In Argentina, your money is worth double if you go to the black market exchanges called Cuevas caves. The Argentian Peso sees an annual inflation rate of 100%. That’s yearly. The government has made it very difficult by imposing strict capital controls, making it challenging to move money out of the country. The Argentian government makes it almost impossible to move money out of the country and extracts high taxes on international transfers. So people turn to the black market to get money to work around this extortion. 

The ARS or Argentian Peso has a pegged exchange rate, also known as price control. Therefore, the mandated rate of the argentian peso is always overvalued. As a result, there is a thriving black market in their currency market. The black market has its exchange rate called Dolar Blue. The government rate of the ARS to dollars today is 110 to 1, and the black market exchange rate is 215 to 1. This means that at an official exchange location, 1 dollar would equal 100, and on the black market, 1 dollar equals 215 Argentian Pesos.

Devon Zuegel goes on to say Illegal money movement is so common that it’s discussed openly and casually like; which bank service do you recommend? Argentina is a hotspot for cryptocurrency, and even the black market advertises BTC and ETH exchange rates. A common sentiment when reflecting on the volatility of the ARS is “I would rather have a digital asset whose price goes up and down than a currency whose only real trend is down.”

But unfortunately, “stablecoins” like USDT are what’s commonly used. Other decentralized cryptos used are stored on central exchanges mostly out of inconvenience.

Remote work is becoming more popular. By setting up offshore bank accounts, they don’t have to bring funds back to Argentina and avoid the watchful eye of the state. They’ll hold funds in places like PayPal. Many times this is done illegally as well.

Great article. Check it out at FreeThink. In addition, I reached out to multiple Argentinians online, and they also confirmed much of what the article said. For example, one of my buddies said the soccer team now pays the players in USD instead of the ARS.

Source:

https://www.freethink.com/technology/crypto-argentina-black-market-cash

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Listen to our podcast episode about this HERE:

https://www.agoristnexus.com/argentinas-crypto-black-markets-episode-116

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