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Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

timeslive.co.za

21–30 of 168 posts

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#23
post #4

Is this a legitimate news source? I have a difficult time believing this part: > The events unfolded as Zimbabwe is in deep crisis. The economy has halved in size since 2000, an estimated 95% of the workforce is jobless and as many as 3 million Zimbabweans have gone into exile. 95% unemployment?

Fact check on it: https://africacheck.org/reports/is-zimbabwes-unemployment-ra... Basically, it's complicated, and nobody knows what to believe. The 95% figure is taken from the CIA World Factbook, and has been repeated frequently in mainstream media and on Wikipedia. However, depending on who you ask and how you count, it could be as low as 4%. Keep in mind that not everyone in the world takes Western institutions (…

I thought "economic unemployment" is defined by the people who seek a job while not having a current one. People who do not seek a job aren't counted. It's been a very long while since the economy classes though.

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#24
post #20

I feel like there are whales that simply manipulate the price based on news. There's little evidence to suggest bitcoin has any usage in zimbabwe in practical day to day usage. Therelies the problem with bitcoin, why would someone in zimbabwe pay 1 week of their salary to move 3 weeks of pay and still not be sure if the money will still be there tomorrow?

if you didn't dealt with this you can't understand, but simply put, 1 week of pay could be toilet paper next week(s), as it happened in Venezuela.

In my country some years ago, in a time of crisis for example the government locked all foreign currency in banks, and auto exchanged it for the national currency, at a rate set by them, it was robbery basically, prices would jump up like 25% day to day, so the national current was worthless, oh, they did the same with all the private owned gold in banks or so they could grab, sold for national currency, same scenario I think it happened in Basil too, government locking money in banks.

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#25
post #20

I feel like there are whales that simply manipulate the price based on news. There's little evidence to suggest bitcoin has any usage in zimbabwe in practical day to day usage. Therelies the problem with bitcoin, why would someone in zimbabwe pay 1 week of their salary to move 3 weeks of pay and still not be sure if the money will still be there tomorrow?

It doesn't have to have any use in Zimbabwe to be attractive to a subset of Zimbabweans. Trading 1,000,000 USD worth of BTC in a month doesn't suggest any widescale adoption IMO, I do wish Bloomberg had gone a bit further into just how significant this actually is. Dramatic volatility in small, local markets is pretty standard in Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#26
post #5

I'm intrigued by the idea that cryptocurrencies can exist and may help alleviate economics crises, but in a dark plot twist can't governments essentially own the majority of computing power, start their own cryptocurrency, and outlaw all others? What does the world look like when a decentralized concept like this is appropriated and brute forced into a more-or-less centralized concept? (Or perhaps I'm way off track..…

Sure they can try to "outlaw" cryptocurrencies. Or the internet as a whole. Good luck with enforcing it though…

It seems to be working pretty well for China, and certain people within North Korea.

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#27
post #19
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would require the government being able to coordinate controlling; 1. Internet access 2. Sales of computers 3. Imports 4. Citizens not revolting against that (including people using and accepting currency, so buy and sell side) All of which are possible but not trivial. I actually think it becomes orders of magnitude more difficult to do this with a decentralised system like BitCoin than it is with fiat currency…

All you have to do is arrest people converting rebel cryptocurrencies into the one you can use at the grocery store. Since every transfer of legitimate money is now in the blockchain, they'll be able to identify them pretty quickly. Not sure if a government in turmoil could do it, but it's easy for a stable repressive regime. I agree the government doesn't get any benefit from decentralization and would just have a M…

how would a government pay to secure their blockchain? how would they find those dealing everything in bitcoin? One of the reason of URSS going down was the huge administrative costs of spying / investigating, keeping up the oppression on its citizens.

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#28
post #24
post #20

I feel like there are whales that simply manipulate the price based on news. There's little evidence to suggest bitcoin has any usage in zimbabwe in practical day to day usage. Therelies the problem with bitcoin, why would someone in zimbabwe pay 1 week of their salary to move 3 weeks of pay and still not be sure if the money will still be there tomorrow?

if you didn't dealt with this you can't understand, but simply put, 1 week of pay could be toilet paper next week(s), as it happened in Venezuela. In my country some years ago, in a time of crisis for example the government locked all foreign currency in banks, and auto exchanged it for the national currency, at a rate set by them, it was robbery basically, prices would jump up like 25% day to day, so the national cu…

.... but bitcoin frequently jumps 25% a day on NON-domestic news.... how is it a better store of value?
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