Soledad Rodríguez Pons admits she had no idea what bitcoin was when it was suggested to her two years ago that the digital currency could provide a neat way of dodging Argentina’s strict capital controls.
“I was suspicious at first,” says the 29-year-old owner of a budget hostel in Buenos Aires.
“But I took the risk, and it was well worth it,” she adds, explaining that she takes credit-card payments from foreign tourists in return for the digital currency. At the moment, she can sell her bitcoins on Argentina’s unofficial currency market for 50 per cent more than she would get at the official exchange rate.
The prolonged use of capital controls in Argentina since 2011 has wreaked havoc for businesses operating in South America’s second-largest economy — not only restricting access to foreign currency and leading to a heavily overvalued official exchange rate, but also exacerbating economic stagnation and double-digit inflation.
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