When I checked 6 days ago, the median Bitcoin transaction fee in the last block was US$0.25, so it looks like you picked an unreliable source for your transaction-fee information: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27337189
(Also, there were transactions in that block that paid much lower fees than that, but some of them might be CPFP or something.)
That comment also explains how people in poor and middle-income countries use Bitcoin in practice, at least in some cases, even though transaction fees are usually higher than that. If you read it, you will understand the answer to your question to some degree.
The Strike app uses Lightning network and uses open source protocols. I believe this is the app they are promoting. I think this will be a good experiment because everyone is talking out of their ass - either this will help El Salvador, hurt them, or be neutral. Let’s wait a few years and see what happens.
> #Bitcoin has a market cap of $680 billion dollars.
> If 1% of it is invested in El Salvador, that would increase our GDP by 25%.
You can’t invest market cap. It’s just a figure you arrive at by multiplying two numbers: number of currency units/price per currency unit. It doesn’t exist anywhere.
If I found a pebble on the beach and sold it to someone for 10 cents, and if we assume there are a trillion pebbles on this planet, then the market cap of pebbles would be $100 billion. But you wouldn’t be able to use this “value” anywhere, because it doesn’t exist.
No, market cap is determined by liquidity in a marketplace. So if there is a pebble market, you can make a claim as to the size of that market. Gold happens to be a very shiny pebble that has a $10T plus market cap. That figure is based on a guess of how many ounces of gold there are in circulation (not including not-as-of-yet mined gold buried in Earth's crust) multiplied by spot price.
Agreed you can't invest marketcap. But could you attract $6.8B worth of economic activity into a country based on recognizing a new asset class and encouraging the development of that asset class in the country? I would argue that yes, yes you could.
The president of a country publicly admits on Twitter that 70% of his population doesn't have bank account and they work in grey/black economy? Dude, that's your problem right there, and BTC is not a solution.
I’ll bite. What is the solution if not Bitcoin? Maybe they should wait until the bottom 70% of their citizens have enough money to entice the big banks?
1. Where are those $6.8 billion supposed to come from?
2. Market cap is a measure of wealth, GDP measures cash flow for one year. How is an investment into an asset that doesn't produce revenue going to increase GDP over the long term? Even if your Bitcoin go up you can only sell them once, therefore you should delay the sale as much as possible.
jc_811|4 years ago
- Whose minimum wage is between $113-$242 dollars per month [1]
- Where 26% of the population is living on less than $5.50 per day [2]
Wants to use a digital store of value, as a means of exchange, whose transaction fees have ranged from $6-$60 in the past 2 months [3]
How is this anything except an attention/headline seeking PR move?
[1] https://www.minimum-wage.org/international/el-salvador
[2]https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SLV/el-salvador/povert...
[3]https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f...
kragen|4 years ago
(Also, there were transactions in that block that paid much lower fees than that, but some of them might be CPFP or something.)
That comment also explains how people in poor and middle-income countries use Bitcoin in practice, at least in some cases, even though transaction fees are usually higher than that. If you read it, you will understand the answer to your question to some degree.
seibelj|4 years ago
runeks|4 years ago
> If 1% of it is invested in El Salvador, that would increase our GDP by 25%.
You can’t invest market cap. It’s just a figure you arrive at by multiplying two numbers: number of currency units/price per currency unit. It doesn’t exist anywhere.
If I found a pebble on the beach and sold it to someone for 10 cents, and if we assume there are a trillion pebbles on this planet, then the market cap of pebbles would be $100 billion. But you wouldn’t be able to use this “value” anywhere, because it doesn’t exist.
chrisco255|4 years ago
Agreed you can't invest marketcap. But could you attract $6.8B worth of economic activity into a country based on recognizing a new asset class and encouraging the development of that asset class in the country? I would argue that yes, yes you could.
ivanche|4 years ago
lowkey|4 years ago
imtringued|4 years ago
1. Where are those $6.8 billion supposed to come from?
2. Market cap is a measure of wealth, GDP measures cash flow for one year. How is an investment into an asset that doesn't produce revenue going to increase GDP over the long term? Even if your Bitcoin go up you can only sell them once, therefore you should delay the sale as much as possible.
nly|4 years ago
unknown|4 years ago
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unknown|4 years ago
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