Topic: Why Latin American economies are turning to bitcoin (Read 3057 times)

I think bitcoin has been in the radar for quite some time for Latin American countries. They might have been investors as well from those nations. However, it is not quite familiar to the general public. Only the upper class may have heard the new about bitcoin being a save haven for investors. But for the general public is not quite popular yet. But its just a matter of time before they will catch up and used bitcoin as well.

Brazil been with BTC long enough but had never really made it to the news brought huge impact to the price of BTC. But after Japan started accepting BTC, it bought a lot of money, just take a look at how much is the marketcap of btc a month ago.

If there are going to be more Latin countries, it should make a big changes too.

Is it only Latin America?
I think no! Bitcoin and Cryptocrrencies are on front-seat in almost every country and economy. Though there are several different reasons for it around the globe but still major domination coming from 'individual investors' who are investing in large in cryptocurrencies. Take a time and visit coinmarketcap, you will able to see that 95% of the coins are rising these days.

With the price of bitcoin in major news and financial magazines people will notice about it and may be they are not confident enough to enter at the current price because it is really a very huge amount when they are planning to invest in it,so it looks like they will come into bitcoin or either into alt coin ,lets see what the future is and i am sure people will make an attempt to learn about the new markets.

...

Despite all time highs and BTC being in the US news, I have NO evidence that BTC is catching on in Peru at all.  ZERO interest, NO ONE here (visiting Lima) has heard of it.  NO ONE cares.  Peru's very small BTC group seems to be in the provincial city of Ica.

In Argentina and Brazil there appear to be active BTC communities that have sprung up, I suppose Venezuelans are looking very hard at it as well.  Mexico?  Could be, I live nowhere near the US/Mexico border so I have no idea.

All the altcoins are the way to go around this,but bitcoin is the most trusted and secure crypto.
I heard news about african countries adopting bitcoin and now Latin America joins the party.
Bitcoin will conquer the third world.

Yes, that is true
Because the technological currency bitcoin where all the money can use bitcoin around the world.
So they do not have to bother anymore exchange currency..

I have been living in Argentina and what this guy says is right on the money.   so to speak.

sdp

Its only logical if the costs are cheap.

And it just means they just need the hardware to do it pretty much, which they can do collectively if they all invested together.

And have a similar setup like in china.

Guess what about this president has done really bad things with off-shoring money from the country that is crumbling under his feet according to the Panama Papers just released today.
Also naming a many other high ranking government officials of sending their countries moneys in large sums to off-shore accounts to hide from the countries treasury departments.

Bitcoin empowers Latin American entrepreneurs to tap into a truly global market by permitting them to accept payments from customers anywhere in the world without facing exorbitant cross-border transaction fees..
bitcoin would free up hundreds of millions of incremental dollars annually in Latin American economies.. so the Latin American economies are turning to bitcoin..

don't you want the same?   Yes, you do.

Wendigo

You have nicely written up the future of Bitcoin in Latin America.  I think the future is good, but not certain, in LatAm for Bitcoin.  A lot can happen, and BTC is likely to do fine, but who really knows.  YES, Bitcoin is a good defense against corruption and wealth confiscation.

*   *   *

blanchwood

Your English is just fine, don't worry.

Bitcoin in LatAm seems to have two main roles now:

1) Defense against .gov destruction of wealth, also (similarly) as a means of guarding and moving capital past controls...

2) Speculation, yes, I did not know that, but it makes sense.  But, probably speculation with the idea of preserving your capital.

If you JUST want to speculate, well you can always have a poker game with your friends or shoot some dice...   

Perhaps the prevalent corruption among the Latin American governments and the high inflation rate force people to search for an alternative to their local currencies that have decreasing buying power every year and Bitcoin is the perfect digital currency which is relatively stable, out of the reach of corrupted officials and can be moved stealthy around.

It is much cheaper than make own crypto, so they use Bitcoin with whole network. All Latin American countries are always thinking to get something without costs. 

Sorry knowhow, but here in South America people couldn't care less about euro/dollar protection by buying btcoins. I live in Brazil and here bitcoins (and altcoins for that matter) are only (for now) for investment (sell high, buy low). We dont have plenty physical stores that accept bitcoins.

Some people buy stuff on internet using bitcoins, but its like 0.5% of the market.

OROBTC:

1) yes, thats right.

2) yes, thats right, but like i said, the core utility of bitcoins "down here" is speculate.

3) i agree with you.


About Venezuela: venezuela is the highest inflaction on south america for several reasons, i think what knowhow said is more applied to venezuela's case. Not only that, but venezuela has the cheapest energy in the continent, some south american miners go to venezuela to mining bitcoins.


p.s: sorry for my bad english.

OK, I hear you, but...:

1) Latins "down there" have to be able to buy & hold Bitcoin.  That is very hard in most cases, for various reasons.

2) Prospective Latin buyers need to feel confident that they can spend their BTC when they need to, it's hard to spend BTC in LatAm.

3) Bitcoin is still a tad too technical.  If it's hard for it to catch on (massively) in Europe & the USA, well...

The above comments, of course, may be subject to change.  I wish Latin Americans well (and hope BTC is an answer for many) who are in crappy authoritarian places with bad money.

Well their own currencies sucks,having bitcoin,will mean have something like gold,or the strongests fiat,being dollar euro or others,this are very strong and almost stable at their values,soo i believe this is what people are investing at bitcoin ,to protect their capital at euro/dollar.

You're equating supply and demand with price

REVELATION: Supply and demand doesn't apply to trading

Let's say AAPL stock goes up 90% in a 12 month time span, is this because "traders" decided to buy apple stock en-masse and drive up the price? The short answer is NO. Any stock that jumps 90%+ in a year only does so when Goldman Sachs and/or any of the other investment banks instruct their market makers to "buy the sell side."

They push billions into the sell side over several months (sometimes several years), and then collect two times their money (or more) when they begin to sell onto the buy side over the following months/years.

Worldwide, banks are failing... BUT - Gold is plunging in price - when, "usually," Gold has an inverse relationship with global financial disorder... "Usually" when the economy is on the brink of destruction, Gold is "supposed" to rally.. Right?

But based on what I described above, about investment banks and their role in price manipulation... Ask yourself, how much money would it take for the price fixers to "buy the sell side" and push the price of Gold up? Billions?... Trillions?... Quadrillions? They don't have the money.

Why don't they have the money? Because they have already done their buying... and what comes after buying? ..Selling!

So despite the financial disorder that we are seeing worldwide, the price of gold is going down... what does this mean? Is it the "traders" that are selling because they are so wise that they are finally willing to go against "the crowd" and against the common cliche that dictates that when the banks are failing and interest rates are jumping, then gold "always" goes to the moon?  

Well no, actually "traders" are still placing their buy orders - because they have been programmed over the last ten years to "perceive" gold as a hedge against financial crisis. So they are still actually trying to "get in cheap,"  but the price just keeps on falling

Why is this?

It's because Goldman and The London Gold Price Fixing Company etc have spent the last 10 years "buying the sell side" and putting trillions into pushing up the price. So, they are now taking their profits by selling onto the buy side, and will be doing so over the next several years - hence, the need for BITCOIN, which has been dubbed "digital gold"

So thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of latin americans may have joined the Bitcoin economy... But the price per BTC does not have to reflect this, and will not reflect this since price is not tied to supply and demand

I hear ya. The headline should really read why a couple of thousand of latin americans are turning to bitcoin.