (1)

According to Wikipedia: “The United States contributed to the conflict by providing military aid of $1–2 million per day to the government of El Salvador during the Carter and Reagan administrations and provided significant training. The Salvadoran government was considered "friendly" and an ally by the U.S. in the context of the Cold War. By May 1983, US officers started to take over positions in the top levels of the Salvadoran military and were making critical decisions and running the war.”

The last article says his government changed some judges. It doesn’t claim this was illegal though the article does mention his government had just won a 2/3 super-majority popular vote - sounds more democratic than dictatorial to me.

Seriously, read the Wikipedia article to understand the historic role of colonial oppression led by the US that resulted in the economic and social problems his popular-majority elected government is trying to resolve and tell me why we should believe the claims of their former oppressors.

I think the man deserves the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.

Whether or not he is successful in his efforts, I believe him to be sincere, unlike the anonymous cowards cited as sources in the articles you provide.

(1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvadoran_Civil_War

When you switch from central banks to narco banks, it's like choosing werewolves over vampires, both are pretty bad tbh

I didn’t see any reference to Narco banks in any of the articles cited. Did I miss something?

https://elamerican.com/state-department-bukele-corruption/

All these articles seem to implicate his cabinet as corrupt.

According to the article, anonymous members of the US State department leaked documents suggesting members of Bukele’s government are corrupt.

Is this the same US government that waged a secret proxy civil war in El Salvador for 12 long years in the 1980’s? [1]

Would that be the same US State department that, according to Wikipedia [1], spent $1-2 million a day in 1980 dollars to fund the training and deployment of a child army to fight in said civil war, per Wikipedia?

From the article:

> “Relations between El Salvador and the United States are not at their best.”

(Notably, the last times relations between the nations was not so good the US funded a 12 years long proxy civil war fought by child soldiers.)

Critical thinking is important here given the realpolitiks of the situation suggest one would have to be extremely naive to assume these sources are genuine or unbiased on this topic.

It is clear that Bukele’s actions were not looked upon favorably by the US State department and that they may have sent their propaganda arm into overdrive.

The US State department is just doing their job protecting American interests, so you can’t blame them for trying to smear a highly popular democratically-elected Central American leader with a demonstrated economic policy that shifts away from US Dollar hegonomy.

However, it falls on each of us to think critically on the realpolitik here and demand more evidence than the smears of anonymous US state Department sources.

Trump recently tweeted that Bitcoin is bad for the US dollar [2].

This is of course true, but he wasn’t supposed to say the quiet part out load.

By admitting an obvious truth in public, he just made it harder for the US State department and their media lapdogs to spread US friendly propaganda.

Tell me again who is corrupt here?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvadoran_Civil_War

[2] https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/trump-bitcoin-a-scam-us-...

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