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Comment by game-of-throws | Hacker News Reader

If someone is trying to escape their local currency, they won't want an on/off ramp. In foreign nations with a large underground USD economy, people skip the local currency and trade/spend USD directly. The same could happen with BTC. In fact in the most extreme cases this transformation is already happening: https://www.reuters.com/technology/venezuelas-economy-regres...

> But a major part of Venezuela's crypto operations involves businesses swapping out of bolivars to beat inflation, said economist and finance expert Aaron Olmos.

> "Nobody is going to tell you 'every night when we do the books, we convert bolivars into bitcoin,' but yes, this is happening."

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I've used crypto for regular monetary transactions (selling art) and it's a huge pain in the ass compared to using actual currency. The idea that people are going to do day-to-day purchases with bitcoin is pure fantasy, it would be a huge step back from what most people are used to.

You pay fees for every single transaction: chain storage, gas, if you want to deposit or withdraw or exchange to another currency, etc; it's slow to go through and at peak times you get gassed out and it doesn't go through at all.

The value fluctuates wildly at all times of day, so your transaction might lose a significant percent of value before you've had a chance to even access it let alone trade it for a more stable currency or asset. Oh, and you have zero safety net for if something is entered wrong, a key is lost, if you end up not receiving the item you purchased, you're outta luck and there's no bank or credit card agency you can petition for a chargeback. Plus you lose ALL your money with no recourse if you can't keep track of a non human memorizable secret key, or if it gets in any way intercepted or stolen from your computer, or if you accept the wrong transaction...

How can everyone convert bolivars into bitcoin? That would imply that equal amounts of bitcoin are being sold by someone in exchange for bolivar. Who is that and why do they think it's a good deal?

People who spend it before it gets inflated but yes you are right, if everyone is posting sell orders and nobody is picking those up then the Bolivar will plummet vs Bitcoin.

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