Topic: Crisis in Argentine - page 2. (Read 4387 times)

argentinian girls are really really hot

There are always willing travelers/tourists who need to exchange money, it would be a good idea to advertise on localbitcoins.

you have the pesos, they have BTC, good trade.

The best way of course is to mine, after all, If you have a good used video card it is time to start mining; Do not mine litecoins! you will earn far less than just mining BTC directly at this moment.

If you mine with a 5870 for a month you will earn guaranteed 120 USD. if you mine litecoin it will be 40 USD.

Then distribute the BTC to the people for the calculated cost of inflation and your exchange fee. NO illegalities, no hassle, just time and a little effort.

http://listado.mercadolibre.com.ar/bitcoin

Here in the United States, I don't have a lot of incentives to mine bitcoins... but I think if I was in Argentia, I'd be fairly motivated to build a big mining rig. Actually, here's what I would do... since ASICs are hard to come by in Argentina, I would mine Litecoins with as many GPUs as I could get my hands on and then trade them for bitcoins. OK, it's complicated, but in dire circumstances...

Haha I love how we want a country to go bankrupt so that we get another bubble within 2 months of last one 

Question to Argentinians-

What do you think of btc.uy and btcglobal, they as good as they claim?

and how do you think argentinians will stomach btc's volatility, is there any precedent where they engaged in some wildly fluctuating value without caring because the losses were far bigger in their national currency, do they like a bit of a gamble or are they more looking for sleep at night? they do pay massive premiums to buy dollars in the black market, no, so maybe they couldnt care less?

The localbitcoins issue and other (darker) alternatives:

Ideally, local exchangers should be the way BUT remember we have a black market dollar. Thus we have an official dollar rate 1 usd = 5~ pesos and a "blue dollar" (black market) rate of 1usd = 8-9~ pesos.

Local sellers are obviously selling at blue dollar prices, so that makes it really really costly (borderline scammy).
If one could find an open heart altruist btc magnate to sell at official rate, that's jackpot.

A second more realistic scenario, is based on money exchange arbitrage and not a btc thing itself, but it's possible and it is being done, a lot.

In such a scenario I can buy stuff for you on the internet at a (new) credit card dollar rate (official rate + 25%, this is forced by gov' on visa, master, etc.), and you give me btc. Now I've got some BTC and I can hoard and hope for the future; or I could try and do some arbitrage selling in black market, but of course if acquiring btc was hard, imagine how hard it will be to get some liquid USD from my btc, to go and sell in BM.

I have recently found a loophole, where I get a web debit card (mastercard) with a valid ACH, to which I should withdraw my BTC to USD exchange. I then must buy a plane ticket, travel abroad, go to an ATM, withdraw my USD, smuggle them back in and sell in black market.

Of course, after all of these hassles, fees, travel costs, and the inherent criminality of it all.... gains are minimal to non-existant. Risk is uber-high.

EDIT: Realistically, the overall best investment for anyone here (or elsewhere) would actually be to start large scale ASIC mining farm, given we are paying 1/8 the electricity costs. But you would have to be very very very lucky to a) get an avalon unit (at it's official price, not the 10-20x resell price they are going for) and b) smuggle them from the US to Arg.

+ full on corrupt (almost dictatorial) gov' (our Secretario de Comercio Interior Guillermo Moreno holds "meetings" with both feet and a loaded gun above the desk, also the pupeteer behind our crippled economy,  fixed currency rates and official gov' money laundering schemes)

  Wow he sounds like a nice guy, at least you have sexy girls just use silk road he can help you find the supply

Why on Earth should you go such a complex way?

You can use localbitcoins much easier (paying directly with pesos), and even if you don't, I'm pretty sure there are many easier methods (though of course less easy than here).

Hi everyone,

I'm from Argentina. I personally think most of you are being too optimistic. The reality is that even if BTC were to gain mainstream support here (which it does not have, actually nobody even knows what BTC is here), there are extreme (unsurmountable?) barriers to entry, mainly regarding btc acquisition.

Argentina, a country:

+ in technical default
+ going through hyperinflation
+ where we can not legally buy dollars (or any other currency)
+ whose banking system is closed to the world (via exuberant fees)
+ full on corrupt (almost dictatorial) gov' (our Secretario de Comercio Interior Guillermo Moreno holds "meetings" with both feet and a loaded gun above the desk, also the pupeteer behind our crippled economy,  fixed currency rates and official gov' money laundering schemes)

The following is the most efficient way to acquire BTC here (I'll let you be the judge of whether it's "easy" as claimed):

1.Acquire USD through black market (at higher rate) (FEE loss #1)
2.Deposit USD to VirWox through CC or Paypal (FEE loss #2)
3.In VirWox: USD > Linden dollars (FEE loss #3)
4.In VirWox: Linden dollars > BTC (FEE loss #4)
5.Withdraw BTC from VirWox (FEE loss #5)

Of course, pray you have an old VirWox account.. if not, you are capped at 20-50 usd a day, making it so that to be able to buy a SINGLE (1) BTC you need to make 2 or 3 deposits, doubling or tripling the 5 fees above). Also, as a new VirWox user, you'll be happy to find out that BTC withdrawal is a 72hs process with a "manual step" on their side.

Would you want me to buy some BTC for you at these rates?

Our situation is akin to the more known Ciprus case. Our countries are the ones who would benefit most from BTC, but unfortunately at the same time, they are the countries with the most difficulties acquiring
them.

Currently they're worse than cyprus, the inflation in the last 10 years is completely insane. And it doesn't look like is going to stop.

You can actually buy gold in Argentina, but it's very scarce since only a few banks (and obviously illegal locations) sell it.

In Argentina there is "freedom of contract", so buying and selling BTC to goods/services would be extremely difficult to ban (ban would be probably anti-constitutional). But the currency market is totally controlled and restricted, so if the Argentine government declares that BTC is a currency, they could shut down exchanges. It is more probable, though, that BTC would be seen as a commodity or a barter accounting unit. We had an experience with the so-called "créditos" in the 90s, a nationwide alternative "bartering" currency which came into prominence in the economic crisis of 2001 and was not banned but destroyed itself due to bad organization.

It must be stated that we are not in a dictatorship, although some right-wing media say this (see the Economist's Democracy Index or the Reporters Without Borders rankings where Argentina is not doing that bad). But I don't like the Argentine government very much and would be pleased if they lose elections this year and above all in 2015 :p

That's a good question. It's hard to know for sure. As they talk about in that Argentia/Bitcoin documentary video the government already takes a heavy handed approach not allowing citizens to buy gold, dollars etc. legally. I think Bitcoin would pose a different challenge, though. Governments can use different tactics to restrict buying of certain things/currencies, but Bitcoin is hard to restrict because it's so much more nimble. It doesn't really exist in physical form and can be transferred as easily as sending email, without middlemen. Argentinians are already buying dollars illegally so I imagine it would be harder to prevent them buying and using bitcoins.

so since the govt already controlling their currency which you cant exchange to other fiat or gold.

Would the Argentina govt puts up a lot of laws and restrictions on bitcoin when the bitcoin spread more and more in  Argentina.

I think Argentina could be first to take off with Bitcoin used for trade and not only speculation.

The reason is their situation, as has been pointed out in this thread. Most other places in the world, especially the US, have complacent citizens who are happy with their finances, relatively speaking. People may admire some of Bitcoin's strengths but see no real reason to use it for exchange when dollars/euros etc. already work so well.

Argentina is different, though, and people there have a better appreciation for alternatives to their national currency. Indeed shortly after their economic crash in 2001 people desperately tried making other trade/money systems. These failed quickly as they were no more sophisticated than what could be designed and printed, and therefore easily counterfeited, by home computers. So Bitcoin might be very well received.

The other reason I think they're particularly well suited is their economy exists at a lower, truer level. One might easily find someone willing to trade personal services like sewing, nanny, tutor, etc., anything of basic value to begin building a foundation of economic activity based on a currency like Bitcoin. That would mean those citizens could really begin to thrive.

It would take that on a growing scale to affect the Bitcoin US price, though.

A nice Bitcoin/Argentia documentary video for those that missed it:

http://www.247btc.com/bitcoins/154/bitcoins-in-argentina-a-brief-documentary/

We have plenty of traders in Argentina: https://localbitcoins.com/country/AR

Also we recently added ARS "blue market rate" to our pricing engine: http://localbitcoins.blogspot.fi/2013/06/argentina-goverment-fixing-exchange.html

Did someone try to track the BTCARS exchange rate?

Obviously that would be quite difficult, since that's black market, but I guess maybe there are open sites with announcements, like localbitcoins?

are there a lot media report, magazines, online news or whatever covering bitcoin in Argentine?

Cheer up!    No reason to be so pessimistic.  A glass that is half empty is a glass that is also half full.  The recent price drop provides a great buying opportunity for those Argentines who want more bitcoins or who don't have any bitcoins yet, and would like to convert part of their savings over to a currency with purchasing power that bankers and politicians can't steal from them.  Having bitcoins may very well be one of the few ways that will allow them to retire some day.

My own experience is with Brazil in the 1980s when we had to track the cruzeiro vs. dollar rate at least twice a day in order to seal a deal. The phenomenon of parallel and black market currencies is essentially the same across time and space. In Bazil, if you were selling a piece of technical equipment to a factory, for instance, they would always have someone on staff that could structure a barter or a black market (read free market) payment. You would need a large sports bag to carry the local currency and the banks would seal and sign the bundles of banknotes so that one didn't have to count the bills, only the bundles. With U$20 in hand you could go into a top hotel and have three waiters hovering over your table while you paid for a classy meal, with wine, and generous gratuities and leave with change.

You have to see otherwise respectable famiies watch their lifetime of savings disappearing before their eyes on a daily basis and desperate for any currency other than their own. The fact that I spoke passable Portuguese and could produce dollars gave me the breezy air of a VIP and caused me to love the county and the people deeply in the end, quite apart from the money angle.

Have no doubt that Argentina is in this state, thanks to their confiscatory socialist economics and perverse regulatory climate. Anyone who goes there with a good stock of bitcoin in hand (so to speak) would be a social success within 24 hours, but would have to be ready to learn an entire vocabulary and acquire a knowledge of free market practices. It's just too big a story to tell, if you haven't already experienced it.

The greatest frustration is that you can acquire some great stuff, say with your bitcoin, like pallets of vintage reserve wines, but you would never be able to get them home without going through the export regulatory paperwork which would seize all the profit in the deal and make it not worth doing. But there are ways... don't ask.