> If the president wants to gamble his own wealth on bitcoin this is absolutely fine.
So, how would you fix El Salvador and give their people the best chance at a good life?
A lot of the anti-crypto sentiment on HN portrayed El Salvador's actions as a very bad and irresponsible move, but I'd say that the President of El Salvador is not only making the right move for his country, but personally has far more skin in the game than any democratically elected leader from most other countries. If his move doesn't work out in the long-run, he will likely eventually be violently removed from office. Hell, he risks assassination from other countries too merely for "stepping out of his lane", so to speak.
Why is it the right move for his country? How much of a gamble is any action when you don't have much to lose?
I don't want to disparage El Salvadoran people in any way: but the reality is that they're a very poor country with a very bad education system and not much industry and have had major crime problems, and many of their people who build up some success and resources in life still see their best path to success as finding a way to get into other countries. Their only real path out of this situation is either humanity inventing free energy and replicators to give them unlimited resources, or them taking a shot at being a friendly jurisdiction for the next major industry and technology before everybody else truly embraces it.
They're like a small-market NBA team with no real chance of winning a title without tanking. Everybody is going to rip them for tanking, but that's their only real path to win.
El Salvador is now in a non-zero position to be a wealthier country in the long run. That's much better than the basically 0 percent chance they had before their crypto actions.