Quote from: Lucius on Today at 01:05:25 PM

Few people know about these negotiations, and it's not that the media is too interested in it - I wonder if anyone ever mentioned on the forum that it happened. I don’t visit altcoins boards so I can’t say with certainty that’s not the case. It seems to me that Bukele accepted the proposal that promised him more (in every sense), and it is indisputable that the guys from the Tether team are much stronger players in financial terms.

I am going to say that your mentioning of Tether like that got me a wee bit worked up...

In other words, I don't accept that framework about Tether influencing the negotiations in regards to bitcoin..

Bukele did not adopt Tether..

He adopted bitcoin... so it just sounds strange to be wording some kind of Tether negotiating team.. as compared with a Solana negotiating Team.. .. Solana is a bunch of fucks.. and maybe somewhere along the line he figured out with Solana that he was dealing with snake-oil salesmen rather than the real deal.. .. so yeah the real deal is bitcoin.. and not Tether..

so fuck Tether team as a supposed influencing factor or a framework of how Bukele was thinking about the matter.. it just does not sound right because even though Tether can be used for on/off ramps in bitcoin.. we are still talking about Bitcoin in terms of what was adopted in El Salvador (and also the use of the lightning network). not Tether.. so it just raises my own hackles to act like the tail is wagging the dog.. if you know what I am trying to say here?

Even though I am not against Tether.. but the framework for bitcoin coming into El Salvador seems to be the one that they presented at the June 2021 miami conference..... which was that increasingly bitcoin was being used in the Bitcoin beach area, and likely discussions with Jack Maller were more important in terms of figuring out how transactions in bitcoin could be facilitated so easily and cheaply through lightning network.. and they were already doing it in the ElSante beach area.. because that is how Bukele was introduced at the Bitcoin Magazine conference in Miami in June 2021... that frame regarding realizing how much remittances were being lost and that 70% or so of El Salvadors were unbanked seems largely accurate in terms of motivating getting banked through bitcoin into El Salvador and how practical the lightning network was in terms of cheap and fast transactions.

Tether seems to be quite incidental in this El Salvador decision to adopt and ongoing adopt and implementation story.. rather than any kind of meaningful focus of what is happening.

Quote from: Lucius on Today at 01:05:25 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on Today at 12:27:19 PM

Regarding how bitcoin has been implemented in El Salvador, we are lucky as fuck that there has been so much bitcoin focus within both how Bukele talks about the matter and he seems to have stayed true to his word.. and has not even come up with his own coin, yet (remember Miami coin?) .. and there seem to be quite a few instances in which Bukele has been rejecting various shitcoin propositions and/or other scammers.. remember when child star scammer Brock Pierce tried to get in on the early implementations, and so many true bitcoiners pointed out that Brock was an opportunist scammer.. so Bukele seemed to recognize/appreciate that information, too.. and did not allow Brock to get into his inner circles.. ... so in quite a few ways, Bukele seems to be very aware of the difference between bitcoin and various shitcoins..

Bukele may not be 100% honest and sincere (like most politicians), but he is certainly not stupid to get into a game with a lower-level scammer or go to a one-way street called "El Salvador Coin". It's not problem (for me personally) that he accepted Bitcoin, but what's behind it all - because the people who worked to convince him that Bitocin is something better than altcoins are not the ones who believe in Bitcoin.

Something seems to be quite different in the way that you are thinking about this as compared with me.. in some kind of implications of nefarious angles, and I don't have a problem with that.. but I do seem to be taking Bukele way more at his word than you, and no I don't expect 100% showing of the agenda anyhow.. but there are surely degrees to which some politicians (and people) are more sincere than others, so I am not going to just lump everyone together in terms of how believable I find them to be in terms of their actions and their words and/or what might be unstated (or hidden).. including that I believe that Bukele's recent interview with McCormick seems to show that Bukele has decent intentions.. and for the most part, I don't believe that he is doing any kind of snowjob but actually grappling with the balancing of matters including the reality that he likely has people who want to kill him, too... while he is actually trying to make an decently honest difference in terms of going down the bitcoin path and considering that the bitcoin path brings a lot of benefits to people in terms of objective monetary standards that are revolutionary in a variety of ways.

Quote from: Lucius on Today at 01:05:25 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on Today at 12:27:19 PM

Could you imagine how much of a shitshow we would have had if Bukele did not have that level of bitcoin focus and conviction within his implementations.. and he would have been more of an "all coins are equal" cryptocurrency maximalist.. and foggy-ass ambiguous and muddled thinking like that? By the way, Tether is not a shitcoin in the same light as various other shitcoins.. even though there are so many tendencies to throw Tether in the mix of supposed corruption.. blah blah blah nonsense..

Maybe Bukele would be more liked by the powers that be (especially the bankers) if he was into foggy thinking about equal opportunity all cryptos are alike and shitcoins.. hahahaha.

Tether is by definition stablecoin,

Fuck tether bashing.. it is less relevant to this story.

Quote from: Lucius on Today at 01:05:25 PM

but a lot of things are very non-transparent behind the company that created it, and which at one point publicly admitted that only 70% of USDT in the market is not backed with USD.

So what. El Salvador adopted bitcoin and lighting network.. Tether is an incidental part.

Quote from: Lucius on Today at 01:05:25 PM

The other 30% were reportedly backed up with something else, although they did not say exactly what.

Mostly does not matter to what we are discussing here.

Quote from: Lucius on Today at 01:05:25 PM

I’ve said before that stablecoins are the real Trojan horse that governments have when it comes to Bitcoin - given that most stablecoins can be frozen even in non-custodial wallets.

Again.. Tether is incidental... and sure there are various stable coins being used as attack vectors on bitcoin, and I doubt that tether is one of them.. even though surely there are likely attempts to co-opt it (maybe even successful).. but still tether is incidental to this El Salvador adoption of Bitcoin and lighting network.

Quote from: Lucius on Today at 01:05:25 PM

If the Terra/Luna fiasco had a very negative effect on the crypto market,

Terra Luna was a big ass scam from the start and it is becoming way more obvious after the fall out for sure.

Tether is not the same as that terra luna scam.

Quote from: Lucius on Today at 01:05:25 PM

what would happen if one day serious investigations were launched against Bitfinex?

There's already been pretty god damned big investigations of Bitfinex/Tether including that they had about $800 million stolen from them.. likely with the US Govt/NY Attorney general complicit in that and then after the coins got stolen then they claim Bitfinex/Tether not sufficiently backed.. yeah the fucking Govt dweebs took the money and then blamed Bitfinex/Tether for that...

I would have thought that you would have gotten over some of your concerns about Tether with the NY AG settlement of that matter more than a year ago.