Its About Sharing
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1386
Merit: 1000


Antifragile


View Profile Personal Message (Offline)

Ignore
July 21, 2013, 01:20:42 AM

Why is the price of BTC 30%-40% higher (or something like that) in Argentina? Probably partly for the reason you "stated". You are seeing a free market go for what it knows. Also, there are plenty of freedom fighters our there (not to mention some of whom are governments) that can get on a plane with an address full of BTC and go there and either  sell them, give them away or some combination of the two...
BTC is revolutionary, we shouldn't lose sight of it. We are not so much talking about a currency competitor. We are talking about a currency that is stateless at a time when corrupt states (most all) are collapsing around the world. Chew on that.

fuck yeah!

As I understand it, and I am very happy to be corrected, the price differential is Argentina is relative to the price in Uruguay. Basically due to rampant devaluation of fiat people are trying to move their cash out of there and BTC is proving a useful medium. Uruguay is the playground for wealthy Argentinians, so it is the obvious place for them to move money too. So they are paying over the odds to buy BTC in Argentina and then being 'skimmed' at the other end when converting them back into dollars. It's a classic opportunistic arbitrage, but apparently a price worth paying to move money out of the country. I don't believe it has a net impact on demand, as they are buying BTC to transfer and sell ... they still want dollars, they just want to get them out of the country as soon as possible without using suitcases.

That they are using BTC for this is a double edged sword in terms of utility vs potential clampdown.
The opening salvos are definitely being fired in this case and it will be interesting to see how it evolves.


Thanks for that info as I hadn't heard nor thought of that before.

Free market in action and as you said, it is showing us something quite interesting. The "scary" part, is that we are just scratching the surface. Extrapolate that out and things get interesting. (Oh, and we are not even at the Netscape Navigator navigator stage yet, we are at the Mosaic stage  Wink...)
Imagine, only 11 million of these "bits" in existence for the world to do with it what it will. (Not counting other crypto-currencies of course.)

MUST MUST LISTEN TO: Your minds will have fun running with this...

Latest Let's Talk Bitcoin: Subvert your government (and a whole lot more): http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyBitcoinShow/~5/Ol5FMDmh8Ng/101753710-mindtomatter-e25-subvert-your-government.mp3