Talk to families of unjustified imprisoned people or to the people itself. His 'fixing' was done by basically imprisoning everyone, which just happened to be close to any suspect gang member. There where even cases where a mailman was imprisoned because he just happenend to deliver a parcel during a raid.
Yes, he fixed the gang problem for now. But at a high price – the loss of a fair justice system. He imprisoned 1.2 % of the total population in just 2 years.
I know that freedom vs security is a fine balance and once security suffers significantly, you are willing to give up quiet a lot of freedom. But since he just imprisoned everyone and their relatives, its only a temporary fix – unless he wants to imprison them for life.
I have very mixed feelings about Bukele but nobody is leaving because of him. Salvadorian emigration has slowed greatly under him and many people are actually moving back.
Which is understandable, but I don't understand his plan. If 1 BTC is unaffordable, then people will buy 0.1 BTC. If that's unaffordable, then people will buy 0.01 BTC. And so on. You have to go down to 0.00000001 BTC before the limit is reached (0.000633158 USD at current prices, which is smaller than a mill). Since every zero there is another order of magnitude, I don't see how a small nation state could make even the smallest BTC unit unaffordable. Maybe the G7 banding together could do it.
There's no question they've arrested innocent people and the prisoners are being treated poorly, but it's hard to judge when I don't have to deal with drug cartels/gangs and make their monthly salary in a couple days.
TBH Bukele is more likely to steal the country's finances than the USA. The USA doesn't have the power to seize decentralized currency from across the equator, at least not without empowering the CIA but every time we do that they destabilize a region, create a theocracy, or trick us into another war so we're getting pretty sick of their shit.
Yes. It's absolutely insane, and this guy's history with it is doubly insane. Read up a bit and prepare to feel super duper sad for the people in that country.
Worse, what happens if cybercriminals are able to successfully steal a large number of the countries bitcoin, or if they somehow lose access to their bitcoin wallet(s)?
He said 'until it's unaffordable' I guess he's using reserves like the way the US does on weapons and military, some of which isn't even for them.
He's investing in what he believes is a profitable investment. I'm guessing that he has financial advice from people that have studied this to a level that can understand it better than most people, and consider it a sound investment. With the intention at the other end being to use for the country. Everything accounted for, nothing going into senators back pockets, could be used to boost their health service and hospitals and whatever else.
With countries less built up currently looking more favourable in the future, they're already in a good position.
If this is legit and not corruption and bitcoin eventually takes off to ungodly levels, imagine the biggest bet in history paying off and their country turns around as an economic powerhouse. Risky and stupid but would make a good movie.
The only thing keeping them a powerhouse would be a number on a computer that can be stolen. Question is, would people try to steal from a nation rich enough to be a powerhouse and how sophisticated would those theft attempts be?
I really wish for them to hit the jackpot and break the cycle, but so far, everything valuable in the region was quickly turned into poverty and famine. It's like a bad magic trick.
It's kinda hilarious that the soft dictatorship and prison state that makes even America look like a prison abolitionist paradise isn't what's going to sink this idiot, it'll be the fucking bitcoins
The headline said 1BTC, so I take it to mean "until the price of 1BTC is too high to buy with real money". They're not saying they'll buy $66000 worth of bitcoin per day indefinitely, just 1 whole bitcoin per day, regardless of how the price fluctuates, for as long as that's viable.
El Salvador doesn't have its own currency; they use USD and recently bitcoin. I don't know enough to say whether this makes sense.
Right but you're missing the point. It doesn't matter if 1 BTC costs $1,000,000 when you can just buy 0.0001 BTC for $100. They would need to drive the cost of 1 BTC into the quadrillions of dollars before it would become even remotely unfeasible to purchase.
Even if bitcoin wasn't just a pyramid scheme and all but right now there are 900 new bitcoins each day, after the next halfing around the corner it's still 450/day. So each day there will be more new bitcoin then he would buy in 1 year.
Even the easiest numbers don't add up even if he is just a 40yr cryptobro Trump version.
Just to explain it to people who don't understand how it works.
The point of the mining rewards is to make the Bitcoin supply infinite, while giving the price time to rise and Bitcoin to gain adoption. Once that 21m coins is created, no more can be created, so the price should stabilize and rise over time as less and less Bitcoin is around.
I know how bitcoin works. But this cap of 21m will be around 2100 or even later if the mining power stays the same as today. So nobody reading this post will be alive around that time. And the same for El Salvador. Should all the people alive right now suffer, cause in around 100 years a theory of a new way for money could succeed? (And no, I don't think bitcoin will ever be more than money laundering and daytraiding craziness ending in more money for the people laundering)
Say he achieves his goal (which doesnt make any sense but lets ignore that), what then? The day they need to encash it and they start selling the price will crash