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A Week of Failing to Pay with Bitcoin in El Salvador | Hacker Newsnews.ycombinator.com/item?id=42014013
212 sats \ 9 comments \ @south_korea_ln 4 Nov bitcoin
The article itself is not that interesting. Most people here probably agree that the use of Bitcoin in daily life in El Salvador is not easy. Several pro-Bitcoin people have reported the same thing.
What's more interesting are the comments on Hacker News. Still no progress there... mostly negative sentiment... and the few pro-BTC comments get downvoted badly, too.
Have you met staunch anti-Bitcoin people who have changed their minds on it?
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174 sats \ 0 replies \ @byzantine 4 Nov freebie
just like most things it will be a slow process until all of a sudden it is ubiquitous. right now most of the business i have met that use bitcoin as a payment method do so because they either have a family member who helps them or they themselves save a portion in btc already.
have also met a few merchants that said their initial fear was "being audited"
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3 sats \ 0 replies \ @clr 4 Nov
What's interesting is that the comments on the article itself on Reason (rather than the comments on HN) are the harshest bitcoin critics.
All those armchair libertarians have been criticizing the government for decades, and now that the solution is in front of their noses, they hate it simply because they didn't invent it. Have fun staying a slave, I guess.
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0 sats \ 6 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic 4 Nov
Yes, I have met them. It looks like the problems with using BTC are not so easily overcome. Even when the government is pushing BTC the small folks find it difficult. What way can we iron out the difficulties and make the experience as easy as using a credit or debit card? Any ideas?
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31 sats \ 3 replies \ @teemupleb 4 Nov
I don’t know if merchants in El Salvador give cashbacks or discounts to customers paying in bitcoin.
As a newbie pre-coiner, I would be happy to try out bitcoin if I got a 20% discount for buying a product or service.
And if the merchants really understood the nature of Bitcoin, they would be happy to scoop it up from customers at these prices (it will outpace 20% quite fast and you can build all kinds of creative promotions around Bitcoin, BTC Map visibility etc.).
Cashbacks and rewards made the credit card system grow too.
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21 sats \ 2 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic 4 Nov
Sure, people would try it out with deep discounts on the goods, however, most retailers would be somewhat reluctant to give those discounts. Retailers typically have very slim margins on their sales, so any discounts would only be slight.
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46 sats \ 1 reply \ @teemupleb 4 Nov
Could be only used for selected products or services, so that they can still fill the margins on aggregate while using Bitcoin as a promotional tool.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic 4 Nov
Ok, a promotional loss leader may work. But the problem with that is that not all promotional goods are desired by everybody. If your objective is to get people on BTC for retail, you have to make it really easy and convenient to do so,
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln OP 4 Nov
What made them change their minds? It's hard for humans to admit they've been wrong. I know it would be very hard for me to admit in 5-10 years that I've been all wrong about Bitcoin.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic 4 Nov
Admitting a mistake may be the source of a lot of problems. People too easily get their egos invested in what they are doing and believing. Who knows the future? Everybody could be wrong, couldn’t they?
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