Thank you for those cites; I acknowledge that El Salvador has gone further along than I had thought. While number 3 is behind a paywall, I will point out that the other two are not portraying it as a huge success.
For instance
But the foundation, which polled 233 companies across different sectors, found that the overall use was still low, with 93% of companies reporting no bitcoin payments.
Also, both the articles I read discussed the Chivo wallet, which is the app El Salvadorans use to convert cash to Bitcoins and pay with them. The articles are not clear, but I strongly suspect, that El Salvador has worked around the problems with blockchain by eliminating it–I think that Chivo has a centralized ledger to handle all debits/credits.
That makes a lot of sense and is a good way for the government to skim off some money. Bitcoin transactions are woefully inefficient. The government could charge the citizens the standard $1.70 bit coin transaction fee for all of the users, then bundle them into a small number of larger transactions that match the overall in/out flow of Bitcoins and dollars and then pocket the difference. No harm no foul. Everyone still gets their money in whatever currency they wanted at the same price as if they were actually interacting with the block chain, but Chivo rakes in the transaction fees.
Slight aside, I just saw an ad on here for “The First Blockchain RPG.”
mind blown
I just wanted to follow up, with an extract from Matt Levine’s Money Stuff column:
Bitcoin as legal tender
Bloomberg’s Michael McDonald went to El Salvador and tried to pay for goods and services in the country’s legal tender, Bitcoin. It went about as well as you’d expect:
Outside the airport, I approach a dozen cab drivers who are chatting and waiting for fares. I pop the question: “Will you take my Bitcoin?” Two throw up their arms and walk away. One says he knows a guy who does, but he’s not here. The rest ignore me and continue their conversations.
I go with a driver in a white Toyota van. He’ll take me to my hotel for $30—actual, not digital dollars. “Most people prefer cash, and almost no one asks if they can pay in Bitcoin,” says Saul Escobar, 55. “The system fails a lot, and lately it’s been really slow. There was a lot of enthusiasm last year, but it’s died down.”
In the hour it takes to exit the airport and reach my hotel, the Bitcoin in my phone falls 2% in value. I decide to stop checking.
I feel like “Bitcoin is digital cash that people will be able to use for regular real-world transactions” was a thing people said a few years ago that has now gone entirely out of fashion. “Bitcoin is digital gold that people will use as a store of value, a speculative asset and perhaps an inflation hedge” is now the respectable position, and perfectly compatible with being bullish on Bitcoin. It was a weird throwback for El Salvador to make Bitcoin legal tender last year , after everyone had moved on from the Bitcoin-is-useful-money idea. And now you see why everyone moved on.
If we mutually agree we can use Monopoly money as “official” currency.