Bitcoin is for Dictators

El Salvador, a country where 70% of the population has no bank account, made headlines days ago when it became the first nation state to officially denominate Bitcoin as legal tender. Its president, Nayib Bukele, is extremely popular and in love with Bitcoin but is authoritarian and has reduced democracy. Is this good for the people of El Salvador, or bad? Will it lead to more freedom, or less? Is it good for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and crypto, or bad? This talk is a case study of El Salvador, the Strike app/service, and its infrastructure, including how it uses Lightning Network and stablecoins under the hood. It will explain this architecture in the broader social, political, and economic context of El Salvador and Latin America, and explore ways that infrastructure and innovation in the Ethereum community could be used to improve this design.