Quote from: alani123 on March 04, 2025, 09:39:00 PM

El Salvador as a state economy tried to pivot to bitcoin.

They employed many tricks to attract investment, to start mining at a scale and bolstered BTC as an alternative currency to the country's population, even recognizing it as legal tender.

The tricks failed to materialize. Poverty remained rampant and El Salvador ended up being forced to suspend its Bitcoin program just to take a puny IMF loan. In the end, no crypto entity stepped in to help them when they needed 1.4 billion in USD. We know from Greece's example that IMF measures lead a state economy to disaster. But imagine how desperate a country had to be to accept an IMF intervention over a loan totalling only around 4% of its GDP.

Bitcoin didn't shield El Salvador from disruptions in the world economy, it didn't enrich its citizens, it didn't protect it from foreign corporations plundering its resources for cheap etc.

So what's the lesson here? Maybe Bitcoin doesn't work at the State level. Yet by Trump's sayings we're going to see the same in the US with a sovereign fund in crypto...

The case of El Salvador is a good example of buying bitcoin with money you cannot afford to keep in Bitcoin. In other words, it is a case of someone who have not even met his basic needs yet use the little he has to invest in bitcoin, what do you think will happen to those bitcoin when reality sets in? @JayJuanGee did wonderful job at explaining this concept of funds for basic needs and even the concept of emergency funds in the thread Buy the dip and HODL. Following that thread, I learnt that to be able to invest in and hold bitcoin, you must buy with money you have and can leave in bitcoin for long. In addition, you also have to set aside emergency funds to cover for things not planned for. Borrowed funds such as loans does not qualify in this this case.

From my submission above, it is obvious that El Salvador made some mistakes in that they are poor and do not have enough money yet they put some in bitcoin which means basic needs have not been met. They did not have emergency funds in place which is a signal that their investment is not guaranteed to last.