Has Argentina proven BTC to be a store of value class asset?

[Linkkoin]

Do not if you had been aware of that, but this week Bitcoin made a small step (as speaking of its scale) which turned out to be a giant leap for cryptocurrencies in general.

In Argentina, there was an election, and its outcome caused mass panic - both the local currency and stocks simply crashed. And it can be expected that yet another time it will cause a crisis and hyperinflation.
And here comes BTC. The smart investors seeing the current situation started switching to Bitcoin in order to save their investment funds and savings from being burned during such a situation.
The local price of BTC (it must be stressed that in Argentina most of the transactions are OTC, so then we are not 100% sure about the price or the real scale) on exchanges momentarily jumped by over $1000.
Why is it so important, yet overlooked by many events? The reason behind it is very simple. BTC was created when the last global recession just ended. Since that time and creation of the term "digital gold" crypto-enthusiasts, investors and academics had been wondering if - just like precious metals - Bitcoin will be regarded as a store of value or not.

The example of Argentina seems to confirm that in the case of a global crisis Bitcoin:
1) Will have its market volume to skyrocket (at expense of stocks, forex or other forms of investing), as at least some investors will transfer their portfolios to BTC (and some alts as well)
2) Will gain reputation (somehow FATF guidelines incorporated into domestic legislation can have a positive influence)
3) Considering both points above combined this should have a significant influence upon confirming the reputation of BTC as a store of value as well as heavily impact its price (a sharp increase of demand).

As well, considering that in general the global recessions are initiated by the US market crash every 7-10 years, and the last took place a bit over 10 years ago, we can expect such thesis to be confirmed/abolished pretty soon.

Any thoughts ?

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[Mandoy]

Argentinians who are into cryptocurrency and bitcoin is increasing and that is good news. Just like any thirld world  countries who engage in cryptocurrency and forex what drives people into engaging into the cryptocurrency market is profit. People do not look at cryptocurrency as a currency but rather a tool for profit. This maybe the reason as of today but we will see in the future when big institutions and commercial centers will be accepting bitcoin as a form of payment then that is the time that people see bitcoin as a currency.

[joelsamuya]

This Bitcoin story in the shore of Argentina is really proving the value of this cryptocurrency as a great and reliable store of value even if it is still very volatile and not yet considered as very legal by different governments. We have to remember that Bitcoin was born during the time of financial crisis hence we should not be wondering if it is functioning as a safe haven in a country like Argentina and I am sure that this is not going to be the last it is acting as such as we are entering into the period of global economic and political uncertainties.

[antisocial77]

Its same for Turkey.the fact is we nor Argentina are not into crypto for being fan only.our money are losing its value everyday so people try crypto, usd, gold etc.its good for crypto ofcourse

[electronicash]

while btc is certain a good option to store their wealth in case of crisis in their country happen, we in crypto however are also celebrating after we dump the money they pour into btc.  Argentinians should have been buying btc and then buying stablecoin after it to store their wealth. i guess no one advices them to do that.

[Artemis3]

while btc is certain a good option to store their wealth in case of crisis in their country happen, we in crypto however are also celebrating after we dump the money they pour into btc.  Argentinians should have been buying btc and then buying stablecoin after it to store their wealth. i guess no one advices them to do that.

All they need to do is wait until it goes above whatever they bought at. If you do it against peso, even with your "dumping", its still higher. You must not underestimate inflation, they did here, and the entire country is paying the consequences.

Bitcoin is super stable next to ours. Your little fluctuation (12k to 10k?) means nothing. Argentinians did no wrong by turning to bitcoin. I'm a bit surprised about the OTC thing, but i guess that's still an option when you don't need boxes of paper to buy a few satoshis. Let them fall the path of my country, and soon they will turn to electronic only, as in exchanges. OTC is madness over here (and ATMs are impossible as well).

Compare this with the hurdle of finding people with USD banknotes, and the dangers.

A have not seen their elections but i guess some socialist candidate is getting a chance, which would explain the panic. They just have to point here as their future. But yes, they should have not waited and bought in advance. Its still not a bad move, trust me, they will later realize it if they are disciplined and keep the most they can of their investment as savings for the future.

[bitart]

It's much more easy to store the value in something that's not tangible when there's a risk of robbery (I mean the bad guys just can't grab your Bitcoin on the street, if you don't take your hardware wallet with you).
If you can keep in secret that you have your money in bitcoin, and you store your bitcoin in different wallets, addresses, you possibly won't be robbed and still can use it, if you're cautious enough.
I hope that the bad guys there are not familiar with bitcoin enough yet...

[1Referee]

If you can keep in secret that you have your money in bitcoin, and you store your bitcoin in different wallets, addresses, you possibly won't be robbed and still can use it, if you're cautious enough.
I hope that the bad guys there are not familiar with bitcoin enough yet...

It helps to have a bait wallet with a very low amount of satoshis in it. If ill minded people somehow find out that you do have Bitcoin, and they force you to hand it over, you give them the bait wallet and they at least have something to take with them. If they know you have Bitcoin and you say you don't have any, they will get really aggressive and who knows what happens then.

In these countries the wealth standards are pretty low overall, so even a low amount of satoshis might somehow be enough to make them leave 'satisfied'.

I also have a bait wallet file (without password lock/encryption) on my computer with a few hundred dollars worth of Bitcoin in it. If a hacker ever gains access to my computer, chances are high that this wallet file will be emptied. Simple but yet a very efficient bit of security alert.

[Duzter]

The market support for Bitcoin keeps growing from support from different countries around. Argentina is nothing an exception and as a part now Argentina has been saved with the support hands of bitcoin. Similar price jumps with massive price difference happens with difference from the regular market due to the immediate support and earlier it has taken place with India during their demonetization of money and on several occasions on African countries.

[BitHodler]

It helps a small group of people as store of value, just like how it does so in other countries with stronger fiat currencies. What really helps them is the dollar because of its store of value characteristics and easy to spend nature.

One dollar notes are a commodity on their own in shaky countries. Aside from increased (very likely speculative) demand on LBC there is nothing really indicating that people there are interested in Bitcoin.

Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to see Bitcoin gain more actual adoption as store of value and currency, but people tend to read an increased demand on platforms such as LBC way too far. I need to see metrics based on actual use.

[Artemis3]

It helps a small group of people as store of value, just like how it does so in other countries with stronger fiat currencies. What really helps them is the dollar because of its store of value characteristics and easy to spend nature.

One dollar notes are a commodity on their own in shaky countries. Aside from increased (very likely speculative) demand on LBC there is nothing really indicating that people there are interested in Bitcoin.

Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to see Bitcoin gain more actual adoption as store of value and currency, but people tend to read an increased demand on platforms such as LBC way too far. I need to see metrics based on actual use.

Hello from Shaky country. I have seen people paying using USD banknotes, they get accepted at whatever "street price" the shop feels like, plus your change is in the local garbage fiat. Very often there are too few USD banknotes for change, and coins are nonexistent.

OTC here is out of the question, and we happen to use LBC way too much (their fees are outrageous, especially wallet transfer fees that can't be adjusted), but such is life in shakyland.

To me it is much more convenient to just exchange whatever garbage fiat will be needed for the day. This has caused me some troubles, but there is no choice. If you change too much into garbage fiat, it loses its value too quickly so you want the most to remain in bitcoin for the longest time possible.

USD are very hard to find, and to trade, and because they are OTC trades, way too risky. think that people here earn about 5 USD a month for a full time job, how much of a target you become to criminals if you happen to have a 100 USD banknote.

The beauty of Bitcoin is you remain low profile as exchanging (online, screw OTC) 10 USD or 1000 USD is done the exact same way.

With the slight bitcoin downtrend our garbage coin is currently back to 1.5 per satoshi (when selling BTC).

[Twinkledoe]

It helps a small group of people as store of value, just like how it does so in other countries with stronger fiat currencies. What really helps them is the dollar because of its store of value characteristics and easy to spend nature.

One dollar notes are a commodity on their own in shaky countries. Aside from increased (very likely speculative) demand on LBC there is nothing really indicating that people there are interested in Bitcoin.

Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to see Bitcoin gain more actual adoption as store of value and currency, but people tend to read an increased demand on platforms such as LBC way too far. I need to see metrics based on actual use.

I guess we can't see an accurate metrics or figures for the actual usage, only approximate figures. But I believe we are in the increasing trend even small step would be a great improvement for the adoption.

[Kasabus]

I guess we can't see an accurate metrics or figures for the actual usage, only approximate figures. But I believe we are in the increasing trend even small step would be a great improvement for the adoption.

From time to time, other small countries will fully be adopting crypto and consider as a valuable asset.
Argentina figured it out that Bitcoin is something we could use in the near future. This is also a way not to be letting behind from new technology and this system is a big help to make our life easier than of before.

[Viscore]

Definitely, with the current status of Argentina that does not have a stable economy, people are doing right to buy Bitcoin to save their money from hyper inflation just like Venezuela although Venezuela is far more worst.

This is a complete example of store of value but we can't drag here the countries with a stable and good economy since Bitcoin is not really that stable due to its nature that is very volatile.

Link below is the list of countries with high inflation rate, they will be help by BTC and BTC will be help as well to get an increase of deamand.

https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate (Argentina is ranked no. 4).

[BrewMaster]

The example of Argentina seems to confirm that in the case of a global crisis Bitcoin:

although i do believe that in case of a global financial crisis bitcoin can shoot up but i still think we can not make the conclusion based on this small case. things are still unpredictable. we may even see no change in bitcoin whatsoever since so far bitcoin has never been taking that much effect from any other market and has always been moving on its own.

[Saltius]

Yet.
Only when govt screw its citizens harder such as confiscating other type store of value, will common people recognise the superiority of bitcoin as a store of value.

[timerland]

This is just like the situation with Venezuela, where because their currency was unstable and people didn't trust it as much as decentralized cryptocurrencies, they turned to BTC as a way to hold their money in, and because it was so in demand, most trades had a lot of spread to it.

There's also a lot of tricks and you are a lot safer with BTC as 1Referee said - a lot harder to get hacked/lose your bitcoins compared to getting robbed if you take precautions or own a hardware wallet.

We've seen countries with issues with their economy turn to BTC. Does this mean in an event of a global market crash, BTC will become even more dominant and countries will be forced to allow it?

[pooya87]

And here comes BTC. The smart investors seeing the current situation started switching to Bitcoin in order to save their investment funds and savings from being burned during such a situation.
The local price of BTC (it must be stressed that in Argentina most of the transactions are OTC, so then we are not 100% sure about the price or the real scale) on exchanges momentarily jumped by over $1000.

this looks more like a guesswork to me rather than a solid evidence showing that "investors" are switching to bitcoin. and more importantly the "scale" of such switch is important. for example if there are a very small percentage of people trading bitcoin then a small number of people join in, there surely is going to be a spike but that kind of spike is not something you could call "investors switching to bitcoin" because it is negligible.

1) Will have its market volume to skyrocket (at expense of stocks, forex or other forms of investing), as at least some investors will transfer their portfolios to BTC (and some alts as well)
2) Will gain reputation (somehow FATF guidelines incorporated into domestic legislation can have a positive influence)
3) Considering both points above combined this should have a significant influence upon confirming the reputation of BTC as a store of value as well as heavily impact its price (a sharp increase of demand).

i could see that happening but there is one problem with that, bitcoin still has a small market and because of that it is quite volatile and risky. "investors" aren't usually so willing to migrate to something that has higher risks specially during a recession.

[Viscore]

We've seen countries with issues with their economy turn to BTC. Does this mean in an event of a global market crash, BTC will become even more dominant and countries will be forced to allow it?

I thinking they will, especially the poor countries, they've seen it's possible to help a country with hyper inflation so that will prove that Bitcoin is a good class of asset to store the value of money. The popularity of bitcoin has been spreading all over the world, it has become a real money since it's acceptable already and if they want to leave the country, they can don't need to carry anything, just a simple wallet key, they'll be able to access their bitcoin and sell it for fiat.

[Kakmakr]

I think most people in first world countries have never experienced the problems with hyperinflation like we had with countries like Zimbabwe and Venezuela, so they do not appreciate the "Store of Value" that Bitcoin offers people living in these economic circumstances.

The USA & China trade wars is their first taste of economic instability, so they will soon start looking for something with a good "Store of Value" to protect their wealth and Bitcoin will be there to help them.  

We saw what happened in Greece when they started to close the Banks and how people started to use Bitcoin out of necessity, due to a lack of Fiat in circulation.