[chrisabrams]

What country do you live in? Because I know plenty of folks in certain countries with massive inflation and projects such as bitcoin are their refuge from 100-1000% inflation a year.

When you say “in 10 years” when did that 10 year time frame start and end? Are talking about the 1960s or the 1990s? Because most people I knew didn’t start using the internet regularly until the mid to late 90s or about 30 or so years after it’s inception. 10 years is still pretty early in terms of adoption. I know people who still have never used email…

[simonw]

I hear this a lot. I want details:

- Which countries?

- What portion of the population are benefiting from crypto? Is it a tiny portion of nerds or has it become more mainstream now?

- With the crash in cryptocurrency over the last few months are these people in those countries still glad that they used this, or are they regretting it?

I don't doubt that there exist individuals in countries with high inflation who have befitted from the crypto boom. I want more than just anecdotes about individuals: I want to understand if this is a widespread, sustainable trend.

[gitanes]

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

[simonw]

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

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]

> 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.

[seibelj]

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

[hnthrow1010]

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]

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]

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.

[espadrine]

> The governments have been able to prevent individuals from storing and saving wealth

Do you have evidence for that? While the Argentinian economy is struggling, and the government has defaulted in the past few years, I don’t know of widespread, illegal government theft of private citizens’ assets. The opposite seems true: they want people to get richer in exports, so they get more in taxes.

Is your argument that taxation is theft? They do need taxation in order not to default again.

[Fnoord]

And those people who circumvent the censorship are faithful in their tax reports?

No, they are not. They are abusing cryptocurrency (the correct term, no matter how often you use 'crypto') to commit tax fraud. Which makes the government even more inefficient as it already is.

[yao420]

Any proof? Have you personally seen and used it?

Seeing as you’re the CTO of a nft company you clearly have bias.

[seibelj]

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-p...

[simonw]

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]

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.

[Fnoord]

> 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.

[RestlessMind]

Afghanistan, from a reputed source like Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/article/crypto-currency-afghanistan- idUSL8N2QU39A

> I want to understand if this is a widespread, sustainable trend.

Why? What if there is not widespread trend and it is only anecdotes? Why should every new technology be "widely adopted or bust" instead of simply being a new interesting tech which a hacker can tinker with just because? Blockchains, NFTs and smart contracts are far more interesting than yet another iteration of a web framework or yet another way to track user data.

[simonw]

Because if it's a widespread trend affecting real people then it's interesting to me. If it's a small group of bitcoin nerds doing what bitcoin nerds do but in another country then it's not.

I want to see evidence that the benefits of blockchains etc are outweighing the very obvious harms they are causing.

[RestlessMind]

What are the "very obvious" harms?

A genuine one I am concerned about is the energy consumption of Proof of Work chains. But the tide is shifting towards Proof of Stake, with Ethereum network achieving 2 significant milestones towards that recently (Ropsten, Sepolia) and a third penultimate one (Goerli) planned in the week of Aug 6th. So the main chain's transition towards Proof of Stake is likely to happen in September and Ethereum's energy consumption drops 99% or even more.

Other purported disadvantages (gambling, sucking in capital and brains etc etc) are totally non-obvious and highly debatable.

[davidguetta]

At least Argentina, venezuela, turkey, lebanon, pakistan and probably sri lanka by now.

Half of the world currencies has done worse than crypto even on small time scales.

[malaya_zemlya]

As of the last month, crypto and certain shady exchanges were the only (known to me) way to send money to Russia.

[toolz]

El Salvador uses it as a government enforced national currency. I struggle to understand how people still make the claim that it's useless or that it's niche - it's a recognized and enforced national currency now, not some neat project.

[acdha]

Who's using it? How many people did more than get that free starter wallet and cash out? How many transactions happen daily? How many businesses would notice if Bitcoin dropped off the planet tomorrow?

(Hint: the fact that people were rioting in the streets to _avoid_ it suggests the answer is not many)

[spicymaki]

Is bitcoin an investment or a currency? I don't think it can be both.

If the value of bitcoin as speculative asset is going to rise, then it is best to not spend it, but to hoard it. If everyone is hoarding bitcoin how can you use it to buy things?

If it is a currency then it needs to have a stable value. If the value stabilizes, then no one will want to invest in it. Since it does not have any "real" commodity value it would then death spiral. I don't know how you square this circle.

[boppo1]

I agree that bitcoin needs to decide whether to be an investment or a commodity of exchange.

> If everyone is hoarding bitcoin how can you use it to buy things?

When people need something more than bitcoin, they'll trade for it. Food, shelter, medicine, etc. People will certainly trade for these things. But maybe they'll pass on replacing a phone that's only 2 years old or getting an xbox or 6 pack of beer.

It's fascinating to me that people say currency can't be deflationary or people will hoard it. You're so against people hoarding, i.e. saving money? People act like the economy will stop, but no matter how deflationary a currency is, people will still trade it for needs like food and shelter.

[hnthrow1010]

>You're so against people hoarding, i.e. saving money?

The problem with this kind of system: It's not just about saving. What's actually happening is those who have saved more are accumulating even more money by doing nothing, and everyone else who needs to spend it to buy food and shelter is suddenly losing more and more of their money. When it starts happening at a faster rate than the economy is producing actual value then you hit hyperdeflation and the economy spirals.

[boppo1]

Hmm. What if we had a central committee mandated to target 2% deflation? Just the right amount of saving, not too much.

[WaitWaitWha]

Is there not an entire currency speculation market? [0]

> When speculative investing involves the purchase of a foreign currency, it is known as currency speculation. In this scenario, an investor buys a currency in an effort to later sell that currency at an appreciated rate, as opposed to an investor who buys a currency in order to pay for an import or to finance a foreign investment.

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/speculation.asp

[spicymaki]

Sure, I get the idea of currency speculation. You can speculate on anything including currency. The problem is when you try to make currency out of a speculative asset. In this case of bitcoin the value is highly volatile, so you would not want to use it as a national currency. I do know that bitcoin was originally envisioned as a currency, but most people are using it as an investment. You also have not addressed the issues I presented.

[2muchcoffeeman]

I don't think it's reasonable to think about it in such a simplistic way.

BTC has been subject to massive swings. Just looking at CoinDesk, it was easy to find a time where it doubled in value in less than a month. Why would any reasonable person spend that sort asset?

I think the dynamics of the market are as important as the technical features that some digital currency has.

[hnthrow1010]

But for the average crypto investor who isn't a whale and isn't insider trading on the whales, the dynamics of the market are effectively just random. This isn't like a stock where you can objectively look at the company, compare it to other companies and understand how it derives profit. It can't work either as a currency or as a reliable investment.

[simonw]

The failure of crypto to actually take off in El Salvador is pretty well documented at this point I think.

[lr4444lr]

It's not enforced. It is legal tender, but the US dollar is still their currency, last I heard.

[Mr_P]

What a convenient source of liquidity for the various drug cartels in El Salvador who need to launder their money.

[toolz]

Yes, so convenient that over a decade after its inception, still well over 95% of the black market operates in fiat instead.

[douglaswlance]

Why would they use a public, transparent ledger to launder money?

[lumost]

Lower counterparty risk, and harder to confiscate. Money can sit in a crypto wallet and be used for illicit transactions until favorable circumstances allow conversion out of btc. You can’t do that with cash in a bank.

With the amount of shady alt coins and defunct btc exchanges separating authentic vs bogus transactions is even tougher for regulators.

[CodeShmode]

There are many ways to launder money.

[plebianRube]

What a staggeringly uninformed comment.

[upsidesinclude]

If you invested in bitcoin ten years ago, you are happy.

I invested in bitcoin five years ago and I an happy.

Ukrainians are heavily invested in crypto and consider crypto (at a governmental level) to be a significant contribution to their efforts in maintaining their sovereignty.

It's tiresome waiting for the unimaginative and uninsightful to open their eyes

[wil421]

I’ve heard people say this but when I’ve asked people from places like Venezuela they use dollars not bitcoin. Even places with not so good local currency will gladly accept Euros or Dollars instead.

[homeland221]

The irony is even those deal in bitcoin, they have to quickly convert to USD now for fear of further drop. Their entire operation involve in converting their cheap electricity (vastly subsidized by their government) to USD with bitcoin as intermediary. And when ask, they only tell the story of their intermediary bitcoin as though as they really by potato eoth bitcoin at their local wet market.

[pedalpete]

"they use dollars not bitcoin" for their daily purchases. But how are they storing the money they have. Are they depositing dollars in a bank? How did they get the dollars? Are they banked at all?

They can't take a bitcoin out of their wallet and pay for something at their local store. They can't use their bitcoin like a credit card.

If you looked at my daily spending habits, you'd say "that guy doesn't have any crypto or stocks, look, he buys everything with a debit card which takes fiat currency out of his back account".

You can't see crypto with your eyes, but look at blockchain activity, and ask people what the source of their currency is.

Obviously it's a TINY TEENSY bit that is held in crypto. I'm not suggesting it is a majority. Crypto is hard to work with for the average person, it's volatile, and scary, but so was trading on the internet in the early days. Trust isn't there, the paypal of crypto does not yet exist.

[m3kw9]

Could have had similar effect by holding any other currency that isn’t equally hyper inflating. Like the USD

[RF_Savage]

Sadly many countries have currency controls that prevent that.

[acdha]

… and that means that if cryptocurrencies ever see notable adoption, those same currency controls will be expanded to cover it. There's this popular mythology that cryptocurrencies are immune to regulation but in reality it's just that most countries don't spend time regulating things which aren't widely used. If that changes, cryptocurrencies are perfect for those governments to enforce since the public ledgers provide an easily-audited track record of all of your activity to compare with what you reported.

[plebianRube]

That is the whole point of bitcoin. There is no entity that can prevent you from using it.

Anyone can say you are not allowed, but enforcing it is impossible in practice.

[NikolaNovak]

>>There is no entity that can prevent you from using it.

I feel that's a geek dream far outside of reality we live in.

Making it illegal to adopt or trade Crypto is possible and feasible. If your employer doesn't pay you in crypto,your landlord and bank and grocery store and public transport and health services don't take Crypto, then you're basically limited to the black market. Which tends to work well enough without complications of Crypto.

People envisioning dystopian future that needs Crypto, severely underestimate the ability of that dystopian future to prevent Crypto. Basically, their imagination of dystopian future is limited and naive. Humans can get bad and nasty and societies can get scary and Crypto is not the way out of such for ordinary citizens. Paper money, maybe. But Crypto requires so much equipment through so many telltales with so many ways for regular humans to reveal themselves accidentally that it's a totalitarian regimes' wet dream.

[plebianRube]

I'd rather die and be tourtured for using bitcoin than suffer under someone else's dystopian wet dream.

[zaphar]

They can absolutely prevent you from using it to buy milk at your local grocery store. In practice having bitcoin is no help if you can't convert it into something else. The regulation won't happen at on the blockchain. It will happen at the grocery store, car lot, or any other place you do business. That is plenty enough regulation to make it a nightmare to use in practice.

[plebianRube]

I don't buy milk from grocery stores. I use lightning to buy from my local farmer.

[Phlarp]

Enforcing it is trivial for a sovereign nation that issues it's own currency and collects taxes in that currency.

Just as we've seen; they can regulate the on/off ramps between local currency and crypto.

If you've got a method to turn meaningful amounts of BTC into USD without being subject to KYC regulations; then the US government is probably already building a federal money laundering case against it.

[plebianRube]

Why is it still in use in China then? How are nodes and miners still operating there.

You give evil too much credit.

[atty]

What? If you think a government can’t enforce crypto bans, then you haven’t thought about it very much. MITM certs to snoop all internet traffic, tying all devices to real identities as a prerequisite for internet access, making it a crime for merchants to accept any payment but the national currency, etc, etc.

[m3kw9]

Unless you already had some BTC or onramp set up somewhere outside the country, they can make it hard to onramp(buying BTC ). You could also buy direct from someone but that is impractical. And then you have off-ramp to deal with once you need the cash

[plebianRube]

90% of coins are mined already in circulation.

I do not need to buy cash since I buy what I can with lightning, which is in no way impractical for me.

[kelnos]

> There is no entity that can prevent you from using it.

As long as you still need fiat currency to buy regular goods -- or pay taxes -- entities can make it difficult for you to use cryptocurrencies. If you have to convert cryptocurrencies into something real-world in order to live, governments can make that difficult for you.

I am just not convinced that we will get to a place where you can live solely (or nearly solely) in a cryptocurrency world, without needing fiat.

[acdha]

> That is the whole point of bitcoin. There is no entity that can prevent you from using it.

This is a common marketing claim which doesn't hold up if you think about it even a little. It's like saying that no entity can prevent you from saying something because you define “prevent” as whether there's a cop following you around ready to punch you if you open your mouth — almost all real-world censorship happens after the fact or relying on third-parties, and Bitcoin is no different in that regard.

Bitcoin can trivially be blocked or tracked at the network level. If you have a hostile government, consider the risks of connecting to a well-known network if they've banned it.

If Bitcoin is not completely banned, a government can require everyone to report transactions for taxation or other purposes. That means that your ability to evade punishment for a transaction comes down to whether all of your earning and spending can be done outside of the country without leaving a trace of that network activity, and that you and everyone you make transactions with will never be compromised (think about how would you know?) or cooperate with the authorities (businesses will share their records because they have a legal presence which can't ignore local laws). Similarly, if you want to actually spend that money you have to be extremely stealthy to avoid the authorities wondering how you're spending more money than you appear to make, hope that someone you know never develops a grudge or is coerced to tell the authorities that you're, say, living lavishly on your trips outside the country, etc.

If _any_ of those points aren't true for you, Bitcoin is not safe to use — especially because the public ledger gives the authorities a huge data source of all of your historic activity so you have to consider not just whether they're watching you at the time of an illicit transaction (as is the case with cash) but also whether you or the the other party will at any point in the future have your wallet IDs leaked.

(Yes, I've heard of tumblers. Ask yourself who in this situation is going to risk being charged as an accomplice to the worst crime anyone else using that tumbler is involved with — or whether the police are running the tumbler to get criminals to self-identify their intent to do something illicit.)

The underlying concept to understand here is that sovereign states control their territory. If you live under an abusive government, you are only safe to evade their rules to the extent that the government is weak — if so, just use USD like everyone else. If not, all of the options are risky and there's no magical thinking about technology which is going to materially change that … but almost all of it opens up new avenues for fatal mistakes which are hard to recognize until after the fact.

[plebianRube]

I'm not reporting shit. They will have to physically track me down.

Even then they cannot seize it, and a transaction script is already in place to send to a trusted address if no spend within a certain time.

I don't give a fuck about living lavishly. I will be living free or dead.

[MBCook]

So what happens when the government just blocks all Bitcoin nodes so there is no way to connect to the network and broadcast transactions?

What if they just turn off the external internet?

They can prevent it. It doesn’t matter if you can get around it. When no stores take it it’s worthless to you.

[game-of-throws]

> What if they just turn off the external internet?

No government is capable of this. Even North Korea has people smuggling phones over the border. A single cell or satellite connection that can sustain 2-3 KB/s is all you need to keep the rest of the country connected.

[pishpash]

Why? A bitcoin node is a network service so unless you have your own communication infrastructure it can definitely be controlled.

[stevenjgarner]

You obviously have never suffered in a country with stringent exchange controls.

[rrdharan]

Are you stating that you actually have, or speculating that bitcoin must help such people?

[stevenjgarner]

Both. I do quite a bit of offshoring in Central and South America (and elsewhere). If I make payment to contractors in Colombia for example, the recipients have severe restrictions on spending that money outside their country if it is in USD or pesos. Hence crypto.

This does not even address the huge number of "unbanked" people in the US who have to pay a fortune in fees for their payments to family back "home" - crypto offers them a much cheaper alternative. They don't care what the crypto is worth as it gets spent again back "home" as a currency, not as an investment.

[hnthrow1010]

Crypto isn't helping there, that's just another form of regulatory arbitrage. If you're exchanging the crypto for USD or pesos anyway then what you're doing is still probably illegal.

[stevenjgarner]

I'm just paying independent contractors with crypto. How could that possibly be illegal? What the contractor does with the crypto is not under my control.

[drexlspivey]

Get out of your bubble. Countries with hyper inflation do not allow you to exchange for another currency obviously.

[actionablefiber]

There's something I've been curious about for a long time.

If your country's currency is in a state of hyperinflation and you want to buy crypto to shield yourself from it, who's your counterparty? Who is willing to sell you that crypto and expose themselves to that inflation, and how are they able to do so profitably?

[drexlspivey]

If you want to buy food or a house or anything you need the local currency. There is always some demand

[kelnos]

Like a sibling poster, I hear this a lot too, but I don't see it as all that significant. Or, rather, these are excellent uses, but Bitcoin is a terrible way to accomplish this -- it's just a huge shame that there may not be better options.

An actual currency should have a stable value. Bitcoin will never have a stable value (at least not while it is popular) due to speculation. People who believe Bitcoin is a safer store of value than their country's fiat currency are in dire, dire straits indeed.

I do absolutely agree that people should be free from fear that their currency of choice/necessity should be safe from the possibility of 100-1000% inflation per year, but I wish we could do better than Bitcoin, of all things, as a "solution".

[BlueTemplar]

Increased popularity was supposed to make it more stable. Which indeed seems to have happened, with each boom/crash less extreme than the previous one ?

[HWR_14]

> I know plenty of folks in certain countries with massive inflation and projects such as bitcoin are their refuge from 100-1000% inflation a year.

Countries with hyperinflation lend to not have a ton of assets. Even if this were a use-case, it doesn't seem to justify anywhere near the valuation of BTC or other crypto.

And why on earth you would you use BTC as opposed to a stable-coin in that case?

[BlueTemplar]

Because stablecoins - aren't ?

(Well, maybe in the medium term, I guess this can fit some use cases, but the illusion of stability still seems to be a concern ?)

[readams]

There are a lot of much better assets to buy as an inflation hedge.

[toolz]

If you live in a wealthy country, yes, but if you have limited bank access and consequently likely a country with unstable fiat, which assets would you suggest are more stable for long term holding? Certainly not physical assets, as people without banking access aren't likely to have vaults or some way to protect something like gold.

[Scoundreller]

Usually in stone (buildings/sheds), farmland, or readily usable goods that keep well/provide value (rice, dry beans, generator, fridge).

Sucks if you need to run though. But usually if you're wealthy in an unwealthy/poorly banked country and can't leave for some reason, you keep your assets in the place you'd run to if you really had to.

[toolz]

all of those things are fine and good, but they aren't something you can easily put your savings into - you have to save up to buy most of that stuff, and you can't just horde physical items without necessary storage and protection. Further for some people these things all pose substantially more risk than bitcoin. If someone burns your sheds down or salts your farmland because you can't payoff the local rebels, you risk losing everything, with bitcoin, having poor timing on exiting the market is risky, but certainly not 100% wealth loss risk and that's without even considering the aspect that memorizing a wallets secret phrase is the only upkeep you need to hold bitcoin. All of those physical assets bear some form of time/energy to maintain/upkeep and as you mention have a strong downside of making you immobile.

I'm not saying everyone should store their savings in bitcoin, but I am saying it serves a very real, potentially life changing purpose for some people and that shouldn't be discounted.

[hnthrow1010]

That has nothing to do with bitcoin specifically though. What you're describing is either someone using another currency or using some kind of digital payment system. It doesn't have to be cryptos.

[toolz]

the only digital currencies that exist for people who don't have access to banks is crypto, I believe.

Holding physical cash is just asking to have your life savings stolen in places that are poor enough to not have bank access.

[stevenjgarner]

Crypto is not about investing, its about payments. "Almost 25% of US Cross-Border Remittance Senders Use Crypto" [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32291999

[kelnos]

Cool, but the grandparent was specifically talking about inflation hedging, not about payments.

Regardless, the article you link does not actually claim what the title says it claims:

> PYMNTS research reveals that many consumers (24%) see the option to send funds in cryptocurrency as a key motivator in choosing a payment services provider (PSP), in fact.

That does not mean 24% of cross-border payments are made in cryptocurrencies. It means that 24% of people think that it's important that their payments provider supports cryptocurrency as an option (and says nothing about whether or not they exercise that option, or even have an account with such a provider).

Also, even if this were true, that does not mean you are correct in stating that cryptocurrencies are about payments. It's pretty clear that far, far more people use them for investing speculation.

[stevenjgarner]

> the grandparent was specifically talking about inflation hedging, not about payments

Their assertion:

> There are a lot of much better assets to buy as an inflation hedge

.. was in indirect response to a parent comment:

> Bitcoin is not really a 'young technology' anymore, and the only thing it has enabled so far is risky, unregulated investment strategies, and an staggering amount of crime.

I think clarifying that there is a material population of crypto users who use Bitcoin as a currency not an investment is material in this context?

[pedalpete]

My understanding, and I haven't been there in a while, but apparently Argentinians were using Bitcoin and other crypto's to store currency because the government had made it difficult to trade US dollars for Argentinian pesos. Even when I was there, a grey market existed for trading dollars. The gov't tried to keep very tight controls on exchange of currency.

However, recently Argentina has banned banks from converting crypto to pesos.

So, I think we can say that it was happening enough that the gov't took action. If it wasn't happening at all, they wouldn't have done anything.

[aordano]

Very few people here in Argentina actually hedged against inflation with cryptocurrency, it's always USD, EUR, precious metals or high-ticket items (like guns). Regarding the subset of people that actually engages with cryptocurrency, most of them are in it to make a buck, not prevent their money from losing value. Similar story for some Venezuelan folks i know.

To be fair, cryptocurrency as a way for transferring money is excellent; people here move money with Bitcoin, which can be immediately converted into foreign fiat, avoiding the absurd exchange rates and taxes the government imposes. In my opinion that is something that could be done with any black/grey market tool for transferring value, and as I see it, currently cryptocurrency is filling that niche because of network effects, not because of its inherent properties.

[BlueTemplar]

Not if you want to transfer value to the other side of the world..? (which admittedly is quite a niche use case)

[Daishiman]

There's a ton of people in those countries offering financial services that consist of triangulating operations inside and out of the country.

Within the crazy insanity that's the system, it does end up working out somehow.

[BlueTemplar]

I literally meant countries far enough that most physical ways to do so are prohibitive.

[Waterluvian]

Bitcoin is flying all over the place. Why wouldn’t they just use US dollars like every unstable economy has used for the past hundred years?

I just don’t buy this at all.