Since June 2014, the topic of bitcoin growing fame in Argentina has been widely talked about. Argentina's super-weak currency and economic decline have encouraged people to seek an alternative medium of exchange that could give them higher degree of freedom along with a better value.

Since June 2014, the topic of bitcoin growing fame in Argentina has been widely talked about. Argentina's super-weak currency and economic decline have encouraged people to seek an alternative medium of exchange that could give them higher degree of freedom along with a better value.

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Broken Economy Meet Alternative Currency

In order to stave off high inflation and falling Peso exchange rate, Argentina government arranged various limitation for currency exchange transactions. Therefore, in a bid to protect government interest, Argentina has limit accesses to foreign currencies, complicate the life of ordinary people in business and liven up underground currency market. Bitcoin, alternatively, provide a more efficient cash flow for businesses, as well as a protection against high inflation. It is no surprise that The Economist's Schumpeter mentioned, Argentina and Bitcoin would appear to be a match made in heaven.


USDARSUSDARS Chart from Bloomberg shows Argentine Peso decline in the last three years

Still, the adoption of bitcoin has to pass several challenges; that is: easier usage, lower price fluctuation, increasing the number of vendors accepting the currency, and its legitimacy as medium of exchange. For some of them, though, Argentina seems like it is on the way to resolve it soon.

Buy Bitcoin In Convenience Stores

To answer Argentines' needs of easier access to bitcoin, a new bitcoin brokerage called Ripio has been launched. Coindesk yesterday (13/8) reported that the service will allow consumers to buy bitcoin in 8,000 convenience stores across Argentina. This is a significant development in bitcoin terms, because it could be the beginning of a wider acceptance of bitcoin by the citizen of a country, skipping over the government endorsement.

In the beginning of August, Coindesk have reported that Bitcoin Market Opportunity Index (BMOI) ranked Argentina as the most likely country to adapt Bitcoin, with Venezuela, Zimbabwe, India, and Nigeria on the top five. BMOI is a new index that tries to forecast bitcoin potential for adoption by calculating seven categories: technology penetration, inflation, financial repression, financial crises-historical, remittances, black market, and bitcoin penetration. Considering the aforementioned categories, then it is just right that Argentina ranked the first. What's left now is for the majority of the people to actually accept bitcoin as medium of payment.

As more and more offline vendors are accepting bitcoin in Argentina, and opportunity for bitcoin in the country too, will widen. Considering the mess that is Argentina's economy now, as long as the cryptocurrency is not forbidden in the country, then anything could happen. Higher bitcoin penetration could even push Argentina to be the first country to adopt the cryptocurrency. It might need some time to go there, but it is certainly not impossible.