Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by kasperni | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

kasperni

Every day, this is getting more and more ridiculous.

View on HN

This is undoubtably a bold move by El Salvador, but I think dismissing it at "ridiculous" isn't very productive.

This is an incredible power move, have to applaud the audacity.

US-protected elections in 3...2...

Tagging it as "ridiculous" calls for a minimal clarification

Like maybe there are more pressing problems than making bitcoin with this electricity supply. I dont know but it feels wasted on a fad.

They are doing it to make money how is making money a fad? The reality of living in a poor nation like this is that unless they take a gamble they will most likely continue with the same level of violence and poverty. Its very easy to look down on people from an ivory tower though and call it a waste.

> They are doing it to make money

In no scenario does "they" refer to El Salvador's poor population, especially not the indigenous peoples. The money will go to the colonizing foreign investors and circulate in things like CDOs. A few crumbs that fall off the table will go to improving the lives of the upper end of El Salvador's people, and incidentally some crumbs of the crumbs might fall down to the rest of the population. Trickle down, eh?

You defeated your own argument :) I’m referring to the whole nation as poor which it is. Poor people rarely benefit from any government economic policies but in order to have them the government needs to be in a place to offer them to start with.

There’s some other points to be argued such as people now are holding an asset that is volatile but deflationary in nature by default and they have the option to convert and hold a currency which will lose value over time (USD). I’m not saying “bitcoin is going to save them” but its at least a novel approach that i think is worth exploring for countries in this position.

Some crumbs of the crumbs doesn't invalidate my argument, it just demonstrates rising inequality: in other words, the benefits will disproportionately accrue to the wealth foreign investors.

I think this is a real problem in the West.

Consider how much brain power and resources have been spent on quant finance and crypto now in the past 20 years.

Imagine if all those resources had been spent on something more productive.

Think of the worldwide effort, resources and brain power spent on memes since the creation of the internet, if we didn't create the internet surely we could be sending people to other galaxies by now.

You live in a country with a functional banking industry open to almost everyone and a function currency run by your government. You have no frame of reference in which to understand how things work in El Salvador. 70% of people don't have a bank account, the official currency is that of another country. A major source of their GDP is money sent back to El Salvador from people workit abroad. Just because it doesn't seem like a pressing problem to you, does not mean it isn't a pressing problem for some people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com