4 ms·

Argentina. 100% of annual inflation. People use crypto everyday to get money in and out of the economy.

by gitanes 4y ago

seibelj 4y ago
This is absolutely true - binance plus stablecoins is how the economy works there.
- yao420 4y ago
  Any proof? Have you personally seen and used it? Seeing as you’re the CTO of a nft company you clearly have bias.
  - seibelj 4y ago
    I’ve been in this space for a long time, know a lot of people. Lebanon is another country that is heavily using crypto. You will see a lot of countries with corrupt governments and central banks become bottom-up crypto centric, but this won’t be reported for a long time until suddenly the NYT will release an article and only then it is “actually” happening. Here’s an informative episode on a podcast if you actually care https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bitcoin-standard-podcast/id1403202032?i=1000507455113 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bitcoin-standard-p...
    - simonw 4y ago
      The summary of that podcast episode says: > Thomas Semaan is an ex-student of Saifedean who has been active in the Lebanese bitcoin scene. He joins us to tell us about the Lebanese fiat crisis, how bitcoin has helped him and other bitcoiners, and compare its effectiveness to political activism and delusions of reform. This is the problem. Obviously bitcoin is of use and interest to bitcoiners. What we're trying to understand is if regular, non-bitcoiners are getting value from it on a large scale. Is crypto in Argentina and Lebanon something that has a real impact on regular people who are not deeply involved in the technology? This is why I only believe it when a publication like the BBC or the NYT cover it: crypto incentivizes people who hold it to boost it, so it's very hard to trust stories that don't come from news sources with strong conflict of interest policies and a long standing reputation for journalistic integrity. That podcast is called "The Bitcoin Standard"!
    - hnthrow1010 4y ago
      I don't have time to listen to this podcast (I'll read a transcript if you have it) but just to respond to your comment: I've never seen the question of what happens after a society becomes "bottom-up crypto centric" get addressed. You have a country where the central bank is suddenly not doing anything, tax fraud is rampant, and the local currency is now further on the brink of collapse. All the citizens' money is effectively being funneled away into entities operating as foreign banks. The government is forced to accept crypto to avoid insolvency and now makes it so you have to pay your taxes in it. If they're still corrupt they'll force people to follow the same regressive restrictions again, and no one will be able to do anything about it because the blockchain is all public. How is this going to help anything? I'm trying not to be bleak here but the idea here seems to be disregarding any hope of reasonable reform.
      - seibelj 4y ago
        I am a libertarian and I fundamentally believe the current central banking model is not only hopelessly corrupt but morally evil. Politicians have been able to steal from common people via inflation for a century while the rich are easily protected. This is a long topic but to summarize I am quite hopeful that the ability for governments to extract wealth is limited greatly by the rise of crypto. If the government wants taxes they can do it by selling services to people who can pay for them if they agree it has value. Of course I’m a minority but like all movements crypto is selling something to average people but the grand plan is only understood by a minority. Countries like Argentina have been basket cases for decades despite endless bailouts and IMF shenanigans. It’s time for something new that I believe is a valuable experiment with clear theoretic and ideological underpinnings that couldn’t possibly be worse than the socialist nightmare destroying billions of common people.
        hnthrow1010 4y ago
        >I am quite hopeful that the ability for governments to extract wealth is limited greatly by the rise of crypto I described a situation where this wouldn't happen though. >If the government wants taxes they can do it by selling services to people who can pay for them if they agree it has value. I'm sorry, this seems contradictory. I thought the possibility of this was already discarded when the idea of reform was thrown out. The assumption with the "bottom-up" idea seems to be that the government will always stay corrupt. If you take that approach then can't you see how this probably will end up like another failed bailout where nothing changes? Effectively all that's happening is more foreign money is being dumped into the system, except now it's just coming from offshore crypto speculators instead of from other governments. Try to look at this from a macro view. Just my opinion: Crypto is pretty bad regardless of what your politics are. The ridiculous amount of fraud and scams in crypto, and other bad things like ransomware, are wrecking common people too. It can absolutely be worse. And, the theory and ideology of crypto doesn't actually stop a government from collecting taxes anyway.
    - Fnoord 4y ago
      > I’ve been in this space for a long time, know a lot of people. Lebanon is another country that is heavily using crypto Every country uses cryptography.
- hnthrow1010 4y ago
  That seems obvious to me that they absolutely don't want crypto. If it's stablecoins they're after then what they really want is USD, so badly that they'll use whatever shady unregulated crypto bank sells it to them.
  - seibelj 4y ago
    They will use crypto because it’s far more difficult to censor. The governments have been able to prevent individuals from storing and saving wealth, but this is becoming a lot harder and will continue to be ever harder.
    - hnthrow1010 4y ago
      I've never seen any reasonable explanation for that to be true. Crypto is very easy to censor, just ban the exchanges. Or if the government is really nasty, shut down the national internet. And if you think they could set up a satellite connection and a mesh net in response to this, they could also use that kind of setup to transact strictly in USD, with an offshore bank. No crypto required.
      - seibelj 4y ago
        A lot of poor countries with socialist / corrupt governments like Argentina rely extensively on informal money transmitter networks as well as money remittances. Exporters earn hard currency which is stolen by the central bank and converted into disgustingly inflated fiat, and then politically favorited importers get access to whatever hard currency hasn’t been looted outright by politicians. Small people have to get dollars other ways. Stablecoins are acquired in less-authoritarian countries and then sent to people in Argentina and other socialist / corrupt countries. They then circulate among the people just like paper dollars do. As this black market grows it is very difficult to shut it down. Anything is possible but I think it’s more likely the socialists try to adapt to this new world rather than shut down the internet. It will be interesting to see what new theft they come up with.
        4y ago
simonw 4y ago
Argentina does look like the most interesting country to dig deeper into here. As always with crypto stuff, a big challenge is finding trustworthy news outlets. I generally don't trust stories from the crypto press. Found this on the BBC from one of their foreign correspondents (hence someone who will be held to BBC editorial and conflict-of-interest standards): https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60912789 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60912789 It does note that: "So far it is the preserve of a minority - largely a young, male, tech-savvy, and relatively affluent population. It's tech workers, not farmers, who are being paid in Bitcoin." That story is also from April. I'd like to see updated coverage now that the crypto market has crashed. How many people in Argentina got burned badly by that?
- dorgo 4y ago
  > now that the crypto market has crashed. I don't understand this "crypto market has crashed" narrativ. Ether is +60% in the last month... It's crypto. It never really crashs. A crypto crash would be something like -99.99%. Everything else is business as usual.

Argentina. 100% of annual inflation. People use crypto everyday to get money in and out of the economy.

seibelj 4y ago

This is absolutely true - binance plus stablecoins is how the economy works there.

yao420 4y ago
Any proof? Have you personally seen and used it? Seeing as you’re the CTO of a nft company you clearly have bias.
- seibelj 4y ago
  I’ve been in this space for a long time, know a lot of people. Lebanon is another country that is heavily using crypto. You will see a lot of countries with corrupt governments and central banks become bottom-up crypto centric, but this won’t be reported for a long time until suddenly the NYT will release an article and only then it is “actually” happening. Here’s an informative episode on a podcast if you actually care https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bitcoin-standard-podcast/id1403202032?i=1000507455113 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bitcoin-standard-p...
  - simonw 4y ago
    The summary of that podcast episode says: > Thomas Semaan is an ex-student of Saifedean who has been active in the Lebanese bitcoin scene. He joins us to tell us about the Lebanese fiat crisis, how bitcoin has helped him and other bitcoiners, and compare its effectiveness to political activism and delusions of reform. This is the problem. Obviously bitcoin is of use and interest to bitcoiners. What we're trying to understand is if regular, non-bitcoiners are getting value from it on a large scale. Is crypto in Argentina and Lebanon something that has a real impact on regular people who are not deeply involved in the technology? This is why I only believe it when a publication like the BBC or the NYT cover it: crypto incentivizes people who hold it to boost it, so it's very hard to trust stories that don't come from news sources with strong conflict of interest policies and a long standing reputation for journalistic integrity. That podcast is called "The Bitcoin Standard"!
  - hnthrow1010 4y ago
    I don't have time to listen to this podcast (I'll read a transcript if you have it) but just to respond to your comment: I've never seen the question of what happens after a society becomes "bottom-up crypto centric" get addressed. You have a country where the central bank is suddenly not doing anything, tax fraud is rampant, and the local currency is now further on the brink of collapse. All the citizens' money is effectively being funneled away into entities operating as foreign banks. The government is forced to accept crypto to avoid insolvency and now makes it so you have to pay your taxes in it. If they're still corrupt they'll force people to follow the same regressive restrictions again, and no one will be able to do anything about it because the blockchain is all public. How is this going to help anything? I'm trying not to be bleak here but the idea here seems to be disregarding any hope of reasonable reform.
    - seibelj 4y ago
      I am a libertarian and I fundamentally believe the current central banking model is not only hopelessly corrupt but morally evil. Politicians have been able to steal from common people via inflation for a century while the rich are easily protected. This is a long topic but to summarize I am quite hopeful that the ability for governments to extract wealth is limited greatly by the rise of crypto. If the government wants taxes they can do it by selling services to people who can pay for them if they agree it has value. Of course I’m a minority but like all movements crypto is selling something to average people but the grand plan is only understood by a minority. Countries like Argentina have been basket cases for decades despite endless bailouts and IMF shenanigans. It’s time for something new that I believe is a valuable experiment with clear theoretic and ideological underpinnings that couldn’t possibly be worse than the socialist nightmare destroying billions of common people.
      - hnthrow1010 4y ago
        >I am quite hopeful that the ability for governments to extract wealth is limited greatly by the rise of crypto I described a situation where this wouldn't happen though. >If the government wants taxes they can do it by selling services to people who can pay for them if they agree it has value. I'm sorry, this seems contradictory. I thought the possibility of this was already discarded when the idea of reform was thrown out. The assumption with the "bottom-up" idea seems to be that the government will always stay corrupt. If you take that approach then can't you see how this probably will end up like another failed bailout where nothing changes? Effectively all that's happening is more foreign money is being dumped into the system, except now it's just coming from offshore crypto speculators instead of from other governments. Try to look at this from a macro view. Just my opinion: Crypto is pretty bad regardless of what your politics are. The ridiculous amount of fraud and scams in crypto, and other bad things like ransomware, are wrecking common people too. It can absolutely be worse. And, the theory and ideology of crypto doesn't actually stop a government from collecting taxes anyway.
  - Fnoord 4y ago
    > I’ve been in this space for a long time, know a lot of people. Lebanon is another country that is heavily using crypto Every country uses cryptography.
hnthrow1010 4y ago
That seems obvious to me that they absolutely don't want crypto. If it's stablecoins they're after then what they really want is USD, so badly that they'll use whatever shady unregulated crypto bank sells it to them.
- seibelj 4y ago
  They will use crypto because it’s far more difficult to censor. The governments have been able to prevent individuals from storing and saving wealth, but this is becoming a lot harder and will continue to be ever harder.
  - hnthrow1010 4y ago
    I've never seen any reasonable explanation for that to be true. Crypto is very easy to censor, just ban the exchanges. Or if the government is really nasty, shut down the national internet. And if you think they could set up a satellite connection and a mesh net in response to this, they could also use that kind of setup to transact strictly in USD, with an offshore bank. No crypto required.
    - seibelj 4y ago
      A lot of poor countries with socialist / corrupt governments like Argentina rely extensively on informal money transmitter networks as well as money remittances. Exporters earn hard currency which is stolen by the central bank and converted into disgustingly inflated fiat, and then politically favorited importers get access to whatever hard currency hasn’t been looted outright by politicians. Small people have to get dollars other ways. Stablecoins are acquired in less-authoritarian countries and then sent to people in Argentina and other socialist / corrupt countries. They then circulate among the people just like paper dollars do. As this black market grows it is very difficult to shut it down. Anything is possible but I think it’s more likely the socialists try to adapt to this new world rather than shut down the internet. It will be interesting to see what new theft they come up with.
      - 4y ago

simonw 4y ago

Argentina does look like the most interesting country to dig deeper into here. As always with crypto stuff, a big challenge is finding trustworthy news outlets. I generally don't trust stories from the crypto press. Found this on the BBC from one of their foreign correspondents (hence someone who will be held to BBC editorial and conflict-of-interest standards): https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60912789 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60912789 It does note that: "So far it is the preserve of a minority - largely a young, male, tech-savvy, and relatively affluent population. It's tech workers, not farmers, who are being paid in Bitcoin." That story is also from April. I'd like to see updated coverage now that the crypto market has crashed. How many people in Argentina got burned badly by that?

dorgo 4y ago
> now that the crypto market has crashed. I don't understand this "crypto market has crashed" narrativ. Ether is +60% in the last month... It's crypto. It never really crashs. A crypto crash would be something like -99.99%. Everything else is business as usual.