Topic: [2019-09-02] Argentina capital controls, a strong case for bitcoin - page 2. (Read 521 times)

Perhaps not to that extent, but most people with some sense in their head have converted a portion of their net worth to Bitcoin or even Gold. It's not that hyper inflation is something that we just got to witness; it has existed for many decades, which should have made people more interested in alternative forms of money.

For some reason people tend to wait and hope for the government to introduce changes that will help improve the economy, but these in most African countries have never really yielded anything. People's 'next time things will be different' mentality works against them. Things haven't been different for the better, only different for the worse. Peolpe need to wake up and help themselves.

I read a news a few days ago that said that even if Mauricio Macri or Alberto Fernández win, by 2020 Argentina will still be in economic crisis. The biggest problem for Argentina and many countries is the lack of a good alternative to govern the country. Political parties that are years in power, the same people who are years in power cannot bring in new energy, cannot bring in a new healthy system.

What happens is this: A guy X that have 60-year-old and his 30-year-old political party that govern the country win the election. The guy X that have 60-year-old governs the country for 10 years and can't change anything in the country, after 10 years the guy loses elections or another guy from his political party starts running the country.

people will look again the guy X that have 60-year-old (now 75) wanting to govern the country again. Let's face it, what kind of changes can there be? nothing is going to change

Thank you for your explanation. It makes sense now. If they can't even maintain a peg to the US dollar, that just tells you how problematic the situation in that country is. What a joke. Who's ever going to trust that government again?

The premium you pay to buy Bitcoin in order to finally be free from that horrible currency, is a small price to pay for long term price appreciation and financial freedom. It's an opportunity of a lifetime for them. Literally.

We can't fathom how much stress these people go through to find out that their fiat buys them less groceries today than it did yesterday, and that for years straight. Much respect to these innocent people who fell victim to their mafia government.

They weren't printing USD. What they were printing were what they called bond coins and bond notes, which were officially pegged 1-to-1 with USD, but in reality traded for far less than this. These bond notes later went on to become part of their new currency which was launched earlier this year when the government declared all foreign currencies are no longer legal tender.

These bond notes were initially pegged at 1-to-1, but actually traded around 3 or 4-to-1. Since becoming part of Zimbabwe's new official currency, they are supposed to trade at 2.5-to-1 with USD, but currently go for around 11-to-1, and continue to rapidly devalue.

Another great use case for bitcoin, but you'll pay a premium trying to buy it in Zimbabwe. Still, within a month or two you would have lost far more value from holding a rapidly devaluing fiat.

Zimbabwe printing US dollars? That's probably one of the biggest crimes there is from the perspective of a government. I don't think that's what happened, otherwise it would big big news covered worldwide.

It might be that some crime syndicates there have printed fake US dollars and that it came into circulation, but the central bank of Zimbabwe doing that is highly unlikely in my opinion.

Last year I saw news coverage that some local governments in Zimbabwe have created their own currency, only usable within their state. This is quite an ingenious way to stop losing purchasing power.

People traded their near worthless Zimbabwean dollars for these non official state currencies, which looking back now, was a fantastic move. It's a big f-you to the main leaders of Zimbabwe.

The implication is then that as more countries devolve in to monetary chaos, bitcoin usage doesn't just become advantageous but pretty much necessary. It begins with countries like Zimbabwe and Argentina which have rapidly devaluing currencies, but all fiat currencies are, by nature, devaluing. "Strong" currencies such as USD, EUR, GBP and so forth are still facing a horrendous few years: impending recession, out of control and ever growing debts and deficits, increasing inflation, chronically low interest rates, trade wars and new tariffs, etc.

People are feeling squeezed. The same paycheck doesn't go as far anymore. Rents going up. Food prices going up. Insurance going up. Fiat value going down. Bitcoin looks ever more attractive.

And that's why they killed him, you would probably do the same, the killing culture is very developed in USA.

The mere fact that he was one of the most popular president in recent American history probably doesn't mean anything to you, but if you are American you must be proud with George W. Bush or Trump.

in other words, places like Argentina are where the real Bitcoin culture is actually taking place, people in that country actually need it. Out of >300,000 tx/day, a significant proportion are happening in places with strict capital controls and/or monetary chaos, out of actual necessity (so also Venezuela, Turkey, China, Brazil...)

These are the real marketplaces for the cryptocurrency space. Only idealists are interested in places with (relatively) stable local fiat, in Argentina, BTC is realism

There was nothing in my post that implies that Argentina should look for more loans. Did I not already say that loans from the World Bank, the IMF or China and America are troublesome for 3rd world countries?

Any Argentinian who has half a brain and considerable savings has done that already. You wouldn't believe how well they can play the system, decades of disastrous governments have kind of made them this way.

Back in 2014 I spent most of the year in Buenos Aires and at that time there was an "official" exchange rate for the Peso and a real one (that was between 50% and 100% above the official rate). You could buy Pesos at the official rate, but not foreign currency, so people had to resort to the black market to get dollars or euros. The center of the city was full of small clandestine offices exchanging currency, along with many dodgy-looking street exchangers. In all these places you could always find a queue of people waiting to get rid of their Pesos before the next devaluation.

The most creative ones would find ways to buy USD at better rates with different methods, for example using their credit cards in casinos in Uruguay to buy chips (at official exchange rate) and then cashing them out into USD.

As bank transfers to other countries were also blocked, there were offices that did so-called "giros". You could take your currency (local or foreign), give it to a person and they would make sure that it would appear in a bank account anywhere in the world, for a small fee.

The most tech-savvy people however already knew about BTC and took good advantage of it. There was a company called Satishitango (it still exists and actually it got really big and legal now) that would purchase your BTC at Bitstamp-2% and blue (good) exchange rate and send a guy on a moped to your flat with the cash in hand. It literally solved my problems to transfer money into the country as my first and last attempt of sending a wire got my money lost forever.

Back in those days there was already a quite big Bitcoin club in Argentina, and some good startups emerged from that scene such as Ripio, Flixxo or RSK. Mauricio Macri spoke out as a big supporter of Bitcoin, not sure though if it will still fit well with his latest plans.

Today I know that there are still plenty of offices that use BTC to send money in and out of the country, and I bet they will multiply like mushrooms in the short future.

Fair enough. Lol.

The ones who are full on board (e.g. Bernie, Warren, AOC, et al) are the ones who couldn't make it in the real economy so need to use force to impose their ideas on everyone else. Socialism-ideas so good they have to be imposed by force. (Applies to any form of authoritarianism - fascism, communism etc).

well, let's be fair:

they're mostly drugged up, all stooges, and all more than half way there to socialism

Agreed. Everyone should be doing it, just some people have a little more urgency.

Kakmakr
Yeah, it's what I call the colonization. It starts economically and ends politically

The debt country perhaps not, but it can help the citizens there to protect their wealth, that's what the OP wanted to show. Even knowing the crypto market is volatile they have maybe more chance to save it than their national currency, loosing already 25% (?). It could be another traditional currency, not necessary BTC

Remember about the Zimbabwean currency? The currency had been devalued to such an extent that the country was printing Zimbabwean $100 trillion bills lol. After they stopped to use the currency for another. They used multiple currencies at the same time in the end, they were also printing USD bills (if I remember correctly)

One wonders why more Americans/Germans/Brits/insert Western country here don't do the same. Everyone the world over is being fed the same lies - "this time it's different", "we're all in this together", "working for you", "make us great again", blah blah blah. And every time the politicians get more corrupt, the banks consolidate more control, the rich get richer, and the average people suffer. The economy tanks and the banks and billionaires use it as an opportunity to buy up more assets cheaply, while large portions of society struggle to keep up with their bills or feed their children. Who cares about the poor dying though, right? Think about the profits!

At least back then they went to the effort of making it look like it was a Soviet defector who did it. Now they can just openly murder people like Epstein in his cell and nobody can touch them.

Argentina is a great case to see how bitcoin is going to reach / help or not, countries that face economic problems.
I believe that due to the capital controls, the Argentinians will try to find new ways of funding their economic activities or strengthen their purchasing power. This can be achieved easily with Bitcoin... My question now is: Is the Argentinian government Bitcoin friendly or not?

JFK?   You can't be serious he was a drugged-up stooge on the path to socialism. 

it's not a coincidence

Some people in the UK media have been promoting Boris Johnson as a political personality for over 15 years. Ask yourself: what for?

he's a total buffoon. he has almost nothing to offer, and yet he became the ostensible most powerful figure in UK politics. There are hundreds of representatives in the British parliament, and the editorial wing of the UK media chose to devote untold amounts of pages/minutes to someone with no redeeming features or skills, as if those qualities are in and of themselves newsworthy? "WORST POLITICIAN YET" was the perennial gist of every Boris story, ever

and these people supposedly have even the slightest sense of responsibility for starting that downward spiral?

the apparent fact is that people like Boris Johnson can become well-known for being bad at doing everything, then become Prime Minister. If just getting alot of TV time can do that, there's something seriously wrong with this garbage culture, as it's this sort of supposedly mindless behaviour by the media that has caused the rise of the "incompetent leader" all over the world, not just the UK. And the media did this worldwide, in synchrony? While international relations are breaking down for unrelated reasons?



John Kennedy was as bad as the rest of them, plenty of skeletons in that cupboard. He made the mistake of trying to upset the rest of the established power structure, and someone was sufficiently pissed to have him murdered. The whole hero worship thing was just what you do when head of state is killed, all the more so when some people in the media knew they had to help cover up the circumstances of the shooting. Making out JFK as an angel sent from heaven strengthened the effect of the "have some respect for the dead" argument when people speculated about inconsistencies in the official narrative.

Politicians are just pawns in the hands of the powerful who use them to control people and pass laws to control them. This is particularly pronounced today, it is enough to look at who leads the most powerful countries in the world, these are certainly not people who have the honor, morals or feelings for the people. There have been good politicians in the past (JFK), but they don’t last long in a world like this.

I do not see how people in Argentina can just like that switch to BTC, capital control means that they can exchange their domestic currency in limited amount every month for $, but this restriction is quite sufficient for ordinary citizens. People still choose to buy fiat ($), rather than BTC, and I do not believe that will change so easily.

I think the countries themselves already know this. Give in to aid packages and you basically sign away some form of our country to the devil. Mahathir knew this in the late 1990s when the World Bank offered to bail Malaysia out of the great Asian crisis. His refusal was slammed by most of the West as callous, but then later that particular brand of Mahathirism was lauded for preventing the country from getting into an inescapable pact with the banking powers.

But it's difficult to break out from the cycle. People want to remain in power for as long as possible. Aid packages that delay the inevitable long enough for you to retire before everything crumbles, so you can handover the doom to your successor? That's just irresistible.