Will This Be the First Country Bankrupted by Crypto?

> What I'm I missing?

> The chaotic budget management by the government is way more likely to bankrupt the country.

Chaotic budget management bankrupts a country for the Nth time will not draw enough clicks.

> What I'm I missing?

One of the topics that hasn't been talked about here and is mentioned by the article is how the Salvadoran government detained one of El Salvador's most known developers for openly talking about bitcoin before the adoption.

> loss is small relative to the country's balance sheet

The bigger question is, in which of El Salvador's government institution's balance sheet are those bitcoin accounted for?

I mean, from government announcements we know that there is a company that runs the state wallet that also runs a subsidized pet hospital using bitcoin profits.

But we no longer have any way to ask about that kind of stuff, because the well-functioning FOIA equivalent we had in El Salvador no longer works as it did before.

Did I mention that the Congress' president actually told journalists to run away an ask asylum in other countries because they were unwanted in El Salvador? While presiding congress, live on our CSPAN equivalent.

https://twitter.com/CronistaOscar/status/1516602424672280579

> But even if it goes to zero the country will be fine.

El Salvador had never had an unstable currency in its history. I mean we never were Argentina/Colombia/Venezuela or other Latin American countries where exchange rates look like a roller coaster. Never before in history we had had a local currency losing 50% of its value in months. For many, that sharp drop in value was a first time experience.

It doesn't seem so much that it is a legal currency, but all the chaos and suffering the push to make it the primary currency is causing. When headlines talk about bitcoin mining hubs using geothermal energy, people are reading energy price hikes and worsening deficit as more energy is imported, and that they don't get to benefit because they don't get to own the miners. And a 'small loss relative to the country's balance sheet' would make an absolutely huge difference if that loss had instead been spent on education or health. The discretionary spending in most countries is 'small relative to the country's balance sheet'.

> Mario Gómez was briefly detained by police in El Salvador on suspicion of being involved in a phishing scam and then released.

But weren't those suspicions just some tweets by one of the president's parties congress members that were deleted afterwards? And amplified by government aligned social media (:

> There are many vocal critics of President Bukele and his bitcoin policy in El Salvador's Assembly and the legacy press. None have been jailed.

Not jailed, just "kindly" invited to ask for asylum in other countries by the president of the legislative assembly (:

>El Salvador’s politics were dominated by two parties rooted in the Cold War: One was the conservative ARENA party, which has its origins in U.S.-backed death squads

Not exactly. ARENA was never the same organization as death squads. There may have been some people who simpathized with both or were member with both. But ARENA never had an armed branch.

In contrast, the armed guerrilla though, was actually converted to a political party as part of the peace traty. This was actually something very remarkable that has not happend often in the world. In which an armed resistance is converted to a party. Switching from bullets to ballots. Something quite remarkable actually :)