Crisis in Argentine

[rebuilder]

Local sellers are obviously selling at blue dollar prices, so that makes it really really costly (borderline scammy).
If one could find an open heart altruist btc magnate to sell at official rate, that's jackpot.

...
What are you talking about? The rest of the world knows that your 'official' peso/dollar exchange rate is flat-out wrong, the government is lying to you.

The official rate is obviously way low, but the "blue" rate in turn is also likely artificially high, because of the risks involved in criminal markets. If Bitcoin offers a way to transfer value with fewer risks, that should eventually be reflected in the exchange rates.

[BitcoinAshley]

Sure the blue rate is pretty high, reflecting the risk of buying it, but that is part of the price. It's not just an exchange rate, it's the exchange rate + the risk of exchanging in the jurisdiction of a state that does not want you to exchange.

If I sold washing machines for $500 each and the government sold washing machines for $100 each, well, what's the "real" price? If the government only sells an extremely limited number of washing machines and uses the police force to attempt to stifle any other washing machine sales, and I sell an unlimited number but with inherent risk, well, I'm selling them at the "real price" plus the risk of law enforcement seizure. Somebody who needs more than one washing machine might have to come to me.

So yes it's not the ' real price ' but so long as the exchange is legally flakey, there will be no real price, no matter how 'kind hearted and altruistic' the BTC trader is.

Ideally we'd get people selling BTC for argentinian pesos, at a lower exchange rate than the dollar "blue rate" in bitcoins. Lower risk reflected in price. But who has bitcoins to sell and wants argentinian pesos? Lol. And who in argentina has even heard of bitcoin? It'll be a while.

[seldon]

Ideally we'd get people selling BTC for argentinian pesos, at a lower exchange rate than the dollar "blue rate" in bitcoins. Lower risk reflected in price. But who has bitcoins to sell and wants argentinian pesos? Lol. And who in argentina has even heard of bitcoin? It'll be a while.

Actually quite a lot of people seem to be interested in it: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/04/27/bitcoins-promise-in-argentina/

[anu]

Local sellers are obviously selling at blue dollar prices, so that makes it really really costly (borderline scammy).
If one could find an open heart altruist btc magnate to sell at official rate, that's jackpot.

...
What are you talking about? The rest of the world knows that your 'official' peso/dollar exchange rate is flat-out wrong, the government is lying to you. Something is worth what people are willing to pay for it

This is the opportunity, not the problem. To all Argentinians here: Stop thinking "problem". think opportunity.

Can anyone sell me 10000 bottles of fine Mendoza wine for Bitcoin?

[Voodah]

Local sellers are obviously selling at blue dollar prices, so that makes it really really costly (borderline scammy).
If one could find an open heart altruist btc magnate to sell at official rate, that's jackpot.

...
What are you talking about? The rest of the world knows that your 'official' peso/dollar exchange rate is flat-out wrong, the government is lying to you. Something is worth what people are willing to pay for it

This is the opportunity, not the problem. To all Argentinians here: Stop thinking "problem". think opportunity.

Can anyone sell me 10000 bottles of fine Mendoza wine for Bitcoin?

OMG Wines for BTC, you just made my day (month? year???).

I've worked with dozens of distributors.. I'll have the website up in a week !

[notme]

Ideally we'd get people selling BTC for argentinian pesos, at a lower exchange rate than the dollar "blue rate" in bitcoins. Lower risk reflected in price. But who has bitcoins to sell and wants argentinian pesos? Lol. And who in argentina has even heard of bitcoin? It'll be a while.

Actually quite a lot of people seem to be interested in it: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/04/27/bitcoins-promise-in-argentina/

Matonis is a hype master.  Take everything he writes with a healthy dose of salt.

[marvinrouge]

Local sellers are obviously selling at blue dollar prices, so that makes it really really costly (borderline scammy).
If one could find an open heart altruist btc magnate to sell at official rate, that's jackpot.

...
What are you talking about? The rest of the world knows that your 'official' peso/dollar exchange rate is flat-out wrong, the government is lying to you. Something is worth what people are willing to pay for it

This is the opportunity, not the problem. To all Argentinians here: Stop thinking "problem". think opportunity.

Can anyone sell me 10000 bottles of fine Mendoza wine for Bitcoin?

OMG Wines for BTC, you just made my day (month? year???).

I've worked with dozens of distributors.. I'll have the website up in a week !

Sounds great !  Let us know if you launch something !

[Lohoris]

EDIT: Realistically, the overall best investment for anyone here (or elsewhere) would actually be to start large scale ASIC mining farm, given we are paying 1/8 the electricity costs. But you would have to be very very very lucky to a) get an avalon unit (at it's official price, not the 10-20x resell price they are going for) and b) smuggle them from the US to Arg.

Actually it would be much easier to just offer some services on the web, accepting bitcoins as a payment.

[Voodah]

EDIT: Realistically, the overall best investment for anyone here (or elsewhere) would actually be to start large scale ASIC mining farm, given we are paying 1/8 the electricity costs. But you would have to be very very very lucky to a) get an avalon unit (at it's official price, not the 10-20x resell price they are going for) and b) smuggle them from the US to Arg.

Actually it would be much easier to just offer some services on the web, accepting bitcoins as a payment.

Well somewhat... I'm not so sure tho.

Setting up capital and doing an investement is not quite the same as running a services company (which I do actually, I'm a dev like many other people in the btc world). There is a LOT more work, there are lots of legal issues (if I want my company to stay within the legal bounds, pay taxes, etc) and last but not least, if I want your btc for it, I'm competing with the hordes of Indian and asian outsourcing companies. The have huge working forces, can also arbitrage the usd / local currency, and overall drive all prices down.

[thezerg]

EDIT: Realistically, the overall best investment for anyone here (or elsewhere) would actually be to start large scale ASIC mining farm, given we are paying 1/8 the electricity costs. But you would have to be very very very lucky to a) get an avalon unit (at it's official price, not the 10-20x resell price they are going for) and b) smuggle them from the US to Arg.

Actually it would be much easier to just offer some services on the web, accepting bitcoins as a payment.

Well somewhat... I'm not so sure tho.

Setting up capital and doing an investement is not quite the same as running a services company (which I do actually, I'm a dev like many other people in the btc world). There is a LOT more work, there are lots of legal issues (if I want my company to stay within the legal bounds, pay taxes, etc) and last but not least, if I want your btc for it, I'm competing with the hordes of Indian and asian outsourcing companies. The have huge working forces, can also arbitrage the usd / local currency, and overall drive all prices down.

I think he's suggesting you do it in the "blue" market at least until you earn a nontrivial amount of BTC.

I think we are seeing why debt-based currencies can become popular quickly.  It is very easy to kick-start a currency by loaning it to lots of people... especially if you can just print more if some don't pay back.

But for asset based currencies, exporting services/stuff (for BTC in this case) is really the key because nobody wants your pesos.

Normally an economic crash would produce a lot of people who are willing to work and export stuff inexpensively -- for less then outsourcing companies in stable economic zones.  This one of the reasons countries are inflating their currencies right now -- to offer an export advantage and deter imports.  Clearly, this would kick-start internal productivity...  So you'd think as a leader in this Argentina would have an advantage. 

But it is perhaps a very unfortunate effect of certain political/economic systems (generally those with heavy regulations/taxes and tariffs) that they can fall apart slowly and in such a way as to not be able to undersell these other zones until the economic destruction is completed ("completed" can be loosely defined as when the majority of economic activity is unreported).

[Voodah]

EDIT: Realistically, the overall best investment for anyone here (or elsewhere) would actually be to start large scale ASIC mining farm, given we are paying 1/8 the electricity costs. But you would have to be very very very lucky to a) get an avalon unit (at it's official price, not the 10-20x resell price they are going for) and b) smuggle them from the US to Arg.

Actually it would be much easier to just offer some services on the web, accepting bitcoins as a payment.

Well somewhat... I'm not so sure tho.

Setting up capital and doing an investement is not quite the same as running a services company (which I do actually, I'm a dev like many other people in the btc world). There is a LOT more work, there are lots of legal issues (if I want my company to stay within the legal bounds, pay taxes, etc) and last but not least, if I want your btc for it, I'm competing with the hordes of Indian and asian outsourcing companies. The have huge working forces, can also arbitrage the usd / local currency, and overall drive all prices down.

I think he's suggesting you do it in the "blue" market at least until you earn a nontrivial amount of BTC.

I think we are seeing why debt-based currencies can become popular quickly.  It is very easy to kick-start a currency by loaning it to lots of people... especially if you can just print more if some don't pay back.

But for asset based currencies, exporting services/stuff (for BTC in this case) is really the key because nobody wants your pesos.

Normally an economic crash would produce a lot of people who are willing to work and export stuff inexpensively -- for less then outsourcing companies in stable economic zones.  This one of the reasons countries are inflating their currencies right now -- to offer an export advantage and deter imports.  Clearly, this would kick-start internal productivity...  So you'd think as a leader in this Argentina would have an advantage. 

But it is perhaps a very unfortunate effect of certain political/economic systems (generally those with heavy regulations/taxes and tariffs) that they can fall apart slowly and in such a way as to not be able to undersell these other zones until the economic destruction is completed ("completed" can be loosely defined as when the majority of economic activity is unreported).

I get what your saying, and you're right on the spot on that last paragraph.

This has been a long dragged process in Argentina, which begun in 2001 and hasn't really finished yet. We are being bled out, slowly and painfully.