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Comment by kristjansson | Hacker News Reader

Conversely if that’s all it takes to induce them to give up it tells you something about the benefits they felt were accruing from BTC.

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They're not giving up on Bitcoin. In fact, it's likely that they'll use the loan to buy more Bitcoin.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/el-salvadors-bitc...

They already are. Just bought 20

Who are they possible gonna offload that bitcoin on to? Their neighbor? That doesn't strike me as a socially acceptable thing to do.

There's a deep and liquid market for Bitcoin - El Salvador isn't even a major holder in the grand scheme of things. I don't see what's socially unacceptable about selling Bitcoin to a willing buyer; it's simply a transaction between two parties, no different from trading foreign currency like USD. There's also no indication that they plan to spend or trade their Bitcoin anytime soon.

> i don't see what's socially unacceptable about selling Bitcoin to a willing buyer

Well you're accepting payment for something people are expecting to hold value. Bitcoin only has value to a small subset of people with money. I'd definitely judge you for selling it if you have options for financial transactions via SWIFT.

Keep in mind that El Salvador is tiny. This is like 14 days of El Salvador's entire GDP. Or scaled to GDP, it's like giving a $1.2 Trillion loan to the USA.

El Salvador has been in the IMF debt trap since 1949. It’s not just a billion dollar loan we’re talking about. Although scaled to GDP it’s quite a lot

Is that really the message?

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