Argentina Becomes a Tinderbox for Bitcoin

On August 13, CoinDesk’s Pete Rizzo reported that 8,000 convenience stores across Argentina now allowed Argentinians to buy small amounts of Bitcoin.
The expected response from this news? Not much. Well, no one really expected that just because people could buy Bitcoin that they would buy Bitcoin. This news was not about an in-road that would suddenly bring thousands into the world of Bitcoin, but of laying a framework.
Below I’ve reprinted a post from ZeroHedge that lays out the economic crisis Argentina is suffering partly because of its own spendthrift ways, but also partly because of predatory lending practices and vulture capitalists. It’s unfortunate, but beneficial change often comes on the back of great suffering. As I was reading the article below, I thought the suffering of the Argentinians might just be what sets fire to Bitcoin adoption.
The scenario plays out like this:
Bitcoin is made easy to buy to a population that doesn’t know anything about it and is likely to distrust it as weird, intangible, and foreign based. They largely ignore it. At the same time, the country is going through yet another financial crisis, just one of many in its long history, but that doesn’t make the hardship any less. The government for its part is incompetent, unresponsive, and ill-equipped to deal with the crisis. Those at the top always seem to find loopholes that let them escape the worst of the situation, but for the vast majority of the population, things just continue to get harder.

This post was published at Bitcoin Warrior on September 1, 2014.

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