Bitcoin demand in economically volatile countries surges

[Vishnu.Reang]

Oh, before now I came across a post that says there have been a lot of people buying bitcoin in Argentina, and I thought that was not true, and now here's this post to verify that he was saying the truth. Well, that's good to see that a lot of people are now buying bitcoin and especially people in Venezuela; I hope that bitcoin is going to help a lot of them escape the poverty they are facing in that country.

It is true that the demand for Bitcoin in many of these countries are showing a small uptick. But if you compare the volumes from these countries to the global volumes, then you will find that these are still minuscule numbers. Venezuelans and Argentines are using the US Dollar and gold as the store of value. Bitcoin is much lower in priority.

[EdenHazard]

So it's not always have a good fairytale story that whenever certain country under crazy inflation... and then bitcoin or any cryptocurrency become their safe haven. That's wrong thought.

Crypto is too risky of a bet indeed. It could work out extremely well, but then you need the luck to have invested in or right before a longer term bull market where prices go up.

If you bought crypto in 2018 thinking it would help you counter the inflation rate of your country, you would have lost far more purchasing, plus you actually lost in units too because cashing out at a loss means you get less units back.

People in these situations aren't speculators, they need stability which can be found in the USD, which generally is the preferred store of value tool even though people here see it differently.

That's the wrong perception that most newcomers think about how bitcoin could help you out of the crisis.

You might find it as a safe haven if you do it in the short term only , that's why the demand surges ... it won't last forever. you need to find other alternatives as soon as possible other than bitcoin... you could choose stable coins but still it's not recommended at all due its controversies hasn't been answered yet.
A big bet of course for those who choose bitcoin as their part of escape plan . Overall you are stepping in to a bigger risk once you do this especially when it's involved a huge amount of money.

[befriendmywater]

This is obvious because so many people around the world think that bitcoin is capable of very good growth over the years. they were manipulated by that concept from the beginning.
In my opinion, buying a lot of bitcoins is really a mistake when you are too confident in the future of bitcoin. It is risky because only manipulative organizations are holding the most bitcoins.
And if one day the sharks were constantly selling off, what would happen to those who believed in bitcoin? What will their country be like?
wow, i cant imagine it.

[alyssa85]

Oh, before now I came across a post that says there have been a lot of people buying bitcoin in Argentina, and I thought that was not true, and now here's this post to verify that he was saying the truth. Well, that's good to see that a lot of people are now buying bitcoin and especially people in Venezuela; I hope that bitcoin is going to help a lot of them escape the poverty they are facing in that country.

It is true that the demand for Bitcoin in many of these countries are showing a small uptick. But if you compare the volumes from these countries to the global volumes, then you will find that these are still minuscule numbers. Venezuelans and Argentines are using the US Dollar and gold as the store of value. Bitcoin is much lower in priority.

The numbers are minuscule because the Argentinian peso has already devalued. Basically you could get a lot more bitcoin if you moved to purchase it BEFORE the crisis hit than after. Same goes for Venezuela - if you try to buy after the crisis you struggle - 1 Venezuelan peso only equals 180 satoshi, so you would need to do a lot of work just to get a few satoshi.

This is always the trouble - people move to buy bitcoin too late, after a crisis has hit, instead of pre-planning and acting before.

[romero121]

There is increasing demand particularly from those economically volatile countries. This is all because of the devaluation every citizen of the country experience. Now everyone want their hard earnings to be secured, and investing on bitcoin this can be achieved. Some fear of the volatility with bitcoin, one who understands better about its volatility invest and have patience to get the best out of it. With bitcoin as the demand increases the value too rises. With fiat to the demand the currencies were simply printed causing inflation. Such scenario is happening in most countries.

[aardvark15]

Have a look at the following graphic:



The image comes from the following tweet:

https://twitter.com/CryptoWelson/status/1190094660578037761/photo/1

Demand for #Bitcoin in economically volatile regions reached record highs in 2019.

Since 2013, volumes on Argentine peso, Hong Kong dollar, and Venezuelan bolivar bitcoin pairs have exceeded $600 billion in total value.

I wonder whether the surge in the bitcoin price that started in March/April is correlated with the Hong Kong riots which started on 31st March 2019 and are still ongoing.

In countries where the government and economy are unstable and in situations with high inflation, cryptocurrency may be a good alternative. It can provide a safe haven for your money. It also allows access to the funds from many places around the world.

[LUCKMCFLY]

~snip~

This is only the statistics for Localbitcoins.com, other Exchanges that also move a lot of volume in operations are not taken into account, however it is necessary to emphasize that Venezuela continues to have increasing numbers in terms of volumes, since the adoption is very large every day, In fact, if all Venezuelans knew about technology, they would return to their country to work on it, whether in trading or otherwise to acquire Bitcoin.

The high volumes of Hong Kong is a normal consequence that is caused by the Chinese government itself, they know very well that they had until recently a lot of prohibitions regarding Bitcoin and Crypto, now that CHINA is in the "Love" phase with Blockchain and bitcoin, to open the way to their cryptocurrency or stablecoin they are preparing the ground for them to use it and adopt their cryptocurrency.

[alyssa85]

The high volumes of Hong Kong is a normal consequence that is caused by the Chinese government itself, they know very well that they had until recently a lot of prohibitions regarding Bitcoin and Crypto, now that CHINA is in the "Love" phase with Blockchain and bitcoin, to open the way to their cryptocurrency or stablecoin they are preparing the ground for them to use it and adopt their cryptocurrency.

China is not in love with bitcoin. It's in love with the idea of creating it's own coin. It still has currency controls and a complete ban on exchanges.

I think the high volumes of bitcoin buying in Hong Kong is down to people there wanting to get their money out in case they get invaded by China.

[BitHodler]

I think the high volumes of bitcoin buying in Hong Kong is down to people there wanting to get their money out in case they get invaded by China.

High volume in relative terms of course, because the volumes in Hong Kong are still peanuts compared to the volume in other Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea, and so on.

I am more interested in finding out what the next stage is for people after having bought Bitcoin.... will they keep it in Bitcoin or convert it to dollars? Volatility is quite a concern especially for those having bought a lot of Bitcoin.

I really hope they will hold their Bitcoin's but wouldn't be surprised to find out that people convert it to dollars, either partially or in full.... their main goal was just to get money out of the country.

[CarnagexD]

I think that a lot of these investors and people that are suddenly entering the Bitcoin scene see it as the only safe haven away from their own country and it's currency.

For example, with Venezuela it has been used as a replacement for their peso currency for years now, their own currency has been unstable since forever and I think it might become a permanent situation soon. Same with Argentina except they are fighting it and don't want Bitcoin to replace their currency. Hong Kong is having issues with China, so that explains it easily.

And this is very telling, even if governments do not want to recognize bitcoin as a currency what they fear the most is that people do because once this process begins to take place they have no way to stop it.

Well actually there is a way for government to stop it, but only from making it illegal and prohibit to use of cryptocurrency under their jurisdiction, that could stop the circulation of cryptocurrency in an area. No one wants to run illegally.  But most probably government would not do it, they would rather change the system than lose their financial stance just because of this, blockchain particularly.

It also makes sense, we see that in countries where the currency and the economy is still strong there is not a need for those people to adopt bitcoin and they keep using their fiat, but once fiat begins to have problems people have no problem trying to find and use other alternatives.

There is nothing wrong about the fiat currency, it just happened that we have a better type of currency to use but is decentralized and no one has the control to it making it vulnerable for mass rejection. But we also delivering solutions regarding this so we can use a partial of the concept of cryptocurrency or maybe a full one in the future.

[davinchi]

Crypto currencies are not risky at all as long as the investor hold good knowledge of his coin and choose the right coin.

Depends if what cryptos are you investing to . The risk is not the same on every cryptos . Btc has the highest risk but has the highest reward also  .  No matter how knowledgeable you are , you are not perfect to predict the price even if you pick the less riskeir coins , so the chance of loosing is still present

The risk that we are even talking about in bitcoin, is not really a terrible risk, the risk of bitcoin is just the volatility and the fear is that we could buy a coin right now and then see it dump within the next minute, but we also need to understand that bitcoin is such an established coin that even if it drops in price, it would always recover back later in the future no matter how long it is.
 
I know that those people that have invested in the last bull run when the value became like $20k, and then suddenly drop, they would have counted that has losses, which I don’t see as losses except the older of the coin panicky sell the coin, provide they don’t sell the asset out of panic, they will always get the opportunity in future to recover it back which we might now say that they lost their time instead.

[Emitdama]

The high volumes of Hong Kong is a normal consequence that is caused by the Chinese government itself, they know very well that they had until recently a lot of prohibitions regarding Bitcoin and Crypto, now that CHINA is in the "Love" phase with Blockchain and bitcoin, to open the way to their cryptocurrency or stablecoin they are preparing the ground for them to use it and adopt their cryptocurrency.

China is not in love with bitcoin. It's in love with the idea of creating it's own coin. It still has currency controls and a complete ban on exchanges.

I think the high volumes of bitcoin buying in Hong Kong is down to people there wanting to get their money out in case they get invaded by China.

If they are not in love with bitcoin, it shows that they are not in love with cryptocurrency because bitcoin is the only true technology that really represent what cryptocurrency is, and that which they claim to want to create is something that is going to be similar to digital payment system and I think that people will not be accepting it that much because there are other existing ones.

If they want to create a real cryptocurrency, they should do it in the right way because any of these currencies must definitely have a tier with bitcoin. Any currency that cannot be paired with bitcoin should not be counted as cryptocurrency, because not everyone will want to use their fiat to purchase such coin for privacy purpose and if you see the additional benefits of bitcoin, the people of china will always take it over their own currency.

[Clement Kaliyar]

It's not   .  People can still loose with or without panicking because there are other reasons that they do like selling because they need the cash or they loose the value of their asset because it fell down .

If you really trust the bitcoin market then you would know that the market will recover eventually and without that trust you cannot invest in a market and when you make a decision to invest then you need to be a fool to sell at a loss, understand the meaning of the term investment and if you do that you will never sell at a loss and you do not need to be genius to know to hold when the market goes down.

[gantez]

This is no surprise at all since this scenario is all part of an ever growing Bitcoin and crypto adoption worldwide that is taking its natural course and I assume  we would expect an even more vibrant Bitcoin and crypto industry in the coming years to come.

For my view on that I think those countries with volatile currency are running into bitcoin and securing their money there for the fear of what can not be predicted about the their fiat. This is having a growing rate on bitcoin. For example, the awareness of what bitcoin is back then in 2017 and now are not the same thing. People have realized that you can invest in bitcoin or tether it.

[rose9696]

then this proves a very correct hypothesis. When a country has political and public debt problems, people will come to Bitcoin more and hold it for a long time.
This hypothesis was true after witnessing the purchasing power chart of Hong Kong people. I believe that in the future Bitcoin will have even more purchasing power.

[wxa7115]

Oh, before now I came across a post that says there have been a lot of people buying bitcoin in Argentina, and I thought that was not true, and now here's this post to verify that he was saying the truth. Well, that's good to see that a lot of people are now buying bitcoin and especially people in Venezuela; I hope that bitcoin is going to help a lot of them escape the poverty they are facing in that country.

It is true that the demand for Bitcoin in many of these countries are showing a small uptick. But if you compare the volumes from these countries to the global volumes, then you will find that these are still minuscule numbers. Venezuelans and Argentines are using the US Dollar and gold as the store of value. Bitcoin is much lower in priority.

Even if that is correct and people are not using bitcoin as much as they are using the US dollar and gold the fact that they are using bitcoin is a very strong sign that when things get ugly economically people are going to use whatever means they have available to protect themselves from the mismanagement of the economy by the governments and if this means using bitcoin then they will do it.

This is why I have always thought that the thing that is going to push the adoption of bitcoin all over the world is going to be a global economic crisis because people will finally realize that the whole system was arranged in such a way to benefit only the rich and they will begin to use anything to get out of that rigged system.

[iv4n]

then this proves a very correct hypothesis. When a country has political and public debt problems, people will come to Bitcoin more and hold it for a long time.
This hypothesis was true after witnessing the purchasing power chart of Hong Kong people. I believe that in the future Bitcoin will have even more purchasing power.

People will turn to alternatives when their national currency lose money. Before there wasn't bitcoin, people used gold as alternative, other precious metals and other goods, but bitcoin beats them all, its easier to hide and transfer it, if we talk about some higher amounts, how will someone transfer gold, or anything else, bitcoin wallet full with bitcoins can be hidden anywhere, much easier.
I think its normal for people that live in economically volatile countries to seek for some safe heaven for their assets, bitcoin is the best for that until now, addition to that can be promising future, and that holding can worth much more some day.

[BitHodler]

Before there wasn't bitcoin, people used gold as alternative, other precious metals and other goods, but bitcoin beats them all, its easier to hide and transfer it, if we talk about some higher amounts, how will someone transfer gold, or anything else, bitcoin wallet full with bitcoins can be hidden anywhere, much easier.

We haven't really seen a global meltdown yet. In the last couple of decades it has mainly been the USD that people used as hedge and store of value, and to some lower degree as means of exchange as well.

Currently we have Bitcoin but that doesn't mean it's going to benefit from economic turmoil, especially with how people still consider it a very risky and volatile asset class.... stability is key to gain people's confidence.

If the price pumps and dumps by 20-30% every so often that's not helping people. People looking for alternatives want stability and not constantly stress out about the price having gone up or down significantly.

[sapnu]

Before there wasn't bitcoin, people used gold as alternative, other precious metals and other goods, but bitcoin beats them all, its easier to hide and transfer it, if we talk about some higher amounts, how will someone transfer gold, or anything else, bitcoin wallet full with bitcoins can be hidden anywhere, much easier.

We haven't really seen a global meltdown yet. In the last couple of decades it has mainly been the USD that people used as hedge and store of value, and to some lower degree as means of exchange as well.

Currently we have Bitcoin but that doesn't mean it's going to benefit from economic turmoil, especially with how people still consider it a very risky and volatile asset class.... stability is key to gain people's confidence.

If the price pumps and dumps by 20-30% every so often that's not helping people. People looking for alternatives want stability and not constantly stress out about the price having gone up or down significantly.

Stability of cryptocurrency is impossible since we all know that cryptocurrency is volatile in terms of value, meaning the price is changing time by time when there are transactions happening all around the world. The idea is that if we experienced downfall as of now, do not lose hope because there is a big chance that the price will come back again to its high value, all we need to do is to wait and HOLD that particular token we have. For you to gain a lot of money or profit you should learn different things with regards to the token you are holding.

[princesspoppy]

One of the good things of bitcoin is its power as a decentralized storage of value and asset which are mostly needed by countries that are having problems and crisis with their own currency and country. The riot in Hongkong serves as a threat in hongkong nationals in losing their country as well as to the government they have. In relation to this, they are threatened with the possibility to lose their freedom and assets, and maybe this is the reason why they choose to put their assets in bitcoin because of its potential in the future.