If you need to go to the IMF for a loan of ~3% of your GDP to mitigate the risks associated with Bitcoin, well, that's a pretty good sign that adopting Bitcoin as legal tender was a pretty disastrous failure.
One of them being that El Salvador lost affordable access to the international bond market for a good part of the past years due to higher country investment risk, there were multiple reasons for that that are too long for one comment.
Some for the consequences have been:
The government switched to funding their bonds locally, including a good chunk of the local banks deposits which then the banks had to refinance to a longer longer term.
The government has been taking a good chunk of the pension funds with no interest paid back. Few details about this deal are available because the pension fund administrators and government supervisors have stopped publishing most of the financial reports for months.
And you thought OKRs were bad! Ha ha ha, reports suck? Let's really make reporting consequential for individuals, like in China.
The irony is just that "reporting" is not a popular human activity, and why we have things like GAAP and try to enforce the rule of law...
The IMF gave them 1.4 billion dollars to mitigate the risk of bitcoin to the IMF. A subtle but important difference.
You need to be functionally illiterate to draw that take from the announcement. Read the thing, be informed.
https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2024/12/18/pr-24485-el-...
El Salvador wants to borrow money. The IMF is willing to lend it, but sees El Salvador's Bitcoin policies as a risk to getting their money back.
From the IMF's perspective it is a risk to El Salvador's economy and therefore the repayment of the IMF's loan.
~ You may want to review the Hacker News Guidelines for commenting. Your comment is out of line with a few of them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In addition, the whole country ditched Bitcoin as a payment system as soon as they cached out their sign on bonus. How is a national currency depicted as a success if no one uses it at all once they cached out the free money?
Crypto bros need to stop moving the goal posts they themselves plant arbitrarily and against any reason.
Was that the goal of the loan? How did you come to this conclusion?
"The program is anchored on improving the underlying primary balance by around 3½ percent of GDP over 3 years, to put the ratio of public debt to GDP on a firm downward path after peaking at 85 percent of GDP in 2024. High quality measures, worth 1½ percent of GDP in 2025, already included in the approved budget, will reduce the wage bill, spending on goods and services, and transfers to municipalities. To ensure fiscal sustainability and a further reduction in borrowing costs, reform efforts will center on strengthening the efficiency of the civil service, the viability of the pension system, and revenue mobilization. Fiscal consolidation will be conducted in a manner that strengthens support for the most vulnerable and protects priority public investment."
The assessment of their economy seems broadly positive
“The Salvadoran economy has steadily expanded since the pandemic, on the back of robust remittances and a remarkable pick-up in tourism, and amid an improved security situation, with climate shocks having only temporary negative effects. Meanwhile, the current account deficit has continued to narrow, and inflation has fallen further – supported also by lower global commodity prices. The fiscal situation continues to improve very gradually, and recent liability management operations have substantially lowered near-term financing needs, in the context of sharply lower sovereign spreads."
“Building on this progress, and recognizing El Salvador’s pending macroeconomic and structural challenges, the IMF-supported program aims to strengthen fiscal and external stability and help create the conditions for stronger and more inclusive growth."
2. That statement refers to government holding bitcoin as reserves. Which has little relation to use of Bitcoin in the country as legal tender.
Yeah I guess bitcoin is only allowed to go UP everything negative is always false! There's no way that virtual beanie-babies couldn't overcome the evil IMF!
The "store of value" trait of money has nothing to do with the investment angle. It literally means value you store. It's the assurance that it retains it's value so to allow you to use it in the future to purchase something just like you could do today.
Yes, because that's the value of money. Bitcoin isn't money. It's a speculative asset precisely because people are hoping its value will only go up.
This is the same for any currency trading.
I think crypto proponents in general share this inability to understand the fact that one of the most basic traits of money is stability of it's value, and anything that fails to meet this basic requirement is simply useless as a currency.
I have $1,000.
I believe that tomorrow, my $1,000 will be worth $2,000.
Why would I ever spend my money?
Hence, economy freezes.
This is so plainly obvious to everyone except crypto zealots I literally gasped seeing your comment.
This is bad.
> Yet it results in more spending but on what?
Well near target inflation rates (which is a positive non-zero number) it results in a mix between consumption and investment.
This is good.
High consumption has been improving the economy, and destroying the earth. I'm not saying I have the answers, but it's not so simple.
It is very good that the default thing to do with excess money is invest it.
This isn't about a decision to buy bread and milk for your breakfast. It's about the decision on whether you invest in a grocery store vs let your money sit in a bank. If doing nothing is more profitable than doing something then society as a whole will gravitate towards generating no economic activity. This has disastrous consequences because the majority of people in a society do not have the luxury of having investments to live off their dividends.
You're operating off a false premise. Do you think all economic activity would be less profitable than the interest rate offered by deflation?
The whole point of investing in any business is to make a return. Giving businesses competition in the form of deflationary currencies will not eradicate businesses from being formed, and there's no evidence to suggest these businesses will be less profitable than holding a deflationary currency.
We see this in various cryptocurrencies claiming to be deflationary with the concept of 'yield', which shows investing to be a function of their wealth, interest, and expectation of return. Inflation does not need to be in the equation for this type of development.
[1] Read this for a more comprehensive view of deflation from an economist who lived through it: https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Changes-Production-Distribut...
of course you are just trolling ("LOL") and you are incurious to any evidence or argument that contradicts your straight-from-cable-news talking points.
As far as deflation in the 1800s, are you referring to in 1818 after a credit collapse cratered England's economy and then spread to the US and put it into a recession; or maybe the Panic of 1837 which triggered a depression until the mid 1840s?; or do you mean the Panic of 1873 which triggered the Long Depression that lasted until 1899?
Which one of those are good examples we should look to?
how could panics be what I'm talking about? we are talking about price levels, or I'm trying to at least.
Remind me, why is the target inflation rate 2-3% again? It couldn't be that it's the amount of money creation they can get away with without devaluing the currency so much that it destabilises into hyperinflation could it?
I'm just having fun - I'm sure I'm completely wrong
Because empirically it seems to yield a pretty sustainable mixture of consumption, investment, and savings, while also not risking a wage-price spiral.
You tell me what the target inflation rate should be and point to some moments in history informing that target so I can go read about them.
Starting again with a hard money, we would thrive, instead of being enslaved by a system that continuously stealthily, steals the value out of the fruits of our labour (at a rate of ~7% year) and gives it to the bankers and those closest to them.
It's like saying - "if we have some money that keeps going up in value, we won't need to work anymore and unemployment figures will go up - that's terrible - we must not allow it to happen!"
And I need to do this today or i’ll starve on the street.
I could delay buying a new laptop, but that’s a personal preference. I still need one at some point.
That’s why I would spend my money, because there are things I need or want.
This is bad.
In fact, you'll only ever invest in highly speculative investments because they're the only things that might possibly justify the opportunity cost of your currency just accruing value.
This is bad.
... although as a form of currency (as opposed to an investment) for El Salvador, it looks like it's a failure
Also thinking, since it's extremely difficult to regulate, was wondering if some very clever people with huge holdings have formed a cartel and are doing a lot of price manipulation to prevent it from fully collapsing (maybe even during a rise in price, causing it to drop early to prevent a major run up). But that's just a theory.
I dont know what the future hodls but it’s looking pretty good for bitcoin so far
Sure that you can always point some exotic and rare exceptions to prove differently but even yourself don't use it on normal daily financial operations, and no, Lightning isn't even bitcoin so please don't argue with that.
There are more things backing up the value rise for that old tech. Just please diversify into other areas so you don't come out empty handed in some years from now.
The future always looks good right before a crash. You really don't want a currency as unstable as bitcoin as your legal ledger. we would have had 2 crashes already in this decade alone: the obvious 2020 dip and the dip in 2023.
All the DOGE/Trump shennaigans + the investigation on the Hawk Tuah coin will probably crash it again late this year.
I see you.