[tkmunzwa]

> His house was filled with petrol (gas) because he'd been paid and he had to buy something the same day that would keep for a month and hold its value or his money would evaporate. So we sat in his house praying there wasn't a fire.

I'm guessing the friend sold the petrol for USD, right?

Zimbabwean who lived through this checking in - let me add context and help deconstruct this for HN: People (and banks) were converting Zimbabwean dollars to anything that could hold value and could be easily resold (in US Dollars) ASAP - this could be petrol or petrol vouchers, groceries, cookies - anything at all that could be bought with Zimbabwean dollars and flogged for USD. One of the retail banks got in trouble with the central bank after adding masonry bricks to their commodity portfolio[1]. Petrol was definitely a risky. Bitcoin would not have solved this because the using Zimbabwean dollars to purchase of commodities was only the first step to procuring US dollars while arbitrating the delta between the official exchange rate that formal businesses had to use, and the much higher real exchange rate as determined by the market. The hypothetical bitcoin:Zimbabwean dollar exchange rate in 2008 would have always tracked the market rate with no opportunity for arbitration.

1. Not brick futures or other fiscalised instrument: the bank bought and took possession of piles of bricks for resale later to hedge against inflation