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Comment by sn_master | Hacker News Reader

Try being a Lebanese or Turkish or any of dozen African countries with hyperinflation.

Only the rich in those countries managed to exchange their local currency for foreign cash in time, everyone else saw their life savings vanish in front of their own eyes except the very few who converted their local currency to crypto in time when they saw the chips falling.

BitCoin allows kind of international currency bank account for everyone and anyone who needs it for minimal cost.

That besides the large markets for illegal goods, which is another cornerstone that's not gonna go away any time soon either, with people more or less being forced to buy crypto to get their goods.

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> Try being a Lebanese or Turkish or any of dozen African countries with hyperinflation.

Aren't you arguing in favour of capital flight instead of crypto?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_flight

> BitCoin allows kind of international currency bank account for everyone and anyone who needs it for minimal cost.

That doesn't really explain why should, say, Sweden or the EU be forced to pay, say, Turkey or Lebanon's ecological footprint of it's capital flight.

> That doesn't really explain why should, say, Sweden or the EU be forced to pay, say, Turkey or Lebanon's ecological footprint of it's capital flight.

It is Turkey and Lebanon today, it was Greece yesterday, it could be Sweden tomorrow.

Banning it now means it won't be there if it's needed in the future.

That's we we have the Euro, so we do not need some shady escape path to hypecapitalisms to a currency controlled by only by some people with money who do not care about the environment. I think it is time for governments to monitor and tax the trading of any unregulated currencies above small amounts and particularly raise import taxes to compensate for any CO2 emissions. I have no clue why legislators are so hesitant. IMHO negative effects on the economy would be unnoticeable.

Cause the euro is solid and isn't going anywhere... Greece like situations have been regulatory fixed and countries other than Germany are paying the bills.

Except not. The EU was desperate to find another financial supporter hence the failed bid calling for the death of the pound. That didn't happen, the euro is on its way out and has been.

What happens to people’s money during inflation when that money is tied up in stocks or mutual funds rather than in savings? Does the inflation affect the stock prices, and partially protect you from the inflation?

During hyperinflation the entire economy tanks, and the stock market will reflect that, if not worse (companies going bankrupt and you losing everything).

And, in those countries, investing in stocks is only for the upper class in general. It's nowhere as easy as in the US, and many of them don't even have a stock market or anything similar in the first place.

Closest alternative is buying precious metals like gold, but then you run into the risk of fakes, theft and difficulty of transportation.

> And, in those countries, investing in stocks is only for the upper class in general.

I'm not sure that is true at all. I mean, nowadays it's as hard to buy a position in crypto as it is to buy stocks from the, say, US stock market.

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