To his horror, BitCoin and Gold DID NOT get adopted as an alternative, basically by anyone. Instead, people keep trying to use US Dollars if they can't get the Argentinian currency. Basically, no one can take BitCoin for trade. You can't really use gold either because gold is to expensive to be used for trading purposes. Silver could be, but no one has enough silver either, and nobody still knows how to trade with it (or confirm it's purity). What ends up happening is that people are getting direct deposits to their accounts, but when they were at 25% interest rate, they couldn't take their money out to move it, so it just sat in the accounts losing value.
If there was going to be a strong, valid, criticism of Milei it would be letting this happen; because these people were basically just being robbed blind. But I know why he let it happen: Reduce velocity to prevent inflation increase, while still trying to stay away from a Bank Run, or a full collapse of the currency.
But the reason that Gold and Bitcoin couldn't be used as alternative, or even as a store of value is because the banking system actually destroyed liquidity itself. If George's video is too long, I'll cut to the analogy:
By destroying liquidity, they've made gold and bitcoin worthless. An illiquid asset that stores value is just as worthless as a liquid asset that stores no value. If you DO find a liquid asset that stores value (like a USD by comparison), then people start hording them, making them too expensive to use, just like gold.
Once I realized this, I actually started hoarding cash, in addition to gold and silver. If they fuck around in the next recession with withdraw amounts, that cash is going to be a life line that everyone else will be struggling to use.
The only good news is that the Argentineans should be getting around this problem soon enough if their inflation is only 4.5% now instead of 25%.
I heard that from George Gammon going down to Argentina. Btw, it was $40 a day.
To his horror, BitCoin and Gold DID NOT get adopted as an alternative, basically by anyone. Instead, people keep trying to use US Dollars if they can't get the Argentinian currency. Basically, no one can take BitCoin for trade. You can't really use gold either because gold is to expensive to be used for trading purposes. Silver could be, but no one has enough silver either, and nobody still knows how to trade with it (or confirm it's purity). What ends up happening is that people are getting direct deposits to their accounts, but when they were at 25% interest rate, they couldn't take their money out to move it, so it just sat in the accounts losing value.
If there was going to be a strong, valid, criticism of Milei it would be letting this happen; because these people were basically just being robbed blind. But I know why he let it happen: Reduce velocity to prevent inflation increase, while still trying to stay away from a Bank Run, or a full collapse of the currency.
But the reason that Gold and Bitcoin couldn't be used as alternative, or even as a store of value is because the banking system actually destroyed liquidity itself. If George's video is too long, I'll cut to the analogy:
If no one in America has a bank account, and you have $50,000 in gold, and you want to sell it. Who are you going to sell it to? The gold dealer. But why would he have $50,000 in cash laying around. In fact, let's say he does... why would he willingly give it to you?
By destroying liquidity, they've made gold and bitcoin worthless. An illiquid asset that stores value is just as worthless as a liquid asset that stores no value. If you DO find a liquid asset that stores value (like a USD by comparison), then people start hording them, making them too expensive to use, just like gold.
Once I realized this, I actually started hoarding cash, in addition to gold and silver. If they fuck around in the next recession with withdraw amounts, that cash is going to be a life line that everyone else will be struggling to use.
The only good news is that the Argentineans should be getting around this problem soon enough if their inflation is only 4.5% now instead of 25%.