World Bank rejects El Salvador request for Bitcoin help

I feel like a lot of people posting in this thread would benefit from reading Dang&#x27;s post [0] from a few days ago about how shallow cryptocurrency discussions tend to be on HN and how we should all aim for a better level of discourse.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27497207" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27497207</a>

A lot of these Bitcoin threads get old. The detractors, the pumpers, the bag hodlers ... it&#x27;s all so tiresome.<p>Here&#x27;s something I want answered (all three parties are invited to respond): Is there a dependency on mature internet infrastructure that exists for a country to adopt BTC as its currency? Seems like there is to me, but maybe I&#x27;m not fully appreciating how this works or am overestimating the connectivity requirements for running BTC at scale in a modern economy.

They cite environmental and transparency concerns, but somehow I believe it&#x27;s more about control and ensuring the continuation of the debt based fiat systems.<p>I have a litmus test I use when discussing global financial politics with friends - &quot;What were the main factors you think lead to Ghaddafi&#x27;s killing?&quot;

This is such a stupid story. The World Bank isn’t set up to finance side projects. In a similar vein, Micronesia wants to send coral to space and the World Bank refused to support—scandalous!

We keep talking about how tech should be used to make a net positive change yet we allow this glorified linked list that has 0 real world benefits after a decade to get a pass because some man children run around promising it&#x27;s the future.

Countries that use the USD for their official currency, and are not a part of the US, have a broken financial system. They need to fix that to a point where they can implement their own sovereign currency.

The world bank responding to such a request shows how big of a thing Bitcoin has become.<p>It also appears that the concerns are not strong, more wishy-washy comments that could be disputed or clarified eventually. Wonder what they say if&#x2F;when more countries do inquiries and adopt Bitcoin.

Other random bitcoin concerns (apart from the environmental ones):<p>- How about people stop accepting laundered bitcoins first and foremost?<p><pre><code> - Any bitcoins that have provably been involved in illegal stuff - Any monero&#x2F;whathaveyou that come from exchanges that accept bitcoin that have received Bitcoins that were involved in illegal stuff </code></pre> - Will bitcoin still have value when quantum computers are around?

I&#x27;m very ignorant about Bitcoin, but given El Salvador&#x27;s big problem with crime, doesn&#x27;t adopting Bitcoin give the cartels an extremely easy way to launder their money?

The Salvadoreans (or perhaps it&#x27;s the BBC) seem to take the view that &quot;legal tender&quot; means any trader must accept it. That&#x27;s not what the term means here in the UK; it means that once a debt is incurred, an offer to clear it with legal tender prevents the creditor subsequently suing for non-payment.<p>So you can&#x27;t walk into a shop, ask for a pack of ciggies, and then insist the shopkeeper accepts a £50 note (or a bucketful of 1p coins, for that matter).

I&#x27;m not sure what the World Bank even could help, as they haven&#x27;t worked with the code base and the cryptography of Bitcoin at all.<p>At the same time lots of core developers, lightning network developers and the best bitcoin companies already offered lots of technical help, so I&#x27;m quite skeptical about the ,,request for Bitcoin help&#x27;&#x27; part.

I&#x27;m still unclear on what &quot;legal tender&quot; means in this context.<p>TFA says &quot;The new law means every business must accept Bitcoin as legal tender&quot;. It says the USD is also legal tender. Is there an official exchange rate? Or an official bank that buys and sells BTC? Do they send out tax bills with both values?

The environmental impact of Bitcoin is positive, as Bitcoin allows us to use energy sources that are too remote or inaccessible to build cables to. For instance, waterfalls in remote locations. About transparency, it is the most transparent system, as all transactions are public. This is nothing but poor excuses.

I don&#x27;t get it, why is this the sort of thing the world bank would help with at all. Isn&#x27;t it up to El Salvador to figure out how to do this? If they were just adopting a new fiat currency, wouldn&#x27;t it be up to El Salvador to implement? Why would the world bank be involved?

Will the big banks, institutions and governments make a move against DeFi soon? Seems like it.

The US uses the dollar as a weapon and it controls the world bank. So it makes sense that they won&#x27;t help to de-dollarize the world.

&gt;&quot;While the government did approach us for assistance on Bitcoin, this is not something the World Bank can support given the environmental and transparency shortcomings,&quot; they added.<p>Environmental as the #1 concern?<p>Bitcoin&#x27;s enegery:market-cap ratio - a proxy for energy vs. value to humans - is &gt;300x better than an airline &amp; 60x better than JP Morgan &amp; 20x better than google&#x27;s.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Okcoin&#x2F;status&#x2F;1403405528462770183&#x2F;photo&#x2F;1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Okcoin&#x2F;status&#x2F;1403405528462770183&#x2F;photo&#x2F;...</a><p>And the BTC&quot;s electricity source trend is quickly toward renewable.<p>&gt;Mr Zelaya also said that discussions with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been successful, saying the IMF was &quot;not against&quot; the implementation of Bitcoin.<p>Interesting.<p>Considering&#x2F;speculating one incentive: If the world bank were to assist in implementing bitcoin in El Salvador, their general technical &amp; financial competence would be transparently on display. And I doubt this fact appeals to them &amp; their backers (powerful incumbents).<p>Reputation &amp; optics are extremely important to incumbent institutions that yield influence. And as such it&#x27;s a dissuading from entering open competitive markets.<p>Long term: Consuming less energy - which is tightly coupled with human prosperity - is futile. It&#x27;s about the source of that energy.

The comments on Bitcoin threads make me realize how much people are happy to bend the truth (e.g. energy consumption) to justify what pays them (or they think it pays them.<p>Bitcoin started with no connection to real money. Still the connection is quite flaky. Essentially people are buying pieces of the output of a program without any government&#x2F;majority backing that has any worth. Then, they try to justify it, because for the time being, the main&#x2F;practically only way to make money out of it, is to find someone else to sell party of this output.<p>I guess I am getting old and I can&#x27;t understand how something with so high transaction fees, latency, environment impact, computationally inefficient (as a feature!) is something sought after by some people.