Argentine leading candidate: Pro Bitcoin, anti CentralBank, wants dollarization

[d5000]

If Argentina wants to have a more stable currency, they should simply stop printing more, and start giving higher rates, and it will be a high recession period but if they push through it, no matter how long it takes, they are going to be fine eventually.

They're already doing that (I guess you mean interest rates ... they're growing every month or so), but it's not enough. As I wrote in my discussion with DrBeer, the big problem is the "structural" deficit due to corruption. The state loses, I estimate, at least about 5-10% of its budget due to corrupt overpricing of third-party services and low productivity due to "ñoquis" (state employees doing nothing or almost nothing). The "printing" problem is also linked to the inability of Argentinian treasury to issue bonds for reasonable rates. So they recurr to "MMT" instead.

anti-immigration

That's actually wrong, I wonder where yo've read it. The other two are correct (he has denied climate change in the past, although it's not part of his official proposals, and anti-abortion, he justifies this one with the libertarian "no-agression" principle, but here he's clearly favouring the right of the unborn child over the right of the woman to not be target of "aggression").

Sometimes ideas that look interesting on paper turn out to be devastating in practice.

That's what I think too. Dollarization hasn't solved all problems of Ecuador, El Salvador and Panama. Above all Ecuador, which is the largest of these countries and thus the one most comparable with Argentina, has ran into several defaults since 2000 and has enormous problems with organized crime (which is, by some, linked to dollarization, as dollarization decreased the income of poor people with informal jobs, and drug lords are recruiting them easily).

The better alternative in my view is a regional currency with Brazil, the main trade partner. I can think of some alternative ideas which could include a state-sponsored stablecoin based on commodities, but they're not discussed in Argentina (although commodity-backed stablecoins do exist there, for example Agrotoken).

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[Mauser]

So, this is going to be a really mindfuck moment for a lot of users
- he likes Bitcoin
- wants to get rid of the central bank
- want to fully adopt the usd dollar, so ditching completely the pesos

This would be great if Argentina can get such a forward looking and modern president that might be able turn the country around. Getting rid of the central bank all together might be a bit extreme and will hopefully not going to happen, but reducing the power of the central bank sounds like a good idea. The whole issue of the Argentina economy and currency is that they tried to rely on the US Dollar in the past without securing the value itself. They were supposed to store large amounts of US Dollars when pegging their own currency to a fixed US Dollar amount. Once it became public that there aren't enough foreign exchange reserves the value dropped freely. Even today with capital bans on the US Dollar, most people still hold large amounts of it instead of their own currency. Ditching their own currency might be way too extreme again, but relying on the US Dollar will help to bring down the inflation.  The idea now is to create a foreign entity that will hold a majority of the state-owned companies. Against these assets the government can take out a lot of loans in US Dollar to try and rescue the economy. For foreign investors it's great because their loans are secured and for Argentina it would mean a much higher debt level. The only issue would be if Argentina defaults again then they could lose ownership of their state-owned companies. Not only relying on the US Dollar, but also focusing on Bitcoin is another great idea. El Salvador did it in the past and so far, the country seems on track to recovery.

[Gyfts]

Assuming Javier Milei wins and he actually follows through with pro-Bitcoin policies, it'd be massive for Argentina and Bitcoin. Triple digit inflation rates are a result of the money printing related to COVID and other matters -- the central banks have been trying to fight bad fiscal policy for years. If he wants to limit central bank influence, that would mean prolonging the inflationary spike and let the economy/prices naturally recover. They would be better off than letting the banks trying to conduct an impossible balancing act of balancing the economy and interest rates.

[mvdheuvel1983]

If Javier Milei wins the presidential election on 22 October this year, Bitcoin might get the needed boast in Argentina.
I don't think Bitcoin will easily regain its traditional status as currency. If the price keeps accelerating more people will keep it as an investment because it will become more precious.

The world is waiting to see the countries in Latin America slowly adopt bitcoin and begin to use it either as a legal tender or together with their USD which is the most used currency in all of Latin America. But I think that it will be based on several factors such as the rate of inflation and the consensus agreement by the central bankers. As for Javier Milei, Argentines can see what is going on. They know his true motive and it is not bitcoin but to dollarize the Argentine economy. I haven't counted though but I do not think that the times he has mentioned about bitcoin is up to 100.