Is El Salvador's Bitcoin bet paying off? | Hacker News Reader

Is El Salvador's Bitcoin bet paying off?

bbc.com

40 pointsbelter59 comments

If you only look at the Bitcoin the governments hold, El Salvador is now roughly on par with the USA in terms of Bitcoin per capita:

El Salvador: 3000 Bitcoin / 6M people = 0.0005 Bitcoin per person

USA: 200K Bitcoin / 300M people = 0.0007 Bitcoin per person

But if you also look at the private sector, the US is probably way ahead. Microstrategy alone holds over 150K Bitcoin. Coinbase is said to hold over 2M Bitcoin. Same for mining. The USA has by far the most capable Bitcoin mining infrastructure.

For now, it looks like the USA manages the same feat in regards to crypto as it did with the internet: Be the main player in a huge landgrab with no other country able to even come close.

And we see the same story play out in AI too. With the main players being OpenAI, Microsoft and Google who are all in the US.

I wish there was a study which analyzes what the magic formula of the US is. I have not seen one yet. It seems like the US is unstoppable when it comes to being the brain of the world. I don't live in the US. But me and everyone around me is connected to each other via US technology. US phones, US software, US services. And it looks like this will only continue to increase with self driving cars and other robots being the basis of all our everyday tasks.

I believe it has to do with the fact that the US possesses a vast amount of land, abundant natural resources, a long-standing democracy, no wars on its territory for an extended period, and a relatively large population size.

If you compare that with other wealthy countries such as Germany, then you'll see that they have less land, fewer natural resources, haven't had democracy for as long, were divided until the late '80s, and do not have as large a population size.

Therefore, just by sheer numbers, it makes sense that everything in the US is bigger. Moreover, Germany, for instance, has a culture where wealth is accumulated across a large number of medium-sized companies, whereas in the US, wealth is increasingly concentrated at the top (for example, the ones you mentioned). These are, of course, the entities everyone knows and talks about.

It's beyond that – culture. Being ambitious in US is rewarded and celebrated. Plus having the most powerful military in the world makes others want to invest more into the US due to the likelihood it will still be around.

There's no reward for being JUST ambitious in the US, there's a lot more involved. Luck and willingness to exploit the work of others is a big part of what's required to earn the reward.

Adding on to the culture -

1. Even if your idea seems crappy, investors will give you millions to bootstrap it. Uber, Twitter, Doordash, AirBnB, Coinbase, Instacart - all sounded funny before they became billion dollar behemoths.

2. Social norm of hire fast, fire fast - allow startups to quickly scale if they sense some opportunity and quickly ramp down in case that doesn't pan out. Again, different countries have different trade-offs around this. But the American tradeoff makes it much easier to build and grow a startup.

Are you under the impression that being ambitious is looked down upon in Germany or anywhere else outside of a bunch of dictatorships?

I don't think there is a simple answer, but I'm sure that quite a few three letter agencies are part of it. And the dollar as the defacto currency of the world since decades. Dollars have a lot of leverage about a lot of important stuff.

> I wish there was a study which analyzes what the magic formula of the US is.

I'll take a try from the geographical determinism viewpoint, which I believe in 100%:

* Have natural resources in vast quantities: temperate arable land (cold enough to have winter 'resetting the fields', hot enough for high yields), oil. Cheap oil means cheap mining, cheap cost of transformation, cheap transports. Cheap everything.

* Unify the country from natural border to natural border, yielding very little need for domestic defense

* Be somewhat big, so that you can bootstrap any innovative company to a massive market and economies of scale quickly. Big also yields resiliency

* Give relative freedom to compete, and give it early in history

These 4 item are IMHO the base of many others which reinforce this strength (WW2 winner with no destructions at home, petrodollar enforcement, Hollywood machine, tech first-mover advantage)

----

Comparatively:

* Middle-East, Africa, India, Central America, SE Asia, don't have the 'winter reset'. Nor do they a need to develop a culture that had to plan and organize for a whole year; one part being food-rich, the other quite not

* Russia has huge unsafe borders (mandatory defense spending), elongated country (need for very creepy/scary internal security services, freedoms are quite limited)

* Europe has depleted its natural resources (but benefited from the industrial revolution then!), was divided for a long time (no big market), has no oil

* China has little oil, had a population matching its food production with very little to spare, had low freedom to compete

* Other parts are not big (Oceania), nor were populated early (South America, Australia)

----

For the future, the main changes will be fossil fuels depletion, and climate change. Here is what could happen:

* De(petro)dollarisation, as oil depletes and is less used in the industry

* World going a tad multipolar. This means less pax americana, more wars

* Resource wars shifting from oil to key materials for electrification like copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt

* Efficiency going down, massive simplification of lifestyles

* Lots of countries going bankrupt like Lebanon. Can't feed without importing? Don't have industry that can export? Enjoy your worthless money

* Fertilizers going more expensive with gas depletion. Lower amounts of higher priced food. Extensive world food programs

* All this right when we need resources to adapt to climate change

The US is also the sink for which brain drains around the wold siphon into. Overall opportunity and in some cases literal freedom to take such opportunity causes more innovation and invites people willing to contribute their talents to the US rather than their own country.

No it isn't paying off.

The people in El Salvador aren't using it, and not even for 'payments'.

https://restofworld.org/2022/el-salvador-bitcoin/

Just because 'Number Go Up' doesn't mean there is any utility in these fictitious tokens.

Another thing, Unrealised gains are just that, Unrealised, not real.

So this is still not 'paying off' unless El Salvador fully gets out of gambling a portion of their government's money on the Bitcoin token, instead of buying every top.

But of course, they and everyone else is staying in because...

'Number Go Up'

their bonds seem to do pretty well..

Scanning some articles and photos in them, it feels like a massive dystopian cyber scam.

In other news: "First-time rider on roller-coaster happy about the steady climb and great view"

Oooh. The HN hivemind is not going to like this. More seriously, as I understand it the recent price rises are because it looks like its going to be possible to buy Bitcoin ETFs and the like more easily?

How is that easier?

The whole point of crypto is that it's easier to trade on than the traditional assets.

For individuals yes, but not for institutions. And these will treat Bitcoin ETFs as any other speculative asset and enjoy its liquidity.

Institutions don't execute themselves and go through the sell-side regardless.

Not really though. The point of Bitcoin is not about being easier, is about being a monetary system which is not in control of any single entity or government.

> monetary system

Bitcoin is not even close to being that nor it ever could. It's entirely a speculative assets not an actual currency (I couldn't think of a token/system less suitable to be used as actual money even if I tried very hard).

Ugh. I initially wrote currency, but knew I'd get a pedant to disagree with that definition, which I did get anyway. You're arguing its legislative and societal role, I'm calling it for what it is: a thing whose primary role is to store and exchange abstract, agreed upon value.

Just tell me what to call that.

Maybe it could be called a non-productive asset in the broader sense?

>Just tell me what to call that.

Just roll with Satoshi and call it "electronic cash".

Bitcoin is almost never used as a currency in the sense that you're describing. It is almost always used as a vehicle for (unregulated) speculation.

> a thing whose primary role is to store and exchange abstract, agreed upon value.

To be fair that's a hard one. Token? Speculative asset? I mean it's closer in most ways to stuff like gold coins or diamonds than real money.

> role is to store and exchange abstract, agreed upon value

Yet most people only buy it and/or hold it entirely for speculation/"investment" reasons.

3.7M is basically nothing for a country. El Salvador's GDP is $74 billion, so this is 0.005% of it.

And this gain does nothing unless the BTC is sold, and the proceeds benefit El Salvador in some way. This also assumes that amount of BTC can be sold. They need to find an entity that will send them ~$120M for their BTC, and better hope that this won't crash the market.

$120M is, as you said, not that much in the Bitcoin market.

It's not much in the market at large, but you need to find some party or several that has $120M sitting around, and willing to exchange that for BTC.

I expect making that transaction isn't that easy.

Could literally just sell that on one of the major exchanges over the course of a few hours

I've sold $8M on Coinbase Pro within minutes by setting a limit order (not a market order - although I'm sure some people will reply without knowing the difference) and it didn't impact the price

It would be an over the counter sale. Even using an exchange directly, together Coinbase and Bybit are trading $1B/day BTCUSD - there's no shortage of buyers.

And, all this has to be compared with what could have been achieved with a more typical investment (which would likely have carried less risk) over the same period. If they can make 4.5% speculating on high-risk commodities and 4.3% with low-risk lending to stable businesses, it's much more responsible for a nation-state to choose the latter.

You don't need to "find an entity" to sell just $120m worth of BTC, just click the market sell button and you'll still get a decent price

El Salvador won't ever "sell" their bitcoin. Your grandkids will be working for it.

> The HN hivemind is not going to like this

A government gambling taxpayer money in a virtual casino? What's not to like?

The HN hivemind is just admiring the current price of Tulips

After 14 years that's the best you can come up with?

It's amazing how a board full of computer science nerds can't appreciate the accomplishment of perfectly solving the double-spend problem in an open-source distributed digital ownership network.

That's a hint for you. Guys Danning and Kruger have something to say about this phenomenon :) .

Yes, you nailed it. They lack expertise in the fundamentals of economics. How can someone understand the true importance of the solution if they can't see the problem?

Exactly, as we know computer science knowledge completely precludes people of learning any other idea. Our RAM fills out and whoops - no space left :) .

Looking at the price rise from the trading perspective, traders have been drawing lines and for a couple of months now been saying that the large bull run is around the corner. And honestly, if you zoom out and look at just the lines and the last few large bull and bear runs and don't ask anymore questions, it really does look like it's time for a reversal.

Seeing people hopping in and buying BTC in hopes of riding the next big wave in hopes that the price goes to at least 70k.

Honestly I'm interested in this particular wave since given the recent currency devaluations that have happened since the last BTC peak in November 2021 I'm wondering what the odds are that BTC actually hits that magic 100k number if this is the big bull run people have been waiting for. And if it does, what happens then since that's the magic number the Bitcoin absolutist (maxis?) folks have been waiting to tout.

So basically, not sure if the current wave is anything to do with the actual news or just the retail trading that's going on.

People have been predicting far more than 100k for a long time, so I don't think people taking about 100k can be reasonably described as maxis... Highest prediction I've seen is maybe 1m.

100k is a pretty mainstream belief now, with e.g Standard Chartered predicting it by year end 2024.

Why do you think so? El Salvador gamble has failed spectacularly and HN crowd is skeptical about tokenbro scammers, so this checks out I think :) .

TLDR: We don't know because there's no transparency from the president.

What kind of transparency are you missing? I think it's one of the most transparent projects the presidency has given about. You can access all the information publicly.

The article talks at length of the total lack of transparency. The government spokesperson doesn't address the problem at all when probed.

Not OP, but it reads like the broader costs of the bitcoin project are guesses (wallet development, promotion, ...), not published numbers - is that all available?

As I understand it, there is no public information on what is held and how profitable the endeavour has been, and the specific graph along with the tweet that is linked in this article is a third-part that merely estimates holdings?

The only information on the actual Bitcoin holdings has been released in tweets by the president, which don't include anything like a Bitcoin wallet address, so there's no proof that the government actually owns them, and no public body is tracking those investments. If the article is true - and I have no reason to doubt those particular details - then this really feels like a "trust me, bro" situation.

Hard to get much more transparent than bitcoin.

You need to read the article - the point is that the president has given no details of the holdings except in tweets, and has not answered questions about the enormous sums of money used to promote the scheme, including a $30 "bonus" for all citizens over 30.

I don’t much care that the BBC is too incompetent/lazy to do research on assets which are so insanely traceable and transparent and complains that a public body isn’t tracking things. All it says to me is I shouldn’t read the BBC and instead follow journalists like Coffeezilla who actually understand the subject they’re reporting on and spend time researching and expose the financial mismanagement related to crypto by doing actual blockchain analysis.

They didn’t even seem to try. They just got some important sounding experts to complain and called it a day.

It is important for public accountability that a public body tracks these kinds of things. Why should citizens of a country have to become experts in a subject when the government should be transparent about what they're doing in the first place? This is pretty basic stuff.

Also, as I said, there are other things they're not being transparent about, like the sums of money used to promote the scheme. You can't find that on the blockchain.

They aren't using bitcoin, they are trying to use a proprietary closed variant of it, loosely linked to the mainnet.

The BBC is a weird publication. They never use interesting language, yet they always make it very clear who they do and don't like.

That's ideology for you.

It's a matter of degree. No source is free of bias or ideology so it's not particularly interesting to call the BBC "ideological" as it's rather like calling a tree "green" (don't pick holes in that metaphor, please)

My point is - your comment doesn't really add much as you're not saying whether you think the BBC is unusual and if so - in what way.

I find BBC articles to be so hopelessly biased they're not really worth reading.

Biased in which direction?

Because I've heard complaints from both ends of the spectrum for many years.

And where are you from, yourself? The UK?

Betteridge

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