Topic: Argentina is not going Bitcoin (Read 4090 times)

It should be relatively risk free for an exchange, as they hold both the bitcoins and the fiat until a trade is done by the users. The risk is on the bitcoin seller, but that should only skew the price, trades should always be possible. It's just like the blue dollars.

Your statement that a country can devalue its way to prosperity makes absolutely no sense.  Please feel free to cite an example where a country devalued its currency continually and prospered.

Argentina is not going to devalue their way to prosperity, only misery.  I don't think they will prove me wrong.

If you were being purposefully obtuse and reading my statements about Argentina as referring to an individual (and given I was replying to a message about Argentina, not an individual that seems a big stretch), then yes, if an individual or small group of individuals control the printing press and prints themselves $50 billion and keeps it for themselves, then sure an individual can do so, but they will be killing their own currency unless they immediately trade it.

Just as we're talking about inflation. Some history...



Source

Argentina has the 9th position of inflation record with the 1981 inflation.

Actually, quite the opposite.

The people who have control of the printing press, i.e. the people who control whether to devalue or not, most certainly can and do use devalue of everybody else to create prosperity for themselves.

Your statement about prosperity makes no sense; it's as you think the decision makers' lives are in any way connected with the lives of their victims.

Exactly right.  :-)

It is the classic case of devaluing a currency to the extreme.  One cannot devalue one's way to prosperity, only to misery.  The smart people (which seems like almost everyone in Argentina) are trading paper that becomes worth less every day for hard assets.

I think that is because they KNOW that there IS NO tomorrow for the peso unless the government gets its act together.  And they know that is extremely unlikely.

The spending will not last, it is just going to make things worse because no one wants the currency, only goods (for obvious reasons). 

:-)

The problem is getting rid of pesos. People have pesos and pesos worth nothing outside Argentina.  Look at the paradox: the Argentina Central Bank does not buy them at any price. 

I'm saying people are spending as if there is no tomorrow and the economy is moving.

That is very suitable for services. As per products, most products are more expensive in Argentina than in the US and if the goverment finds out you are exporting, they will force your client to deposit the dollars in the government account, and they will give you pesos (that they happily print at no cost) at the official rate.
 

You guys have practically put an embargo on yourselves.
How is that not bad all.

I live in Argentina. Land of large scale economic experiments

This is what people want to do with their savings:

1 - Get rid of ARS (change them for some other currency)
2 - Buy BTC to hedge against US inflation

For argentinians #1 is much more important than #2, they are perfectly happy keeping their savings in the "weak fiat"  the USD is. If you think the FED is destroying the USD, then try the ARS.  (inflation in ARS is 25% annual)

That said, many argentinians are using BTC to achieve #1 without the physical interchange of USD or EUR bills, but the amounts are tiny since wealthy people is already invested in USD.  The BTC is used as a temporary tool, and is far from perfect.

Other funny facts that will make into economic research papers:
- A BTC/ARS exchange will never be approved by Government (heck, even a USD/ARS exchange is forbidden)
- Nobody sells dollars at the official rate of 5.7 (rate that is used for "approved" imports and all exports)
- Informal traders put the rate at 9.3 ARS/USD. It is illegal to buy or sell foreign currency (law that is impossible to enforce anyway)
- Argentinians can use their credit cards to buy stuff in foreign currency (either travelling or online) paying in ARS at a 20% premium on top of the 5.7 rate (~ 7 ARS/USD). But this is probably going to end after October elections. There are practical limits for this anyway (CC limits for instance)
- Argentinian internal economy is not thriving, but is not bad at all.

Its because their government has a tight grip on their bank accounts.
They can't change ARG for USD, they can't wire money and they can't consequently they can't buy mining equipment (not that mining is worth much nowadays)
Their president is literarily a feminazi.

+1

...and of course someone could offer to do this for other people looking for Bitcoins and charge a premium (or simple do this and sell the Bitcoins at localbitcoins in hand).

Why wouldn't this work?

It's near impossible to buy at official rate (now about 6 ARS/USD) but you can buy at illegal market, the so called Dólar Blue cotization which goes around 9 ARS/USD. Yes, 50%.
The problem goes into the other side too, nobody is going to give you cash dollars, they will convert your dollars into ARS at official rate.

Now there is a limit on this, you can't withdraw more than a few hundred bucks per month in other countries ATMs.


Anyway the Gov. is not going to permit an exchange here.

there are a lot of bitcoiners that have translated most of the knowledge, i know of queesbitcoin.info is one

Agreed, I mine and trade for pesos, to then pay rent, buy food or whatnot.

they would use it to buy things inside of Argentina... the fact that the currency sucks doesnt mean we should expect people to be unwilling to trade bitcoin for it, just that such transactions should be expected to carry a very large premium

A lot of these rumours about various countries accepting Bitcoins or making them an accepted currencies seem to come from pretty unreliable looking sources, usually some idiot with a blog looking to get lots of views or actual conspiracy theorists. I have noticed though that there are plenty of private companies already making a move and it seems that countries who have long been independent of the major empires seem to like Bitcoin quite a lot even if they don't say anything, because you see a lot of the companies based in independent countries quite happy to use it.

See the known tax havens etc. countries that care about privacy rights, you could easily argue that Bitcoin is a common ally for these kind of countries.

it is probably really hard for Argentinians to convert local currency into BTC

even for people in the US, it was not really easy when Mtcocks stopped taking their money

And why should an exchange open up in Argentinia, to accept large amount of weak local currency, for BTC? What would they do with that local currency? They cannot move it out or convert.

In Cyprus the story was different, the currency was Euros. Only the bank transfers to the outside were halted.

yes i like where this is going. here is an idea. find good useful products to sell on bitmit and underbid the other sellers. since its so difficult to get coins into the country you ought to be able to make up the difference with premiums on the coins you sell.