The ferry from Argentina to Uruguay everyday full of people taking money out of the country to deposit it in banks that won't be skimmed by the government is much more disruptive than a handful of bitcoin traders.<p>Bitcoin however is great for avoiding the official fake exchange rate and getting the real rate, which is often 2x the amount of the official rate. If you're travelling to BA you want to avoid those sketchy blackmarket moneychangers floating around. If you're a tourist there's good odds you'll be receiving counterfeit Argentinian Pesos or end up getting jacked by a guy on a motorbike after he watches you exchanging money in the streets whereas with Bitcoin you can safely meet somebody in a coffee shop, do the trade and they usually have some kind of localbitcoins.com or other online reputation they want to keep so won't be handing over counterfeits.<p>Bitcoin hasn't replaced the mass exodus of Argentinians who deposit money outside the country in Uruguay yet. <a href="http://en.mercopress.com/2013/03/05/an-estimated-one-million-dollars-trickled-per-day-from-argentina-to-uruguayan-banks" rel="nofollow">http://en.mercopress.com/2013/03/05/an-estimated-one-million...</a>
I think this article is going to result in a crackdown on Bitcoin here in Argentina.<p>It’s interesting that it mentions “The American company Coinbase” but doesn’t mention Coinbase’s Argentine origins. Maybe Brian wouldn’t give an interview to the author?<p>This is a good example of why I haven’t been willing to get involved in Bitcoin so far, despite finding it fascinating: we’ve known since May presented the Crypto-Anarchist Manifesto at Hackers (1989?) that a likely endgame of anonymous digital currencies was that governments would lose their ability to impose capital controls and indeed taxes. While I’m skeptical about the ontological status or moral value of the State, I also don’t want public education, policing, and public healthcare to disappear overnight without a chance to construct alternatives; racism and other hateful ideologies promoted by States over the centuries to keep their subjects divided can simply explode into violence.<p>(I’m not worried about “terrorists and organized crime” — those are of course terrible but nothing we haven’t dealt with before. I’m worried about the collapse of governments leading to a collapse of civilization, which is a thing that has happened before, with disastrous results — the Bronze Age collapse, the Maya collapse, the fall of Rome, and so on.)<p>If it catches on, though, continuing to abstain might become as difficult as Stallman’s continued abstention from using the internet, or the abstention of the Amish from driving cars. And I will yield.
SPOILER: it's not.<p>> The number of Bitcoin users in Argentina is relatively small; it barely registers on most charts of global Bitcoin usage.<p>This article is hype: "This article was adapted from 'Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money'". It reads like a press release because it is one.<p>> This is the street-smart economics. Not the complex Ph.D. economics.<p>The phrase "I'm not book-smart, I'm street-smart" can be rephrased "I'm not real-credible, I'm fake-credible." It's the sort of thing expert beginners say, particularly when they've reached the stage of recognising and disparaging actual expertise in their subject. And hoo boy, Bitcoiners are at the far end of expert beginner.<p>There is no reason to expect anything good or useful from this article.
"The number of Bitcoin users in Argentina is relatively small; it barely registers on most charts of global Bitcoin usage."<p>That's the very definition of not disrupting.
While I might have some doubts about the ultimate thrust of this article, my gut tells me that ignoring Bitcoin as a technology and an ecosystem is a mistake.<p>I've been present for three big revolutions in technology (personal computing, the Internet, and mobile data/smartphones) and with each there were detractors that dismissed the ultimate effect and utility of these new arrivals. I'm not so sure we aren't repeating that mistake.<p>I'm hedging my bets. It might be the case that Bitcoin the currency never makes it, but the technology that underpins it might live on in some useful construct when applied to a problem where the utility is more apparent, even if that connection isn't at all clear now.
Argentinian here, nope, no disruption at all, I actually will argue that due our history and high volatility of pesos people only trust in-hand hard cash dollars, anything else is smoke & mirrors :D
"See, Bitcoin isn't just for illegal drug purposes. It's also for illegally circuventing currency controls!"<p>Psychic prediction. In ten years, there will be some jurisdictions where possesion of a copy of the bitcoin ledger will be a criminal offense.
The Casa Rosada (the equivalent to the White House, home to the executive branch of the government) tweets ironically about this article:<p><a href="https://twitter.com/casarosadaar/status/593584932485779457" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/casarosadaar/status/593584932485779457</a>
The headline has been changed to the less obviously ridiculous "Can Bitcoin Conquer Argentina?"<p>To which the answer is, of course, "Betteridge."