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Comment by ckdarby | Hacker News Reader

Can someone with expertise or background chime in why the IMF is even making this statement?

Bitcoin is very volatile and offers no consumer protection whatsoever. If a developing nation encourages citizens to buy into Bitcoin for use as legal tender and then Bitcoin crashes (leaving the citizens who bought it with nothing) the result would be an international financial crisis and the IMF would step in to help resolve the matter.

Additionally, Bitcoin in particular has structural issues (transaction fees, limited transaction rate driven by block size limits) which make it poorly suited for use as legal tender.

Yes, Lightning exists. I know. But it's essentially a system of private IOUs -- it's not something which would always be available to settle a debt between any two people.

The IMF regularly reviews the finances of different countries and makes recommendations. The report guides the government of the country as well as other countries which may provide assistance. This report is part of the IMF's usual cycle and is not in response to President Bukele making bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador, although it discusses that issue. Like most countries El Salvador runs a deficit and relies on foreigners to buy its bonds and financial assistance from other countries.

> Can someone with expertise or background chime in why the IMF is even making this statement?

Because the IMF is right now deeply involved in “stabilizing” Costa Rica’s economy, notionally for effects of the pandemic, at the government’s request.

IMF is the closest thing we have to a global entity responsible for managing currency supply and distribution.

Bitcoin undermines their existence.

Hello, just a heads up, your account is shadow banned, and unless someone who sees it 'vouches' for your comments, they wont be seen by normal users.

Is mine?

No.

I’m a normal user and I can see their message. Has it been vouched for in the past 4 minutes? My settings are still the HN defaults.

I vouched for it so that I could reply.

They are not shadow banned. They were explicitly banned.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29091010

If there's something in the comment you want to respond to, great: then add your comment.

So, um, what does "banned" mean if they can continue to post?

As typically used, the term "shadow banned" is a ban without alerting the user that they are banned. That's not the case here. On HN, "banning" means to to have your posts be dead by default. And "banned" is the language 'dang himself used in the message to the user.

There are also numerous bans with no notice at all, just a sudden stream of gray comments that are 0 minutes old.

Yes, there is also autobanning and filtering software. But that is not what happened here.

Wow got banned for saying a 200% tax on gasoline is another example of a government looking to tax the population into poverty and dependence.

The entire web is 1984 now. Crazy couple years

We banned your account for breaking HN's rules, as I explained to you when I banned it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127479.

It has nothing to do with your particular statement about gasoline taxes or anything else. You could have made exactly the opposite statement and it would have had the same effect. The deeper issue is that HN is not a site for people who want to defeat their political enemies; it's a site for people who want to have curious conversation and learn from each other. I don't think that's too hard to understand.

Bukele is shorting the dollar by issuing dollar bonds and buying Bitcoin. Of course, the IMF is not happy.

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