Topic: Bitcoin as Zimbabwe's official currency + Prince of Sealand interest in bitcoin - page 2. (Read 7574 times)

Zimbabwe can launch their own coin with centralized control. Why do they need Bitcoin?

I don't know, I'm still very sceptical. The Sealand story, looks pretty legit. The Zimbabwe story, everything out there points back to the CNN story, which is one without sources... So unless we get any other reports. (google hasn't found any yet) Looks like its fake

Sealand I'm all for.

Zimbabwe not really.  That economy is a massive mess and this whole idea doesn't make a lot of rational sense to me.

lol what a load of bullshit
'unidentified source'
'unknown journalist'
right... go on...


I thought Zimbabwe is mostly underdeveloped as in, no power or much technology to support the bitcoin system...?

The Zimbabwe's content is updated with information from CNN.

Not impossible but harder.

A small nation can be coerced pretty easily.

I've heard of important bitcoin advocates trying to convince small nations to adopt bitcoin as official currency. This would make impossible to make bitcoins illegal.

Regarding the practical feasibility of this, there's a lot to speculate though.

But tying your currency to an inflation free-index is a solution that has been used with success in order to stop inflation. In Chile, my country, we have since the late 70's something called "UF" which is an alternate currency that readjust every month according to inflation. This currency is used in almost all real state transactions and for most credits. You can even make time deposits in UF to protect agains inflation.

Perhaps they don't need to actually use btcs, but just tie the exchange of their currency to btc prices.

Cheers!

Yeah i read in another thread about their system called Mpesa. Maybe we can learn something from them and create a layer for bitcoin that is similar to their system to make BTC payments more user friendly. I'm not a programmer but if a developer could make something similar i think it would be a huge leap for Bitcoin.

I'm still not convinced but i have saved the link and will read it when i have time. Thank you and hopefully i'll learn something new.

Loans in BTC particularly are not feasible due to its extreme volatility.
But if a currency is used by an entire nation, its price won't fluctuate that much. A stable currency would increase in value proportionally to the economic growth of its user base. Loans would then be a possibility, likely with low interest rates. Like they were during the gold standard (during the second half of the XIX century in the US, for instance, prices would systematically fall)


You're ignoring that inflation is not neutral. Those who receive the money first profit from those who receive it last, by being able to buy things before prices account for the new money. When the last people in the chain receive the new money, it'll be already too late. So, at least (when we're talking about 'simple inflation'), it is a nefarious wealth transfer mechanism. It's the most disguised of all taxes, and tend to hit harder on the most ignorant and/or poor.
And that's not all. Inflation nowadays is not simple. It's always directed to the credit market, creating signals to investors that there's lots of resources to invest in long term projects, Obviously creating money doesn't create resources, so this false signal will trigger a malinvestment boom which will result in a burst. These boom and burst cycles result in lots of lost capital. You can read more here:  https://mises.org/daily/672


You're forced to hold at least some because you're forced to pay your taxes in fiat. The network effect of the banking system will also ensure you hold much more than what you strictly need only for taxation.
Let's hope Bitcoin makes it easier to live without fiat one day.

I understand your argument and i know many on this forum share it. I'm not saying i'm right and your wrong. Hell, people have been battling about this for a long time and still there is no consensus. The problem i see with your argument is that when you give the farmer less BTC every month because it is worth more he won't be able to pay back any loans he has. You could solve it by making the loan less BTC every year but then why would anybody lend it if you win more by just holding.

To be honest i don't see a problem with an inflationary currency. In my point of view, i see currency as one thing and a store of value as another. I think of currency like a hot potato which you want to hold for as little as possible. It's just something that makes trading easier but doesn't have any value by itself. Also when a currency loses purchasing power, the wages become bigger so there is balance. So when a worker gets his paycheck, he buys food, pays his rent etc and the part that he wants to save he invests in gold, silver, real estate, BTC etc. Nobody is forcing anybody to hold a currency, i don't see why somebody would like to hold it and complain that it loses value.

Brushan, if you analyse your argument a little deeper basically what you're saying is that the purchasing power of everybody else should be kept weaker than what it can be just to help exporters.

That's wrong both ethically and economically.
No, you should not decrease the purchasing power of an entire society in order to temporarily help a segment of it. When your money earns value, you earn more purchasing power and you become richer. So if the money of an entire country is getting more valuable, everybody in this country is getting richer!

And this effect over exporters is much less worse than what people make it look like. With his stronger money, the exporter farmer of your example will have more purchasing power to acquire more tools/machinery and be more productive, for example. Also, since the value of money increased, people can receive nominally smaller wages - which could be actually higher in purchasing power.

Well let's say a corn farmer in Zimbabwe gets paid 10 BTC a month. To be able to to pay him 10 BTC a month the owner has to sell 1 kg of corn for 1 BTC. Let's say his exporting the corn to the neighbouring nations. When the value of 1 BTC rises the corn gets too expensive for the importers and they start importing from elsewhere. A country has to do business with other countries or else it will end up like North Korea. So when the whole world has inflating currencies and 1 country has a deflating currency they will have a hard time.

Its a CNN iReport by "BitCoinSachs".  Yea right  . And since when did CNN become an authority on Bitcoin?

CNN reports also:
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-957375
Lets see.
It bitcoin goes up this month over 500 $ then we know why.

yeah, run by HavenCo

there was some news article I read in February this year that said they were going to attempt to start it up again "later this year"

Bitcoin has never been tried at such a wide scale in a single country, this is probably bupkiss though given their hyperinflation problems making their existing money absolutely worthless I could see this happening in some country sometime soon.

Why is deflationary a bad thing? Is it bad your money continues to appreciate in value over time instead of losing it like the Euro of Dollar never to recover their spending power? People need to disconnect fiat currency from crypto-currencies, they do not work the same and cannot be compared in an economic way. Bitcoin's deflationary nature ensure hyperinflation never occurs which I think has been proven to be infinitely worse for an economy.

lol mentioning Zimbabwe is not going to do Bitcoin any favours its pretty funny though, they should try litecoin or something more suited to

their weak monetary base

I think they don't export so much and they are already isolated.
May be they are meaning to introduce bitcoins for foreign trading which would help imports.

So Zimb goes from being the most inflationary country to the most deflationary country in one hit.....