Many won't believe but this step is gonna be economically fruitful for El Salvador , this will help the country avoid inflation and increase the buying power of the citizens.
Today, McDonalds, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, and others accept bitcoin in El Salvador
- Thread starter johnarb
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Hallelujah! Amen! Praise Statoshi in the name of the crypto gods!
The main purpose for the Bitcoin switch is to facilitate the transfers of money from the U.S. to El Salvador. Therefore it will be used mainly by the people already with those accesses because they are getting it from family in the U.S. The government set up a wallet for the transactions and ATMs for people to access the money.
Again the main reason is not to use it as a currency for all people. It is to avoid millions of dollars in fees going to private companies when poor families are sending $100 to $200 to relatives back home.
If El Salvador wants this to work and make it a means to save millions of dollars in transfer fees for its poor population, the government wallet will receive the BTC and convert it to US$ so that the people's money will be preserved and the real savings is achieved.
Will this happen? No because even poor people believe that BTC is some magic asset that will keep growing and growing. For some, holding it in BTC means their $500 received from U.S. could become $550 and that is huge for them. For others it will go the opposite way since no one can time these things.
The best way for this to work is for a U.S. user and Salvadorean user to have the wallet on their apps and like Coinbase you make the transfer between accounts and in El S, the receiver converts it to US$ immediately.
Anything else is simply speculating on a foreign currency and will lead to more problems. SOme might accumulate BTC hoping in a year to get gains to further help pay for things but again, that is not money transfer that is pure currency trading with all the risks that come with it.
If I were president I would mandate immediate conversions which would have a positive im pact of millions more dollars a year being brougt into the economy.
I guess those who buy coffee with btc will buy back the outgoing btc using fiat. Kinda crazy logic but there are people who can think differently.
Exactly. Others will join.
And, since yesterday was the very first day of something that might last a 100 years, I'd be more more worried about the deterioration of my paper money relative to the value of Bitcoin, rather than the other way around!
Bogus. It just takes one person in the family to buy a used smart phone for $70.
Then the whole extended family is on the path to saving hundreds, or thousands of dollars.
...Or that smart family member that invested in the smartphone charges the extended family fees for facilitating the transfers
. Can go anyway really. We'll just have to wait & see how it all shakes out, won't we?