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by int_19h 3126 days ago
> You are from Venezuela or Zimbabwe – The government has issued capital controls and is devaluing currency by the day. You transfer your wealth into Bitcoin in order to offset capital erosion due to hyper-inflation. When the situation stabilises, you transfer your Bitcoin back into fiat.

How exactly do you transfer your wealth to BTC in this scenario? There aren't many people willing to sell BTC in exchange for a rapidly devaluing third world currency. Realistically, to use any of the large online exchanges, you'll need to convert it to some common currency (like USD or Euro) anyway. But if you can do that, why would you buy BTC, instead of just storing your money in that common currency? It's going to be a lot more stable.
2 comments
0xCMP 3126 days ago
You'd need to get it while you had a chance (see China, Japan, Korea making massive volumes and for a while a lot of the price gains). Once it all freezes up then all you can do is work/trade/exchange for the BTC or USD from those who have it just like it probably always has in situations like that.

Except now they can't literally come take the USD nor can they freeze in-country or off-shore banks so if that's a real scenario for you BTC is a pretty nice deal.

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beaner 3126 days ago
People in Venezuela are actively trading lots of bitcoin every day, in person. You can see this in the LocalBitcoins data: https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins
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rspeer 3126 days ago
This is a pretty misleading response.

So, okay, some of the fortunate people who do have access to USD/EUR are trading it for Bitcoin on LocalBitcoins, not just storing it. But you're making it sound like this is a graph of ordinary Venezuelans trading their hard-earned bolivar into lucrative Bitcoin, which it almost certainly isn't.

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beaner 3125 days ago
The y-axis on the Venezuela chart is denominated in Bolivar. I assume it's Bolivar being traded. Why would you assume otherwise?
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