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Comment by mrjin | Hacker News Reader

I would expect the opposite. Argentinians do that coz Argentinian banks cannot be trusted(they learnt it from banks forced converting foreign currencies held in their acounts). But still, they will need to convert back to peso so that they can buy groceries etc.. Cutting the link will not make everyone accept crypto but leave it as none wants something cannot be freely converted if they have a choice.

I guess the next move would be opening offshore accounts to accept payments.

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If an Argentinian receives a SWIFT transfer of let's say 10k USD, it is forcefully converted to pesos at an absurdly bad, effectively asymmetrical exchange rate, basically less than 50% of the real value. In other words, if you try to buy dollars with the pesos that were converted for you, you will only be able to buy less than 5k USD.

And that's before taking taxes into account. When taking taxes into account, somebody who is paid 10k will basically end up with 3k USD, probably less.

Additionally, and this happens in every country, SWIFT takes days and fees are really expensive. Crypto is almost instant and fees much much lower.

> Argentinians do that coz Argentinian banks cannot be trusted

Incorrect. Argentinians do that because taxes are incredibly high, and if you earn in USD you must sell it at the official dollar rate (less than half of the real rate), and you can't even buy the dollars you sold back because there's a cap on how much USD you can buy per month (I think it's 200USD). Argentinian devs LOVE crypto because they love evading taxes (justifiably or not)

What you've described is less of a "tax" and more of a financial enema.

I agree with you, but I feel it's unfair for the other 99% of the country to be subject to it.

Yes complicity with theft makes one untrustworthy.

Describing it as mere tax evasion interests is a bit of a simplification. During Corralito accounts were frozen to the point they could often barely be drawn on. Whether you want to blame that on the bank or not, the end result is people end up not trusting the banks...

People don't trust the banks, that is correct, but the reality is that nobody buys crypto for that reason --- they buy it because the peso is a volatile currency and to avoid taxes.

On the other hand, supermarkets don't accept USDT or Bitcoin because there's little benefit: it's easier to have their customers convert it to peso first. But if the conversion becomes more difficult, then a shop accepting crypto is now more attractive to those that have it.

Of course that only works if the whole crypto hassle is still better than working with local banks.

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