The point is that anyone is welcome to contribute to Bitcoin and support and help it grow, but to control it, you have to achieve consensus, i.e. Taproot upgrade, Segwit implementation, etc
As bad as the story of someone spending the equivalent of today's BTC value of 100K on a pizza all those years ago is... El Salvador is screwed if they do that with Pizza Hut pizza! GAG BARF!
A tiny corrupt country of 6 million people being told to use bitcoin by their government is hardly an endorsement. Lot's of people there protesting it and burning down bitcoin ATMs, it doesn't benefit the average joe using a medium of exchange that pops and drops 20-40% in value in a month, but for the elite in power it helps them (for now).
There are protests, but the numbers are small. One ATM was destroyed as far as I know Did you know they had a week long Bitcoin conference in El Salvador a week or so ago? How about finding some videos and pictures of the event? and at the end they announced building a Bitcoin city financed by Bitcoin Bonds Out of 6M people, last I heard they have over 4M people with Chivo wallet, a kind of crypto bank and investment account digital wallet where they can swap USD to bitcoin back and forth with no fee Over 70% of the population never had a bank account and in a few weeks they achieved the above with Bitcoin But hey, you found that on google, so you're the expert on El Salvador Bitcoin stuff https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/labitconf-2021-bitcoin-conference-to-be-hosted-in-el-salvador
Not claiming to be an expert on El Salvador Bitcoin stuff, just my opinion it's an abnormality in a bubble and time will tell if the USA and other western countries follow El Salvador in their steps..
who knows he might get the endorsement from drug cartels, mafia, pot heads, weed farmers, gangsters, pawn shops in Ca, OR, Wa
As a differing view, Raoul Pal said in an interview with IA that he didn't think it was the right move for El Salvador. The reason was because they already had a stable currency in that they used dollars. They weren't like Venezuela. Going through a 50% correction might be quite devastating for these people. Its an interesting viewpoint which I think has merit. But I'm actually quite giddy when I think about how transformative blockchain can be for the world, not just finance. (Well, in a way, money is at the root of everything anyway, so if you control finance, you control everything else). Bitcoin is more democratic than democracy. Its an example of how to truly practice what you preach. It will hold people accountable in the most pure way. Imagine politicians having to use smart contracts for all the bullshit they promise before elections. The way the world operates now is a total farce and I think all the solutions start with accountability.
A few things I've seen on this and of course I'm severely biased: El Salvador uses the US $ as its currency when the previous one collapsed. This looks good from a high level, but it means that El Salvador and its people are at the mercy of the ones in charge of he US Monetary system Think about it, the US printed trillions of $ and devalued the purchasing power of the currency causing "official inflation" of 6.2% and "unofficial inflation" is above double digits and a person in El Salvador has no way to combat this fiat debasement. They did not get the stimulus funds that were given the people living in the US. And this will not stop... Currency inflation is a hidden tax on all the people who use it A big portion of El Salvador's GDP is from remittances and the fees that are charged by Western Union and the likes are very high and the services are subpar (i.e. lines, office hours, locations, etc.). Imagine a person in the US wanting to send $20 to a family member in El Salvador and being unable to do so as the fee would be higher than the amount that is being sent With bitcoin, either Chivo wallet or Strike or any bitcoin LN wallet, you can send any amount for no fee or a few pennies. In major US cities, there are Chivo ATM's at El Salvador consulate offices and sending $ has no fee. Whatever the method used to send $, it's instant, so there's no need to go to a Western Union office and line up during business hours and deal with the paperwork 70% of the population never had a bank account. They never got the chance to participate in the financial systems. There's a construction worker in a Vice video that paid his electric bill using bitcoin and completed the process in minutes whereas before, he used to travel by bus and spend 3 hours total What we take for granted was revolutionary for the ones that never had it as a choice And to be clear, the Chivo wallet is a US $ and bitcoin wallet and now more than 4M of the 6M Salvadorans have it. It's like a digital bank and investment account wallet Should they choose to only use US $, they can store it in US $ and when they want to pay by bitcoin, they simply exchange to bitcoin and use it on any merchant, or they can withdraw the physical US $ from any ATM's for no fee The law was written that anyone who wishes to continue using US $ can still do so. I posted the link on the other thread on this At the current bitcoin price, over 90% of the bitcoin owners are in profits against the US $ so the Salvadorans who kept their earnings and savings in bitcoin are in profits, but the important thing is that it was a choice and one they did not have in the past where you and I always had with our Robinhood, and E-Toro, Wells Fargo and Coinbase accounts El Salvador is now going on a business venture building the Bitcoin City financed by Bitcoin Bonds. Who knows, maybe it'll fail miserably, but there's a small chance it's successful and attracts a lot of crypto companies as the only tax would be VAT. They will also build infrastructure for mining bitcoin using clean energy from the volcano. The idea for the city is to build a financial hub like the Singapore of Latin America. Such optimists and dreamers... Hope they succeed El Salvador has a chance to rise above being a 3rd world country whereas before they did not have any chance And to be clear, Bitcoin has no feelings about all of these. It doesn't care if Jack Dorsey wants to focus Square into a Bitcoin financial company, nor does it care that Michael Saylor and his company are buying billions of $ worth of bitcoins and certainly Bitcoin doesn't care if Tesla sells all the bitcoins tomorrow PayPal used to ban and lock accounts involved in bitcoin and cryptos transactions on Ebay, now it's a big supporter of bitcoin and cryptos. Bitcoin doesn't hold a grudge Visa used to block transactions to bitcoin exchanges and now a big supporter of bitcoin and cryptos. Ok with Bitcoin either way Banks used to block transfers to and from exchanges but now they want to custody your bitcoins, like Bank of New York, US Bank, Bank of America and hundreds of other banks. Fine with Bitcoin whichever way it is Bitcoin is open monetary network