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Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

timeslive.co.za

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Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#121

Post by lloeki »

solaarphunk wrote: post #28
kown223 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

Z$ record inflation was 79,600,000,000% a month[0] before it disappeared. Bitcoin's short term volatility looks quite manageable in comparison.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe#Inf...

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#122

Post by gowld »

PKop wrote: post #79
gowld wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, so that's maybe OK for moving in/out of a >$1000 position, but horrid for spending as a currency.

That's why you don't spend it. You save it. See Their's Law, good money drives out bad.[0] People will hodl Bitcoin and spend fiat, driving up the price of BTC in terms of fiat until it absorbs some significant portion of global currency value. There are only 21 M coins; a deflationary crypto currency isn't for buying coffee or micro-payments. It is displaying similar qualities to Gold in countries where governments…

How can this be? BTC is deflating far faster than USD is inflating, considering USD purchasing power. So BTC can't be picking up USD's weakness, it must be a speculative bubble.

Were Beanie Babies good money driving out bad? https://qz.com/114753/meet-the-family-who-lost-100000-when-t...

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#123

Post by freeloop3 »

paulmd wrote: post #99
freeloop3 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't confiscate a brain wallet

This $5 wrench says otherwise. https://xkcd.com/538/

Torture only works if you are sure of the existence of such a thing. It's easy to order the police to go from home to home, confiscating valuables. It's a lot harder to know if someone has bitcoin, and if so how much they have. Even if you can get them to admit they have it, and give you access to n wallets, they may always have n+1

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#124

Post by robk »

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #114
robk wrote: post #104

I find it hard to believe ANYONE wants to take the other side of this and sell bitcoin for local currency. In cases like this or Venezuela, even at exorbitant prices I can't see why anyone would want to hold the local currency.

The article says that there is no local currency. Zimbabwe adopted USD and SA rand some years back and the bitcoin exchange sells BTC for USD.

Then where is the inflation? 1 usd = 1 usd

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#125

Post by Kiro »

ryanlol wrote: post #110
Kiro wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

24 hours? I want it to confirm in 1 second for even less fee than that. How else can Bitcoin become a serious mean of payment?

How else can wire transfers become a serious means of payment??

Do you pay online with wire transfer? My vision is a decentralised coin that is as fast as VISA is perceived but a lot cheaper to transact. Obviously that's not the vision of Bitcoin though?

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#126

Post by gowld »

nostrademons wrote: post #60
egeozcan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

...how do you define "seek a job" in a place where the concept of full-time employment is alien? Therein lies the rub. If you dig into the stats, the 10% unemployment rate quoted in official government statistics - and measured accordingly to the methodology economists usually use, excluding people who have "given up on searching for a job - is based on a definition of "job" where they have worked (in cash or in kind…

a more sensible approach is counting how many people maintain a certain standard of living (determined by local or global metrics, whatever you are interested in) without relying on government assistance or charity.

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#127

Post by nrp »

zman0225 wrote: post #120

very small correlation between situ in Zimbabwe and price of bitcoins. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets Either a pump from Korea or China.

Agreed that this seems fishy. Given that Zimbabwe no longer has a local currency, this seems to be USD->BTC on an exchange that happens to be in Zimbabwe. If you have the financial freedom to move your USD, it seems highly unlikely that you'd want to do so into BTC at a price much worse than at other exchanges.

Can anyone familiar with Zimbabwe shed some light on what's happening?

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#128

Post by freeloop3 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #91
freeloop3 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Foreign currency can be confiscated. A brain wallet cannot

A brain wallet can be confiscated by rubber-hose cryptanalysis. It is more resistant, perhaps, to detection than cash on hand in foreign currency (though not necessarily particularly more than a foreign currency account where access information is memorized, depending on the threat profile of concern.)

Torture may be used to find out the user has bitcoin, but you can never be sure you got it all. If they give you access to n wallets, how do you know they don't have n+1?

A foreign currency account is not as easy to setup as a brain wallet.

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#129

Post by aqsheehy »

gowld wrote: post #122
PKop wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why you don't spend it. You save it. See Their's Law, good money drives out bad.[0] People will hodl Bitcoin and spend fiat, driving up the price of BTC in terms of fiat until it absorbs some significant portion of global currency value. There are only 21 M coins; a deflationary crypto currency isn't for buying coffee or micro-payments. It is displaying similar qualities to Gold in countries where governments…

How can this be? BTC is deflating far faster than USD is inflating, considering USD purchasing power. So BTC can't be picking up USD's weakness, it must be a speculative bubble. Were Beanie Babies good money driving out bad? https://qz.com/114753/meet-the-family-who-lost-100000-when-t...

Bitcoin is for the dark net markets; for everything else, there's MasterCard

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#130

Post by ryanlol »

Kiro wrote: post #125
ryanlol wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else can wire transfers become a serious means of payment??

Do you pay online with wire transfer? My vision is a decentralised coin that is as fast as VISA is perceived but a lot cheaper to transact. Obviously that's not the vision of Bitcoin though?

I pay salaries with bitcoin, compared to wire transfers it is just amazing.
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