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Comment by 8note | Hacker News Reader

USDT's selling factor is that it's convertible to USD, no?

The interesting thing I think is what happens to those USDT after the payment?

I’m less familiar with Argentina than other countries. I know in Lebanon a lot of money changers will take crypto (Bitcoin / USDT primarily) and give you paper currency. There are a lot of money changers who earn a living this way. Very likely the same in Argentina.

Yep, pretty much the same here in Argentina. People are only now getting used to digital money (I don't mean cripto, I mean thinks like PayPal). Except for some places in Buenos Aires or online shops that sell contraband tech, you don't see widespread use of crypto. For us it's just a proxy for USD. Our currency is a joke (95% anual inflation) and we can only buy legally 200 USD month, so crypto is our way out.

Do you call that "a true circular crypto economy"? Selling USDT to some shady changers on a grey market in Lebanon?

No street exchanger is going to take your cryptocurrency and give you money if they can’t get money back out of it.

They typically send the crypto to a coworker in another country who cashes it out. Crypto has no borders

> Crypto has no borders

At some point you are going to want to cash out your crypto to USD.

Which is a regulation point that will need to implement KYC/AML.

In Lebanon, $500 USD goes a long way, and a lot of KYC rules are under that limit. All manner of mechanisms exist such as gift cards and cell phone minutes to make conversion without KYC. And to be honest the entire KYC system is pretty ineffective anyway, a straw man can be found extremely easily if they have a pulse and a valid ID card.

I’m sorry the truth doesn’t match what you want but this is reality I’m speaking of.

That's fine you can keep your $500 USD transactions.

I am talking about the larger financial transactions that actually underpin the global economy.

And for those crypto very much has borders.

I think it's clear that this whole process is not really circular and hinges on people who collect bitcoins thinking they will keep growing in value. These folks are willing to not be able to get out for now, but they will be making a hell of a lot of effort to push the croins onto all of us because it would put them right at the top of the pyramid along with Satoshi and friends.

Hawala has been a thing long before crypto, with plenty of experience creatively dodging such regulations. And I would expect there to be a considerable intersection between the two in a place like Lebanon.

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