Topic: Crisis in Argentine (Read 4397 times)

I get what your saying, and you're right on the spot on that last paragraph.

This has been a long dragged process in Argentina, which begun in 2001 and hasn't really finished yet. We are being bled out, slowly and painfully.

I think he's suggesting you do it in the "blue" market at least until you earn a nontrivial amount of BTC.

I think we are seeing why debt-based currencies can become popular quickly.  It is very easy to kick-start a currency by loaning it to lots of people... especially if you can just print more if some don't pay back.

But for asset based currencies, exporting services/stuff (for BTC in this case) is really the key because nobody wants your pesos.

Normally an economic crash would produce a lot of people who are willing to work and export stuff inexpensively -- for less then outsourcing companies in stable economic zones.  This one of the reasons countries are inflating their currencies right now -- to offer an export advantage and deter imports.  Clearly, this would kick-start internal productivity...  So you'd think as a leader in this Argentina would have an advantage. 

But it is perhaps a very unfortunate effect of certain political/economic systems (generally those with heavy regulations/taxes and tariffs) that they can fall apart slowly and in such a way as to not be able to undersell these other zones until the economic destruction is completed ("completed" can be loosely defined as when the majority of economic activity is unreported).

Well somewhat... I'm not so sure tho.

Setting up capital and doing an investement is not quite the same as running a services company (which I do actually, I'm a dev like many other people in the btc world). There is a LOT more work, there are lots of legal issues (if I want my company to stay within the legal bounds, pay taxes, etc) and last but not least, if I want your btc for it, I'm competing with the hordes of Indian and asian outsourcing companies. The have huge working forces, can also arbitrage the usd / local currency, and overall drive all prices down.

Actually it would be much easier to just offer some services on the web, accepting bitcoins as a payment.

Sounds great !  Let us know if you launch something !

Matonis is a hype master.  Take everything he writes with a healthy dose of salt.

OMG Wines for BTC, you just made my day (month? year???).

I've worked with dozens of distributors.. I'll have the website up in a week !

This is the opportunity, not the problem. To all Argentinians here: Stop thinking "problem". think opportunity.

Can anyone sell me 10000 bottles of fine Mendoza wine for Bitcoin?

Actually quite a lot of people seem to be interested in it: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/04/27/bitcoins-promise-in-argentina/

Sure the blue rate is pretty high, reflecting the risk of buying it, but that is part of the price. It's not just an exchange rate, it's the exchange rate + the risk of exchanging in the jurisdiction of a state that does not want you to exchange.

If I sold washing machines for $500 each and the government sold washing machines for $100 each, well, what's the "real" price? If the government only sells an extremely limited number of washing machines and uses the police force to attempt to stifle any other washing machine sales, and I sell an unlimited number but with inherent risk, well, I'm selling them at the "real price" plus the risk of law enforcement seizure. Somebody who needs more than one washing machine might have to come to me.

So yes it's not the ' real price ' but so long as the exchange is legally flakey, there will be no real price, no matter how 'kind hearted and altruistic' the BTC trader is.

Ideally we'd get people selling BTC for argentinian pesos, at a lower exchange rate than the dollar "blue rate" in bitcoins. Lower risk reflected in price. But who has bitcoins to sell and wants argentinian pesos? Lol. And who in argentina has even heard of bitcoin? It'll be a while.

The official rate is obviously way low, but the "blue" rate in turn is also likely artificially high, because of the risks involved in criminal markets. If Bitcoin offers a way to transfer value with fewer risks, that should eventually be reflected in the exchange rates.

...
What are you talking about? The rest of the world knows that your 'official' peso/dollar exchange rate is flat-out wrong, the government is lying to you. Something is worth what people are willing to pay for it - so while you might be able to get a very limited amount for the "official rate" through "official channels," the rate you can get an unlimited amount for on the black market is as close as you can get to the 'real' discovered price. Just because the word "official" is in front of the "official exchange rate" doesn't make it legitimate.

Inflation is 25% not 10% so why do you hope/expect to find someone willing to exchange USD as if inflation were 10%... You'd have to find some pretty stupid people.

Anyways.

Argentinians are used to buying USD on the black market so I have no doubt that they can easily become accustomed to buying BTC on the black market - and trust me, no one's going to do that wacky Virwox linden dollars thing - OTC is the way to go, whether it's IRC or IRL. Like I said, if you're already used to buying USD from a "friend" and stuffing it under your mattress, buying BTC the same way is not going to be a stretch as it would be in many other countries.

That said, it'll be a while before we see any real demand from Argentina. While the dollar is relatively stable, they'll be buying dollars just because it's familiar and easy. As wopwop pointed out, you can not only buy BTC a couple days ago at $93 and wake up today and have it be $102... you can also buy them at $102 and wake up a few days later and have them be $93. The volatility is not appeasing, even though the long-term trend beats any fiat currency in existence.

Same thing happening in Venezuela - annualized monthly inflation is 40%, current YoY is ~35%, also there is a toilet paper shortage
inb4 "lol their just not doin' socializm rite - if they did tru socializm it wud totally werk"

thanks for the ideas and brahah
my buds and I were deciding to open an exchage
semm Argentina would be the best choice but also a worst choice

I know. Called it soccer so the US people would know what we're talking about. Some of them have trouble with mBTC, football etc  

There is a mailing list for trade of BTC in Argentina: http://wiki.eudemocracia.org/en/bitcoin
Found it in this blog post: http://thebluemarket.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/bitcoin-dollars-and-pot-banging-protests-in-argentina/

It's called football. Americans.....

This is where bitcoin can come in. Smuggling bitcoins is really low risk compared to USD. Of course, the hassles, fees and travel costs are still an issue. But if someone is traveling from the US to Argentine anyway for whatever reason, buying some BTC beforehand could be a really good deal. If you ever visit the states you could look at BTC as an alternative to USD without the big risks of getting caught.

You should start to sell soccer players in BTC instead of Euro/USD

You won't be.....


... if you solve that problem.

PM me if I can be of any help (sitting in the EU)

 

It's about 50% (25%/year). See http://inflacionverdadera.com.  It's very high though, no need to exaggerate.

Anyway: Why is this in the "Speculation" subforum? This has nothing to do with the Bitcoin price. Should be in "Politics & Society", "Economy" or "Off Topic".

Argentinians are USD addicted right now, in a forced way.

Inflation is over 100% in the last two years but salaries in pesos have not adjusted accordingly (maybe 30/40% increase).

All our economy is now tourism dependent, we attract lots and lots of Americans, Europeans, Chinese, you name it. Everybody loves it here, and as some have dutifully noted :p we do have maybe the best women in the world ( for reference, i've been in the us and all around western europe ). As result all consumer prices are indexed and tailored against the USD and tourists.

Acquisition power for locals is at very low levels right now, and you got whole sectors of economy in a stale state. An example is real estate. Rents are doing ok (at high costs), but there are no sales.
Land owners are locked in a mentality where they bought at our golden age of "convertibilidad" 1 usd = 1 peso, and prices have only gone up since, always in USD.

So take for example someone like myself, almost 30 with a decent job. A tiny 1 room apartment at a decent area is upwards of 100k usd. At our current of 1 usd = 9 pesos, I need to almost become a millionaire before I can move in to my first own home. Remember, banks are not extending credit, and we have no such thing as your mortgage and double or triple mortgage scammy thingy you got in the US. It looks like I will be renting for a long time.

So that's USD for everyday living, but there's another important reason for USD craze here. The 2001 bank runs are still fresh in everyone's mind. Banks here, are simply not trusted hated.
At that time lots and lots of people lost most of their savings. And more recently the gov' completely looted the 40bn in the retirement companies (and shut them down in favor of the monopolist gov' controled ANSES ). Now people have no savings, and no future. USD is being stored under the matress, "a la gold".

If BTC finds a better oiled way to arbitrage between pesos, USD and btc itself, it will be very attractive to argentinians. As it stands now, there are lots of barriers to entry.

I've only recently found btc.uy but they were not officially live yet. Are they now?

I haven't heard of btcglobal but I'll check em out.