The Force Behind Bitcoin’s Meteoric Rise: Millions of Asian Investors(wsj.com)
wsj.com
The Force Behind Bitcoin’s Meteoric Rise: Millions of Asian Investors
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-force-behind-bitcoins-meteoric-rise-millions-of-asian-investors-1513074750
8 comments
No no, you guys, this time it's different, get it now before it's too late...Everyone else is getting rich from this, don't miss out.
The underwater part of the Bitcoin iceberg is people all over the world who deal with terrible local financial services and regularly devalued currencies. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are pure magic to them. We are not talking about the extremely poor or the destitute. The big beneficiaries are those who are in the upper middle class, such as small business owners in these countries. They previously had no way to protect themselves from the regular financial disasters and constant local currency devaluation.
This argument is undermined by the volatility of bitcoin.
Have you looked at an Argentina peso chart? Anything is better than that garbage. People who had dollar based accounts in Argentina lost 70% of their net worth overnight in 2002 when the government forcibly converted their accounts to pesos, so that doesn't work either.
Saying “here is an example of a currency that is also volatile” does not make bitcoin any less volatile.
paywall...
does anyone here actually pay for wsj? how much is it?
Interestingly, it also means that they will hold on to it for the long term or until it is regulated closely enough that they can’t hope to convert the coins later -- and there is always the hope form investors that their countries will understand or that they will emigrate. This would make me bullish, in spite of recent seemingly unreasonable price increases.