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Comment by ArtTimeInvestor | Hacker News Reader

Why do you think that people in Argentina are flocking to Dollar and not to Bitcoin or Gold?

When I look at the search trends in Argentina, I see Bitcoin in a very volatile longterm uptrend, Gold in a longterm downtrend and the Dollar being constantly a distant third:

https://trends.google.de/trends/explore?date=all&geo=AR&q=go...

Over the 20 years which the Peso has been devaluing, Bitcoin has outpaced the others by far in terms of searches.

What other indicators could we look at to get a better picture?

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How are search trends the same as ownership of the currency?

Also in Argentina it's "dólar," not "dollar": https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=AR&q=g...

Good to see that myth busted.

Having spent enough time in the country people buy dollars to save money, there is no other way except investing in real estate and other large investments that are typically only available to people that are already rich.

Since we are here, why "gold" and not the actual Spanish word "oro"?

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=AR&q=g...

Do people in the USA do a Google search for Visa or Mastercard when they want to pay for something? Of course not, they just use their credit card.

It’s the same with dollars in places where it’s an actively used alternative to devaluating national currencies. You don’t search for “dollar” online, you just buy and sell in the street and use it to pay for things directly.

People do have an interest in Bitcoin as it's the only way to do transfers abroad that really works. But typically they just hoard dollars. Bitcoin also fluctuated way more than dollars in the last few years, people that buy dollars are typically middle and higher class people that want to save money for their house, going on vacation and that kind of stuff. Risk avoiding people.

There are a variety of dollars, the one most people talk about is the "blue" (meaning black market). It trades for twice the official rate, but since you can also sell it at around that price it doesn't impact you that much when you're saving in it. It does hurt when you want to spend that money when for example traveling abroad.

https://dolarhoy.com

Nope. Searches for oro (Spanish for gold) and dólar (dollar?) far outstrip Bitcoin. Searches for gold and dollar (English) terms are effectively flat and paint a very different picture.

A very direct, relatively reliable indicator we could look at to see if this has happened at all anywhere recently is the gold premium in China, which has gold import restrictions. Just days ago people were willing to pay ~$100/oz over the international mark price, so there are people willing to spend >5% above the mark on a high volume asset in order to have a physical hedge in the event of a catastrophic failure of the yuan.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-27/chinese-g...

Try now: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=AR&q=g...

Not even "Messi" can beat the "dolar blue"

That's impressive! Thanks for introducing me to this term/idea.

People in underprivileged countries have a lot more experience in keeping the value of what they have when push comes to shove

Dollar means liquidity, stability and "money in pocket". Dollar inflation is nothing compared to Peso inflation

Bitcoin can help with some of those aspects but with much less liquidity and more volatility.

> What other indicators could we look at to get a better picture?

Depends how you look at that picture. Let me ask this, if 100 people buy bitcoins and 100 people buy the equivalent dollar value, what proportion of each group will generally be checking how much their purchase is worth on a daily basis?

They don't think people in Argentina are flocking to Gold, they wrote:

> and people are flocking to ... US Dollars. Not gold,

Yup, sorry, fixed.

The search trends are the same for Dollar vs Bitcoin. Strongly in favor of Bitcoin.

Because nobody needs to search "dollar", everyone knows and uses it.

Using Google trends as a proxy is absurd and a total non-starter. This reeks of SV minset.

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