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I wonder how those who work from a third world country like Argentina with a hard fiat currency control from our government will achieve to get paid without bei

I wonder how those who work from a third world country like Argentina with a hard fiat currency control from our government will achieve to get paid without being robbed by it. I'll explain: today our government forbids us from buying foreign currency such as the US dollar (200 tops for a really REALLY small portion of the population) so a black market has been at place since the prohibition started many years ago. In this market each dollar corresponds to 200 pesos while the government states each one costs around 100 pesos. So, if you work for a company outside, and the pay you 1000 usd, you get 100,000 pesos when you could get 200,000 in reality. Not only that, you also are forbid from buying dollars, so if you want to get them to avoid our rampant inflation (50% average, around 100% for groceries) you only have the black market which is around 200 pesos. I know about the damages to the cliamte of crypto mining but consider also that there are some beneficial uses of these currencies for people like me who don't live in the first world.

jollybean 5y ago
Argentinians who want to avoid their own currency would be 10x better served by USD than BTC.
- hogrider 5y ago
  This is true but you van only buy a few dollars from official sources, after that you need to go black market where thry will screw you over with fake bills.
- kragen 5y ago
  The USD inflated 6% over the last year, and getting it into the country is often difficult, but it is indeed very popular here.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    6% is fine, at least it's not +/-100% and it's accepted everywhere. For now.
    - kragen 5y ago
      It's fine as a medium of exchange or a unit of account; as a store of value, 6% inflation in a year is disastrous.
      - jollybean 5y ago
        6% was just one year, not a long term value. And nobody should be using common currency as a store of value. The USD is designed to have a bit of inflation, i.e. it's not supposed to be a store of value on purpose.
        kragen 5y ago
        It's true that we don't know whether US$ inflation this year will be 1% or 12%, but that's not actually better than a predictable 6% per year inflation rate. It's worse. A predictable inflation rate could be priced into things like bond yields. Use as a store of value is a significant part of what we're talking about here. You said, "Argentinians who want to avoid their own currency would be 10x better served by USD than BTC." Why do you think Argentines want to avoid our own currency? Part of it is that it's useless for export; nobody abroad has AR$. But the main reason is that designed-in secular inflation makes it a shitty store of value. This was specifically mentioned in the comment you were replying to: "Not only that, you also are forbid from buying dollars, so if you want to get them to avoid our rampant inflation (50% average, around 100% for groceries) you only have the black market which is around 200 pesos." Bitcoin has its own problems, like volatility, but it doesn't have that one. Why would you claim that people wanting to "avoid rampant inflation" would be "10x better served by USD than BTC"? We can now discard the hypothesis that you don't know about the secular inflation of the US$, since you explained it yourself in your own words in the comment I am replying to. It seems like you were being, at best, careless with the truth.
  - notriddle 5y ago
    And Bitcoin deflated by 18% https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BTC-USD/history/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BTC-USD/history/ 43,565.51 on January 6, 2022 36,833.88 on January 6, 2021
    - kragen 5y ago
      Yes, but I think the more crucial aspect is not how much it's gone up or down in a given year, but more the secular trend. The dollar has a secular inflation trend, having lost something like 95% of its value over the last 50 years, because that's just what fiat currencies do, while Bitcoin was designed to not have the structural incentives that cause that. Indeed, some have argued that Bitcoin is inherently deflationary, which would make it an ideal savings vehicle if true. How's Not Mimblewimble going?
      - notriddle 5y ago
        The "ISO Standard" argument against inflation is that it favors the capital class over the middle and lower class, because money loses value over time faster than capital does. This means it steals from the poor and gives to the rich, because the upper class puts most of their wealth into capital, because they have a higher return on investment, while the poor and middle class store most of their wealth in savings accounts, because they need the ability to access significant chunks of their wealth in a hurry if they suffer an emergency (the rich have "lots" of cash on hand, too, but it is a smaller fraction of their overall wealth). This seems like it implies that a deflationary currency would be better, but it does not, because in a deflationary economy, the behavior of the rich would change. In effect, the rich would keep most of their wealth in cash, while the middle class and the poor would not be able to change their behavior at all. The middle class family that has 50% of their wealth tied up in a house would still have that wealth tied up in a house because they actually need to live in it. A rich investor who owns hundreds of houses in the current economy would, however, move their wealth into cash and sell the houses. It might help the housing market, but it would screw up the currency market in exchange, and would probably not do anything for wealth disparity. In short, "wealth" is the ability to make a wider range of choices. Both paths, deflation and inflation, favor the wealthy over the poor because of this.
pibechorro 5y ago
Damage to the climate is highly exaggerated. People waste insane amounts of energy washing their clothes every day, keeping their tropical homes at 60 degrees, commuting hours each day, maintaining incredibly polluting industry such as the military, etc. Not to mention the energy currently used by traditional financial services and banks. We are talking about a small small fraction of the worlds energy use. Its virtue signaling by wealthy 1st world people who simply dont get it.
hogrider 5y ago
I'm also from Aegentina and a climate doomer. I will keep burning resources for personal profit, my own personal contribution will not move the needle that much anyway.
gspr 5y ago
I sympathize, but your problems won't be solved by cryptocurrencies. Sure, those might patch things over, but systemic change is needed, or it'll be a never-ending series of such patches.
- lezojeda 5y ago
  I completely agree. Just wanted to point out our situation (which may be repeated across the globe in some other countries with corrupt governments as ours). I get the feeling that sometimes people from the first world believe bitcoin & ethereum and other currencies are only used for financial speculation but we've found a pragmatic use for them due to our conditions.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Cryto is that systemic change.
  - gspr 5y ago
    Then I'd argue it's bad systemic change.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- int_19h 5y ago
  Systemic changes take decades, and that's if you have the power, which in most of those cases people don't. But they have to keep on living in the meantime.
  - gspr 5y ago
    And that is understandable. But how does one leap from this fact to excusing a non-profit in a country without the underlying problem doing the same?
    - int_19h 5y ago
      I believe that people don't really have the power to make systemic changes in US, either. The past 10 years or so of federal politics have been ample demonstration of that. But I digress. Mozilla is a US org, but it has worldwide outreach, and the product is certainly used worldwide, so it shouldn't be American-centric in its decision-making in any case. FWIW I don't think the decision adds up to anything either way, to be honest. It's not going to meaningfully affect global warming, and it's not going to meaningfully affect the usefulness (or not) of cryptocoins. It's just a PR stunt - a silly one, but certainly not something worth getting riled up over regardless of one's stance. Just to clear something up: I'm not actually all that bullish on existing cryptocoins myself - Bitcoin clearly has many problems, and it's not just energy wastefulness. What I'm interested in is radical political and economic decentralization in general, from an extreme left libertarian perspective. Decentralized money ought to be a part of that, somehow, and blockchain seems like a workable approach in principle, but it isn't there yet. I hope it will be someday. But in the meantime, something that lets people in, say, Venezuela send or receive money from US - or, for that matter, lets people in US send or receive money from Iran - is a worthwhile tool to have.
hammyhavoc 5y ago
If you're forbidden to do that, what happens when your government forbids you to use crypto for the reasons you just stated? China already did, what's to stop yours?
- buildbuildbuild 5y ago
  Many governments forbid getting paid cash under the table, especially without a visa. I believe history will show cryptocurrency to be even more resilient than cash as an international, sometimes private, means of transferring value between individuals. People will do what it takes to survive. Regulations can slow but never stop “illegal” workers.
- lezojeda 5y ago
  Cryptos are being used as a way of payment and then via a series of conversions and exchanges (to the point that it is ridiculous what we have to do to avoid being robbed by our government) we get our national currency for our daily groceries, bitcoin acceptance is still extremely rare here afaik. And it's mainly freelancers, IT workers, designers, etc. But the number of people who work this way is increasing every year since we are running out of options as well (no jobs besides delivery apps, working for the state doing basically nothing, etc.). Kinda related: IT companies from our country are already complaining that there is an "unfair" competition because we get paid, for example 2000 USD, which is a very low sum for IT workers abroad but is a huge number for us while these companies can't even compete with that number for the same employee. So I believe sooner or later the government will take advantage of their complains to try, somehow, to control the money inflow from people who work for companies abroad.
  - mrjangles 5y ago
    Is that 2000 USD a month? Do you know how much a talented computer programmer gets paid in Argentina (or is that what you mean by IT)? I'm thinking that Argentina seems like a good place to go to start a startup. What do you think? What problems would I run into aside from language?
    - 5y ago
nikanj 5y ago
Does anyone local actually accept BTC? That is, do you need to sell your BTC for either USD or pesos before using your money for rent / groceries / phone bill / etc? Incidentally, your defense of BTC is pretty much "it makes it possible to skirt laws and taxes" which seems to be the elephant in the crypto living room.
- hogrider 5y ago
  We have wallet apps for payments, some give you a debit card to automatically sell crypto for pesos.
- notch656a 5y ago
  In Argentina taxes total taxes on employee income if you pay all taxes can be above 100%. This is not hyperbole, I spoke with an accountant at a construction company there. They basically had to put 70% of their labor off the books. Skirting the law is required in Argentina. I can see the appeal for Argentinians.
  - hackerfromthefu 5y ago
    So the tax in more than the income .. ie you earn net negative for working?
    - notch656a 5y ago
      That's my understanding, this is hearsay from a private corporate accountant in the construction industry. I presume the idea is a fully law abiding company would not deduct all of that but some portion would be the company responsibility so that pay is positive.
    - lezojeda 5y ago
      Yes, it's as stupid as it sounds. Ours is a clown country. Don't take it seriously.
- sanp 5y ago
  The Argentinian govt. could just as easily put the same restrictions as it does on USD today. They can (if they want to) also ensure that no commercial establishment accepts BTC.
dgb23 5y ago
Crypto won’t fix political and economic problems but only worsen them. The debt that was imposed on you is inhumane and you shouldn’t have to pay it. The resulting attempts to solve it by selling public infrastructure only makes it worse. Throwing crypto into the mix is pure insanity. It’s just gambling at a crippling ecological cost.
- notch656a 5y ago
  OK so you have a economic problem where capital controls on dollars are untenable to you and you can't move them through the traditional banking system without some mandatory and seriously depreciating exchanges. Instead you switch to crypto and hold the USD funds for safe keeping until transferring back out the country. That may not fix structural issues but if it fixes things for you personally it sounds like some sort of win and better than nothing.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Crippling ecological cost? Think of the crippling cost of printing actual money from cut trees. Pressing daily newspapers can be considered insanity. Cryto is fixing economic structural problems for the parent poster.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    A lot of "paper" money is made from either cotton (eg USD) or plastic (eg GBP and Euro). Trees aren't cut down to make money.
    - mastazi 5y ago
      Sounds like you should get more informed about the environmental impact of cotton and plastic? Cotton: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/18/the-darling-will-die-scientists-say-mass-fish-kill-due-to-over-extraction-and-drought https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/18/the-d... Plastic: do you really need a link for this one?
      - 5y ago
allturtles 5y ago
This is a governance problem, not a technology problem. Your government could just add easily forbid you from buying or using crypto. What then?
- notch656a 5y ago
  The government could ban drugs. What then? Guess you won't find them anymore. Definitely no illegal drugs in Argentina. Breaking the law is a requirement for survival there. Basically all the big employers have to do it, no one seriously pays all their taxes as they can be non-hyperbolically over 100%.
  - labcomputer 5y ago
    Ok, so then why not just use USD? After all, breaking the law is a requirement for survival, so why concern yourself about breaking one more law (using USD)?
    - notch656a 5y ago
      Well you can use USD representation like tether or GUSD. You may want to acquaint yourself with taxation in Argentina. There is a tax just to put money in your bank account. To deposit your money. I recall it being small but above 1% but I can't remember the amount off hand (Edit: 0.6% for business account transaction) [0]. I'm not sure if there's any mandatory exchanging to pesos when depositing, but that may be the case. I'm not Argentinian. If that is the case it makes things way worse. You have to bring the USD into the country somehow. I think crypto is a convenient way to do that which avoids capital controls imposed when entering the banking system. I guess you can bring in gobs of cash on your person and that works as well, although there's the tradeoff of being robbed or whatever. But bringing in USD sounds OK too for some people and it is very easy to smuggle in border with Paraguay as there is basically no control at the border. For some it may be a personal preference. [0] https://www.doingbusiness.org/content/dam/doingBusiness/country/a/argentina/ARG.pdf https://www.doingbusiness.org/content/dam/doingBusiness/coun...
  - kragen 5y ago
marcosdumay 5y ago
People have always used dollars on countries that prohibit it. On Brazil we used to have even official black market prices, that were announced nationwide on TV every day. Anyway, yes, non-discriminating electronic money movement is a great product that improves the lives of many people. Blockchains are a very bad implementation of that concept and remove a lot of its potential value. If we are able to get some other one working, it's for the better.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  Blockchains are just starting. There are major innovations under development right now that will massively reduce the energy consumption, and increase the scalability, of blockchains, like zk-Rollups.
  - defaultprimate 5y ago
    This is basically a verbatim quote from 2016/2017 when Microsoft, IBM and other tech giants were starting blockchain research divisions, all of which were dissolved by last year lol
  - Kye 5y ago
    13 years is not just starting.
    - SparkyMcUnicorn 5y ago
      The first microprocessors started in the 70s. The internet started in the 80s.
      - Kbelicius 5y ago
        World wide web which, like cryptocurrencies, runs on the internet in its first 13 years had on it Amazon, Google, Facebook... 13 years seems plenty.
        5y ago
immibis 5y ago
Well, you will get the full value of your pay, but you'll also be screwed by the collapse of the local currency until the local economy rebuilds itself using crypto. Governments do such things to try and paper over economy shortfalls, keeping everything running kinda-less-bad-ish than if they just let it fail and start over. When you are in this situation where a USD only gets half as many pesos as the free market dictates, that means a peso is only worth half as much as the government is trying to pretend it is, and (this is the point of the currency controls) they are trying to allow only the 50% of most productive usages of USD to go ahead, possibly in the hopes of getting enough USD back into the country that they can get the free market value back up to where they think it should be, and then stop pretending.
epolanski 5y ago
That's a good reason to vote better and political activism. Crypto currencies are in no way a solution to the scenario you describe.
- mrjangles 5y ago
  It's the activists that are causing the problems in Argentina.
sdf4j 5y ago
- lezojeda 5y ago
  You don't sound amused, you sound kinda angry, to be honest. Of course we break the law, because the government is plainly corrupt, it is proven and it is our right to stand up to it breaking the stupid laws they make living nobility while 50% of the country starves. Now go on enjoying living in the first world, we'll keep using the cryptos the way we want.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    It's honestly hilarious seeing first worlders getting upset that those in the 3rd world are using crypto for some of the things it was actually originally envisioned to do: break from the traditional centralized banking and legal system. Crypto got white-washed by many of the masses as something seeking legitimacy when in reality the crypto doesn't care whether you are seeking legitimacy or not, it's just a tool. One the Argentinians are using wisely.
    - int_19h 5y ago
      There's a general premise in the First World that laws are, on the whole, just and rational, and thus anything that helps people break them is bad. (One exception seems to be workarounds for censorship. Although, the way things are going lately, I suspect that it'll change.)
      - sdf4j 5y ago
        Even when I said "we are all doing it" you choose to assume I was too firstworldly to have an opinion. Trust me, I know very well how we Argentinians use crypto. The country monetary policy is a mess and we don't like to pay taxes. You can tell yourself whatever heroic story helps you cope with the cognitive dissonance, I'll still find it amusing.
mgh2 5y ago
Why does it have to be US dollar? What about Canadian, Australian dollars, or Euros?
- kragen 5y ago
  Tradition.
  - mgh2 5y ago
    They have similar stability as USD. The crypto community is overusing the USD conversion ban argument, but there are easy ways around it.
    - kragen 5y ago
      In Argentina? No. Why would you think that? Euros, Canadian dollars, Australian dollars, etc., are regulated in exactly the same way in Argentina as US dollars are, except that the real estate market is dollarized. Euros, Canadian dollars, Australian dollars, etc., are not easy ways around bans on conversion to US dollars. (Gold isn't either, although the regulation is slightly different.)
      - mgh2 5y ago
        Thanks for your feedback, information coming from a local is highly valuable, (other than crypto) what other avenues are there to conserve your earnings? Please provide references, even in Spanish will help: [1] https://www.lonelyplanet.com/argentina/a/nar-gr/money-and-costs https://www.lonelyplanet.com/argentina/a/nar-gr/money-and-co... [2] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/argentina-central-bank-use-full-force-tame-fx-markets-source-says-2021-07-19/ https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/argentina-central-b... [3] https://ambcrypto.com/argentina-crypto-adoption-is-high-but-stablecoin-adoption-is-really-high-too/ https://ambcrypto.com/argentina-crypto-adoption-is-high-but-...
        mgh2 5y ago
        Straight from Argentines: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29849224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29849224
deleted 5y ago
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codebolt 5y ago
The solution to Argentinas trouble is not to turn digital gambling tokens into a working currency.
Kletiomdm 5y ago
Might sound mean but not supporting pow crypto helps you more than supporting it doe to climate change. Also pos is being worked on. It will be an option soon.

jollybean 5y ago

Argentinians who want to avoid their own currency would be 10x better served by USD than BTC.

hogrider 5y ago
This is true but you van only buy a few dollars from official sources, after that you need to go black market where thry will screw you over with fake bills.
kragen 5y ago
The USD inflated 6% over the last year, and getting it into the country is often difficult, but it is indeed very popular here.
- jollybean 5y ago
  6% is fine, at least it's not +/-100% and it's accepted everywhere. For now.
  - kragen 5y ago
    It's fine as a medium of exchange or a unit of account; as a store of value, 6% inflation in a year is disastrous.
    - jollybean 5y ago
      6% was just one year, not a long term value. And nobody should be using common currency as a store of value. The USD is designed to have a bit of inflation, i.e. it's not supposed to be a store of value on purpose.
      - kragen 5y ago
        It's true that we don't know whether US$ inflation this year will be 1% or 12%, but that's not actually better than a predictable 6% per year inflation rate. It's worse. A predictable inflation rate could be priced into things like bond yields. Use as a store of value is a significant part of what we're talking about here. You said, "Argentinians who want to avoid their own currency would be 10x better served by USD than BTC." Why do you think Argentines want to avoid our own currency? Part of it is that it's useless for export; nobody abroad has AR$. But the main reason is that designed-in secular inflation makes it a shitty store of value. This was specifically mentioned in the comment you were replying to: "Not only that, you also are forbid from buying dollars, so if you want to get them to avoid our rampant inflation (50% average, around 100% for groceries) you only have the black market which is around 200 pesos." Bitcoin has its own problems, like volatility, but it doesn't have that one. Why would you claim that people wanting to "avoid rampant inflation" would be "10x better served by USD than BTC"? We can now discard the hypothesis that you don't know about the secular inflation of the US$, since you explained it yourself in your own words in the comment I am replying to. It seems like you were being, at best, careless with the truth.
- notriddle 5y ago
  And Bitcoin deflated by 18% https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BTC-USD/history/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BTC-USD/history/ 43,565.51 on January 6, 2022 36,833.88 on January 6, 2021
  - kragen 5y ago
    Yes, but I think the more crucial aspect is not how much it's gone up or down in a given year, but more the secular trend. The dollar has a secular inflation trend, having lost something like 95% of its value over the last 50 years, because that's just what fiat currencies do, while Bitcoin was designed to not have the structural incentives that cause that. Indeed, some have argued that Bitcoin is inherently deflationary, which would make it an ideal savings vehicle if true. How's Not Mimblewimble going?
    - notriddle 5y ago
      The "ISO Standard" argument against inflation is that it favors the capital class over the middle and lower class, because money loses value over time faster than capital does. This means it steals from the poor and gives to the rich, because the upper class puts most of their wealth into capital, because they have a higher return on investment, while the poor and middle class store most of their wealth in savings accounts, because they need the ability to access significant chunks of their wealth in a hurry if they suffer an emergency (the rich have "lots" of cash on hand, too, but it is a smaller fraction of their overall wealth). This seems like it implies that a deflationary currency would be better, but it does not, because in a deflationary economy, the behavior of the rich would change. In effect, the rich would keep most of their wealth in cash, while the middle class and the poor would not be able to change their behavior at all. The middle class family that has 50% of their wealth tied up in a house would still have that wealth tied up in a house because they actually need to live in it. A rich investor who owns hundreds of houses in the current economy would, however, move their wealth into cash and sell the houses. It might help the housing market, but it would screw up the currency market in exchange, and would probably not do anything for wealth disparity. In short, "wealth" is the ability to make a wider range of choices. Both paths, deflation and inflation, favor the wealthy over the poor because of this.

pibechorro 5y ago

Damage to the climate is highly exaggerated. People waste insane amounts of energy washing their clothes every day, keeping their tropical homes at 60 degrees, commuting hours each day, maintaining incredibly polluting industry such as the military, etc. Not to mention the energy currently used by traditional financial services and banks. We are talking about a small small fraction of the worlds energy use. Its virtue signaling by wealthy 1st world people who simply dont get it.

hogrider 5y ago

I'm also from Aegentina and a climate doomer. I will keep burning resources for personal profit, my own personal contribution will not move the needle that much anyway.

gspr 5y ago

I sympathize, but your problems won't be solved by cryptocurrencies. Sure, those might patch things over, but systemic change is needed, or it'll be a never-ending series of such patches.

lezojeda 5y ago
I completely agree. Just wanted to point out our situation (which may be repeated across the globe in some other countries with corrupt governments as ours). I get the feeling that sometimes people from the first world believe bitcoin & ethereum and other currencies are only used for financial speculation but we've found a pragmatic use for them due to our conditions.
ipaddr 5y ago
Cryto is that systemic change.
- gspr 5y ago
  Then I'd argue it's bad systemic change.
deleted 5y ago
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int_19h 5y ago
Systemic changes take decades, and that's if you have the power, which in most of those cases people don't. But they have to keep on living in the meantime.
- gspr 5y ago
  And that is understandable. But how does one leap from this fact to excusing a non-profit in a country without the underlying problem doing the same?
  - int_19h 5y ago
    I believe that people don't really have the power to make systemic changes in US, either. The past 10 years or so of federal politics have been ample demonstration of that. But I digress. Mozilla is a US org, but it has worldwide outreach, and the product is certainly used worldwide, so it shouldn't be American-centric in its decision-making in any case. FWIW I don't think the decision adds up to anything either way, to be honest. It's not going to meaningfully affect global warming, and it's not going to meaningfully affect the usefulness (or not) of cryptocoins. It's just a PR stunt - a silly one, but certainly not something worth getting riled up over regardless of one's stance. Just to clear something up: I'm not actually all that bullish on existing cryptocoins myself - Bitcoin clearly has many problems, and it's not just energy wastefulness. What I'm interested in is radical political and economic decentralization in general, from an extreme left libertarian perspective. Decentralized money ought to be a part of that, somehow, and blockchain seems like a workable approach in principle, but it isn't there yet. I hope it will be someday. But in the meantime, something that lets people in, say, Venezuela send or receive money from US - or, for that matter, lets people in US send or receive money from Iran - is a worthwhile tool to have.

hammyhavoc 5y ago

If you're forbidden to do that, what happens when your government forbids you to use crypto for the reasons you just stated? China already did, what's to stop yours?

buildbuildbuild 5y ago
Many governments forbid getting paid cash under the table, especially without a visa. I believe history will show cryptocurrency to be even more resilient than cash as an international, sometimes private, means of transferring value between individuals. People will do what it takes to survive. Regulations can slow but never stop “illegal” workers.
lezojeda 5y ago
Cryptos are being used as a way of payment and then via a series of conversions and exchanges (to the point that it is ridiculous what we have to do to avoid being robbed by our government) we get our national currency for our daily groceries, bitcoin acceptance is still extremely rare here afaik. And it's mainly freelancers, IT workers, designers, etc. But the number of people who work this way is increasing every year since we are running out of options as well (no jobs besides delivery apps, working for the state doing basically nothing, etc.). Kinda related: IT companies from our country are already complaining that there is an "unfair" competition because we get paid, for example 2000 USD, which is a very low sum for IT workers abroad but is a huge number for us while these companies can't even compete with that number for the same employee. So I believe sooner or later the government will take advantage of their complains to try, somehow, to control the money inflow from people who work for companies abroad.
- mrjangles 5y ago
  Is that 2000 USD a month? Do you know how much a talented computer programmer gets paid in Argentina (or is that what you mean by IT)? I'm thinking that Argentina seems like a good place to go to start a startup. What do you think? What problems would I run into aside from language?
  - 5y ago

nikanj 5y ago

Does anyone local actually accept BTC? That is, do you need to sell your BTC for either USD or pesos before using your money for rent / groceries / phone bill / etc? Incidentally, your defense of BTC is pretty much "it makes it possible to skirt laws and taxes" which seems to be the elephant in the crypto living room.

hogrider 5y ago
We have wallet apps for payments, some give you a debit card to automatically sell crypto for pesos.
notch656a 5y ago
In Argentina taxes total taxes on employee income if you pay all taxes can be above 100%. This is not hyperbole, I spoke with an accountant at a construction company there. They basically had to put 70% of their labor off the books. Skirting the law is required in Argentina. I can see the appeal for Argentinians.
- hackerfromthefu 5y ago
  So the tax in more than the income .. ie you earn net negative for working?
  - notch656a 5y ago
    That's my understanding, this is hearsay from a private corporate accountant in the construction industry. I presume the idea is a fully law abiding company would not deduct all of that but some portion would be the company responsibility so that pay is positive.
  - lezojeda 5y ago
    Yes, it's as stupid as it sounds. Ours is a clown country. Don't take it seriously.
sanp 5y ago
The Argentinian govt. could just as easily put the same restrictions as it does on USD today. They can (if they want to) also ensure that no commercial establishment accepts BTC.

dgb23 5y ago

Crypto won’t fix political and economic problems but only worsen them. The debt that was imposed on you is inhumane and you shouldn’t have to pay it. The resulting attempts to solve it by selling public infrastructure only makes it worse. Throwing crypto into the mix is pure insanity. It’s just gambling at a crippling ecological cost.

notch656a 5y ago
OK so you have a economic problem where capital controls on dollars are untenable to you and you can't move them through the traditional banking system without some mandatory and seriously depreciating exchanges. Instead you switch to crypto and hold the USD funds for safe keeping until transferring back out the country. That may not fix structural issues but if it fixes things for you personally it sounds like some sort of win and better than nothing.
ipaddr 5y ago
Crippling ecological cost? Think of the crippling cost of printing actual money from cut trees. Pressing daily newspapers can be considered insanity. Cryto is fixing economic structural problems for the parent poster.
- onion2k 5y ago
  A lot of "paper" money is made from either cotton (eg USD) or plastic (eg GBP and Euro). Trees aren't cut down to make money.
  - mastazi 5y ago
    Sounds like you should get more informed about the environmental impact of cotton and plastic? Cotton: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/18/the-darling-will-die-scientists-say-mass-fish-kill-due-to-over-extraction-and-drought https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/18/the-d... Plastic: do you really need a link for this one?
    - 5y ago

allturtles 5y ago

This is a governance problem, not a technology problem. Your government could just add easily forbid you from buying or using crypto. What then?

notch656a 5y ago
The government could ban drugs. What then? Guess you won't find them anymore. Definitely no illegal drugs in Argentina. Breaking the law is a requirement for survival there. Basically all the big employers have to do it, no one seriously pays all their taxes as they can be non-hyperbolically over 100%.
- labcomputer 5y ago
  Ok, so then why not just use USD? After all, breaking the law is a requirement for survival, so why concern yourself about breaking one more law (using USD)?
  - notch656a 5y ago
    Well you can use USD representation like tether or GUSD. You may want to acquaint yourself with taxation in Argentina. There is a tax just to put money in your bank account. To deposit your money. I recall it being small but above 1% but I can't remember the amount off hand (Edit: 0.6% for business account transaction) [0]. I'm not sure if there's any mandatory exchanging to pesos when depositing, but that may be the case. I'm not Argentinian. If that is the case it makes things way worse. You have to bring the USD into the country somehow. I think crypto is a convenient way to do that which avoids capital controls imposed when entering the banking system. I guess you can bring in gobs of cash on your person and that works as well, although there's the tradeoff of being robbed or whatever. But bringing in USD sounds OK too for some people and it is very easy to smuggle in border with Paraguay as there is basically no control at the border. For some it may be a personal preference. [0] https://www.doingbusiness.org/content/dam/doingBusiness/country/a/argentina/ARG.pdf https://www.doingbusiness.org/content/dam/doingBusiness/coun...
- kragen 5y ago

marcosdumay 5y ago

People have always used dollars on countries that prohibit it. On Brazil we used to have even official black market prices, that were announced nationwide on TV every day. Anyway, yes, non-discriminating electronic money movement is a great product that improves the lives of many people. Blockchains are a very bad implementation of that concept and remove a lot of its potential value. If we are able to get some other one working, it's for the better.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
Blockchains are just starting. There are major innovations under development right now that will massively reduce the energy consumption, and increase the scalability, of blockchains, like zk-Rollups.
- defaultprimate 5y ago
  This is basically a verbatim quote from 2016/2017 when Microsoft, IBM and other tech giants were starting blockchain research divisions, all of which were dissolved by last year lol
- Kye 5y ago
  13 years is not just starting.
  - SparkyMcUnicorn 5y ago
    The first microprocessors started in the 70s. The internet started in the 80s.
    - Kbelicius 5y ago
      World wide web which, like cryptocurrencies, runs on the internet in its first 13 years had on it Amazon, Google, Facebook... 13 years seems plenty.
      - 5y ago

immibis 5y ago

Well, you will get the full value of your pay, but you'll also be screwed by the collapse of the local currency until the local economy rebuilds itself using crypto. Governments do such things to try and paper over economy shortfalls, keeping everything running kinda-less-bad-ish than if they just let it fail and start over. When you are in this situation where a USD only gets half as many pesos as the free market dictates, that means a peso is only worth half as much as the government is trying to pretend it is, and (this is the point of the currency controls) they are trying to allow only the 50% of most productive usages of USD to go ahead, possibly in the hopes of getting enough USD back into the country that they can get the free market value back up to where they think it should be, and then stop pretending.

epolanski 5y ago

That's a good reason to vote better and political activism. Crypto currencies are in no way a solution to the scenario you describe.

mrjangles 5y ago
It's the activists that are causing the problems in Argentina.

sdf4j 5y ago

lezojeda 5y ago
You don't sound amused, you sound kinda angry, to be honest. Of course we break the law, because the government is plainly corrupt, it is proven and it is our right to stand up to it breaking the stupid laws they make living nobility while 50% of the country starves. Now go on enjoying living in the first world, we'll keep using the cryptos the way we want.
- notch656a 5y ago
  It's honestly hilarious seeing first worlders getting upset that those in the 3rd world are using crypto for some of the things it was actually originally envisioned to do: break from the traditional centralized banking and legal system. Crypto got white-washed by many of the masses as something seeking legitimacy when in reality the crypto doesn't care whether you are seeking legitimacy or not, it's just a tool. One the Argentinians are using wisely.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    There's a general premise in the First World that laws are, on the whole, just and rational, and thus anything that helps people break them is bad. (One exception seems to be workarounds for censorship. Although, the way things are going lately, I suspect that it'll change.)
    - sdf4j 5y ago
      Even when I said "we are all doing it" you choose to assume I was too firstworldly to have an opinion. Trust me, I know very well how we Argentinians use crypto. The country monetary policy is a mess and we don't like to pay taxes. You can tell yourself whatever heroic story helps you cope with the cognitive dissonance, I'll still find it amusing.

mgh2 5y ago

Why does it have to be US dollar? What about Canadian, Australian dollars, or Euros?

kragen 5y ago
Tradition.
- mgh2 5y ago
  They have similar stability as USD. The crypto community is overusing the USD conversion ban argument, but there are easy ways around it.
  - kragen 5y ago
    In Argentina? No. Why would you think that? Euros, Canadian dollars, Australian dollars, etc., are regulated in exactly the same way in Argentina as US dollars are, except that the real estate market is dollarized. Euros, Canadian dollars, Australian dollars, etc., are not easy ways around bans on conversion to US dollars. (Gold isn't either, although the regulation is slightly different.)
    - mgh2 5y ago
      Thanks for your feedback, information coming from a local is highly valuable, (other than crypto) what other avenues are there to conserve your earnings? Please provide references, even in Spanish will help: [1] https://www.lonelyplanet.com/argentina/a/nar-gr/money-and-costs https://www.lonelyplanet.com/argentina/a/nar-gr/money-and-co... [2] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/argentina-central-bank-use-full-force-tame-fx-markets-source-says-2021-07-19/ https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/argentina-central-b... [3] https://ambcrypto.com/argentina-crypto-adoption-is-high-but-stablecoin-adoption-is-really-high-too/ https://ambcrypto.com/argentina-crypto-adoption-is-high-but-...
      - mgh2 5y ago
        Straight from Argentines: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29849224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29849224

deleted 5y ago

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codebolt 5y ago

The solution to Argentinas trouble is not to turn digital gambling tokens into a working currency.

Kletiomdm 5y ago

Might sound mean but not supporting pow crypto helps you more than supporting it doe to climate change. Also pos is being worked on. It will be an option soon.