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The ferry from Argentina to Uruguay everyday full of people taking money out of the country to deposit it in banks that won't be skimmed by the government is mu
by pakled_engineer 11y ago
The ferry from Argentina to Uruguay everyday full of people taking money out of the country to deposit it in banks that won't be skimmed by the government is much more disruptive than a handful of bitcoin traders.
Bitcoin however is great for avoiding the official fake exchange rate and getting the real rate, which is often 2x the amount of the official rate. If you're travelling to BA you want to avoid those sketchy blackmarket moneychangers floating around. If you're a tourist there's good odds you'll be receiving counterfeit Argentinian Pesos or end up getting jacked by a guy on a motorbike after he watches you exchanging money in the streets whereas with Bitcoin you can safely meet somebody in a coffee shop, do the trade and they usually have some kind of localbitcoins.com or other online reputation they want to keep so won't be handing over counterfeits.
Bitcoin hasn't replaced the mass exodus of Argentinians who deposit money outside the country in Uruguay yet. http://en.mercopress.com/2013/03/05/an-estimated-one-million-dollars-trickled-per-day-from-argentina-to-uruguayan-banks http://en.mercopress.com/2013/03/05/an-estimated-one-million...
- juanignacio 11y agoI know of money going the other way arround. When Argentinians need the US dollars they have in Uruguay people cross in the ferry with tipicaly 50~100k, charging 2,5~3,5% fee for this "service". Maybe there is room to provide this service with Bitcoin, selling bitcoin to this people in Montevideo and buying Argentinian pesos with that Bitcoin in Argentina. Is it possible to make this work with a 1~2% commission using Bitcoin?
- pakled_engineer 11y agoProblem is unstable rate of bitcoin so you wouldn't want to hang on to them in storage, you'd need a way to buy them on demand by either leaving USD on Coinbase account or having #bitcoin-otc IRC trade open, Stellar might be more suited for this you could create UruUSD coin when it gains more adoption https://stripe.com/blog/stellar https://stripe.com/blog/stellar
- pakled_engineer 11y agoWrong link, oops https://stellartalk.org/topic/6699-how-to-create-a-new-coin-inside-stellar/?p=67178 https://stellartalk.org/topic/6699-how-to-create-a-new-coin-...
- kragen 11y agoThe Buquebus and Sea-Cat ferries (and the cuevas, etc.) are the incumbent. As I understand Christensen’s idea, a disruption is new, worse than the incumbent (for the incumbent's customers), cheaper, and adequate for some new customers. Without opining on whether Christensen’s ideas are accurate or valuable in any kind of predictive or analytic sense, I will say that Bitcoin in Argentina certainly seems like a textbook case.
- cperciva 11y agoThe ferries are the incumbent disruptor of Argentina's economy. Bitcoin is disrupting the Argentinian economy-disrupting industry.
- w1ntermute 11y agoIt's a multilayered disruption machine: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/23/the-disruption-machine http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/23/the-disruption-...
- kragen 11y agoYour comment disrupted my comment, Colin. But I think I need to go disrupt a bed, because right now my thinking processes are too disrupted by fatigue to properly disrupt HN. Disrupt you very much!