El Salvador passes its Bitcoin Law – and it's a Tether scam
davidgerard.co.uk
davidgerard.co.uk
I'm not sure I follow the argument here. Why can't the family continue to use Western Union or one of its competitors to send USD remittances if Tether bothers them and Tether would in fact be involved?
> Well, that’s easy — you can cash out your USDT balance as US dollars at a Strike-operated Bitcoin ATM!
> How many Bitcoin ATMs are there in El Salvador?
> Two. ...
I guess it's possible, but this sounds rather speculative. Why on earth would someone in the US send Tether as a remittance? Unlike bitcoin, which will be treated as legal tender, tether will enjoy no such status.
If Tether can't be converted to USD easily, it won't be sent as a remittance. There may be some initial confusion, but I suspect that word of mouth about bad experiences would spread quite quickly given what's at stake.
The author also seems to be completely discounting the possibility that over time El Salvadorans may come to prefer remittances to be sent in bitcoin and used immediately to pay for things. No need to invoke tether at all in that case.
They can, but this is a bad remittance channel.
> Why on earth would someone in the US send Tether as a remittance?
Per the article, this is literally the supposed use case that the CEO of Strike puts forward.
> over time El Salvadorans may come to prefer remittances to be sent in Bitcoin and used immediately to pay for things.
It's possible, but the past ten years of bitcoin failing at the merchant use case suggests otherwise. I won't say it can't happen; but given bitcoin's past repeated failure, I'd want to see it happening.
Please avail yourself of publicly available sources of information
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210605005045/en/Str...
https://jimmymow.medium.com/announcing-strike-global-2392b90...
Taxes might actually the only 'commerce' bitcoin is good for - fairly high value, low frequency. Bitcoin/Eth are both too expensive/slow to really use for everyday shopping/etc.
This is a little like if I asked you, "well, what's the problem with a Ponzi scheme? If it bothers you so much, just invest in a different fund instead."
A Ponzi keeps stringing its victims along, but a family receiving a remittance will want spend it quickly.
I'm not sure where the author is getting his information but Strike runs on Lightning Network, this is the first I've ever heard this claim and doubt it's legitimate.
Is it possible the author has confused Strike.org for Strike.me ?
https://www.coindesk.com/strike-launches-bitcoin-lightning-p...
https://jimmymow.medium.com/announcing-strike-global-2392b90...
>Strike then takes the bitcoins and automatically converts them back into USDT (synthetic digital dollar known as Tether) using its real-time automated risk management and trading infrastructure.
So the user has an *option* of Tether if the prefer, how does that equate in your mind to "a tether scam"?
Followed immediately by:
>What if an El Salvador user wants local currency in exchange for their Strike USDT balance? Are they stuck with synthetic digital dollars? Nope.
>Remember, Strike remains interoperable with the Bitcoin and Lightning networks. We don’t need to install Strike network tellers and ATMs around the world, we are built on top of an open network, the work has already been done for us.
So are you just choosing to ignore statements that do not conform to your narrative or did you skip this portion? As it directly contradicts your previous statement of Strike not running on Bitcoin / Lightning.