Didn’t some country already try this and fail miserably?
Edit: Oh yeah, El Salvador invested $150M in bitcoin only for it to lose half its value lol
Edit 2: lmao at the replies. For those of you who haven’t read the Wikipedia article on this, here’s the gist of it:
Salvadorian president Bukele forces businesses to accept BTC as legal tender, sets aside $150M in cash to back up his BTC plans, and offers $30 to anyone who signs up to a government-backed digital BTC wallet. Most Salvadorians never used it, and most who did just spend their $30 and leave. Less than 0.0001% of financial transactions use this BTC digital wallet, and most Salvadorians disapprove of Bukele’s decisions, with >70% having little or no confidence in BTC, and 9/10 not even understanding what it is.
Bukele announces a “Bitcoin City”, which leads to El Salvador’s overseas bonds to fall by 30%.
In 2022, because of the BTC crash, the Salvadoran national reserves lost $22M.
By 2022 only 20% of businesses were actually using BTC, and only 3% thought it was actually valuable. By that point El Salvador’s BTC had lost half of its value, and Bukele responded to its volatility by “buying the dip” like a maniac, with many economists predicting the country would likely default on its debt. And in usual right-wing fashion he cut public spending to make up for his incompetence, including water infrastructure and public services in some municipalities.
Finally, after all of this bullshit, in March 2024 El Salvador’s BTC holdings stood at a 50% profit. Now that it’s valued at >$100K their profit is higher, though by how much I’m not sure. Bukele still hasn’t sold the BTC for some reason.
If you look at all of this and genuinely think that the recent (and undoubtedly temporary) increase in the value of Bitcoin makes this whole thing a “Big Chungus W win for Bitcoin” or whatever, I strongly urge you to stay away from crypto and any casinos for your own sake. I assure you that there are plethora of better ways to spend the time of government employees and taxpayer money, and you deserve better than whatever faux-utopia crypto bros have sold to you. Actually investing in the country’s infrastructure and economy, or even something like Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, are much better ways to improve the economy without some long-term gamble that causes citizens to suffer.
It has had a few ups and downs in that time frame and the people that are very much anti-blockchain anything seem to cheer every time there is a (local) dip in value. But, as you say, if you look at its value since its inception…well, it was just under 107K today.
Didn’t some country already try this and fail miserably?
Edit: Oh yeah, El Salvador invested $150M in bitcoin only for it to lose half its value lol
Edit 2: lmao at the replies. For those of you who haven’t read the Wikipedia article on this, here’s the gist of it:
Salvadorian president Bukele forces businesses to accept BTC as legal tender, sets aside $150M in cash to back up his BTC plans, and offers $30 to anyone who signs up to a government-backed digital BTC wallet. Most Salvadorians never used it, and most who did just spend their $30 and leave. Less than 0.0001% of financial transactions use this BTC digital wallet, and most Salvadorians disapprove of Bukele’s decisions, with >70% having little or no confidence in BTC, and 9/10 not even understanding what it is.
Bukele announces a “Bitcoin City”, which leads to El Salvador’s overseas bonds to fall by 30%.
In 2022, because of the BTC crash, the Salvadoran national reserves lost $22M.
By 2022 only 20% of businesses were actually using BTC, and only 3% thought it was actually valuable. By that point El Salvador’s BTC had lost half of its value, and Bukele responded to its volatility by “buying the dip” like a maniac, with many economists predicting the country would likely default on its debt. And in usual right-wing fashion he cut public spending to make up for his incompetence, including water infrastructure and public services in some municipalities.
Finally, after all of this bullshit, in March 2024 El Salvador’s BTC holdings stood at a 50% profit. Now that it’s valued at >$100K their profit is higher, though by how much I’m not sure. Bukele still hasn’t sold the BTC for some reason.
If you look at all of this and genuinely think that the recent (and undoubtedly temporary) increase in the value of Bitcoin makes this whole thing a “Big Chungus W win for Bitcoin” or whatever, I strongly urge you to stay away from crypto and any casinos for your own sake. I assure you that there are plethora of better ways to spend the time of government employees and taxpayer money, and you deserve better than whatever faux-utopia crypto bros have sold to you. Actually investing in the country’s infrastructure and economy, or even something like Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, are much better ways to improve the economy without some long-term gamble that causes citizens to suffer.
As of March 2024, El Salvador’s bitcoin gambit stood at a 50% profit, with bitcoin having recorded a new all-time high of over $69,000. --the article
And btw, it’s currently over $100k. So even higher.
Bitcoin has only gone up so I’m not sure how that would even be possible…
It has had a few ups and downs in that time frame and the people that are very much anti-blockchain anything seem to cheer every time there is a (local) dip in value. But, as you say, if you look at its value since its inception…well, it was just under 107K today.
Did you read the article you posted?