[FRIAM] The case for Bitcoin

[Pieter Steenekamp]

El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender. So what's the big deal about this?

Simple, savings in up to 100 million dollars or more for ordinary citizens
of El Salvador

From
https://brettcolbert.medium.com/how-zaps-strike-lightning-wallet-works-and-why-el-salvador-adc8888617c8
:

"*So a housekeeper in New York sends a hundred dollars to her sister in El
Salvador. Before Strike and before Lightning, the way that transaction
worked, they would go through Western Union, the sister would go to Western
Union in El Salvador, a hundred dollars would turn into sixty (editor note:
due to fees, which vary but are quite high in percent terms on most
remittances), the sister would have to be fearful of gangs hanging outside
the Western Union. And what a lot of people don’t realize is there aren’t a
lot of Western Unions in El Salvador, so the sister might have to drive
hours on a bus, to get the sixty.*




*Now fast forward to today, what has Strike done with Lightning Labs? That
sister takes her hundred dollars in a Strike app, buys (fractional)
bitcoin, that bitcoin zips to El Salvador across the Lightning network, her
sister gets it in El Salvador, does an FX trade instantly and for free. So
a hundred dollars doesn’t turn into sixty; it turns into 99.8 dollars.
There’s no trip to Western Union to battle the gangs. There’s no hours of
bus and taking that day out of your life every single week just to survive.
And 6–8 weeks ago there were 10–15 signups per day. There’s 15,000–20,000
signups a day now. It is changing lives every single day.-Ross Stevens, May
2021And keep this in mind…24% of the GDP in El Salvador is remittances —
people sending money back to family/friends in El Salvador from other
countries*
*At a GDP of $27B, that means that $6.5B of the total El Salvador GDP is
remittances. So imagine if people didn’t lose 40% of that money. Radical.*"

As a side note, I really enjoyed listening to the interview with Jack
Mallers, the 27 year old guy who played a central role in El Salvador
making Bitcoin legal tender:
https://youtu.be/yL6J56Jzvl0

Pieter
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