Bitcoin: Argentinean fever for the digital money machine

Having just recently lived in Argentina, I can say the bitcoin community is really active. The biggest problem is that it's still really small so you're dealing with a few hundred pesos at a time. To take a subway across Buenos Aires and meet up, for say, $300 ARS ($37 USD at the unofficial rate) is a huge hassle.

I had the idea of bringing in say a few thousand USD/month (I have an office and a number of things like random office lunches, office rent, nespresso capsules, snacks, etc are for various reasons not payable via a check from a business account.) I could buy say $1500 USD in bitcoins but then I couldn't find people who are not miners to take the other side of the transaction that had enough bitcoins to buy $8000 to $12,000 ARS in one transaction.

WHY would that be useful? Well, if I have $1500 USD of bitcoins, I can get the "blue" rate of 8.05 * 1500 = $12,075 ARS. If I wire myself $1500 USD from outside Argentina, I'll get $8092 ARS. So, imagine I could use bitcoins to do the transaction. I'll get about 40% more money if someone properly values the bitcoin to the peso.

What we need is the coinbase of Argentina, but then being "legal" would kind of defeat the whole value of bitcoins in such a warped economy. Just check out http://dolarblue.net/ for the TWENTY different ways to convert ARS to USD/EUR, etc. Argentina is not a place you are going to setup a legal bitcoin exchange and have it last very long.

I don't really think people should be promoting auto translated pieces like this. It doesn't provide much content other than "Somebody writing in spanish is introducing bitcoins".

We did a short documentary on Bitcoins in Argentina not to long ago which should give an idea the situation in Argentina. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e__m-w4N7NI

Must be a different Argentina, I was there these days and although some guys that works in the Argentinian branch of the bank I work were very tech-savvy and were complaining the restrictions of moving money out of the country they did not cite Bitcoin, at all, some were venturing with buying gold and moving it out of Argentina but that was all.

For me it was odd, bitcoin appears a good way to move money from there to the other side of the River Plate.