Argentina's Central Bank prohibits payment service providers from offering BTC
1277 sats \ 19 comments \ @eduardopro 5 May 2023 bitcoin
Geez, that's extreme.
As you might know, bitcoin (and crypto, but whatever) adoption in Argentina is quite high and there are several million-dollar companies serving that market. You might also know that a year ago the Argentinian government received an FMI loan that came with a clause that said: “To further safeguard financial stability, we are taking important steps to discourage the use of cryptocurrencies with a view to preventing money laundering, informality and disintermediation.”
Well, the time has come to comply. According to official documents presented by analyst Adam DuB the Argentinian government prohibited "payment service providers from offering #bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to their customers." The thread is in Spanish, but hey...
According to Adam DuB the decree will affect giants like MercadoPago, Uála, Modo, Personal Pay, and Nubi. It will also kill the business of lesser-known payment providers like Pomelo, Digipayments, and Koibanx. Here's the full list of affected services and companies:
https://www.bcra.gob.ar/SistemasFinancierosYdePagos/Proveedores-servicios-de-pago-ofrecen-cuentas-de-pago.asp
According to DuB it will affect even more not listed companies, "Will it affect crypto fintechs not mentioned in the listing? Yes, it will probably affect them in several services they provide, because several of the companies in the PSP registry are providers, even though the fintech's name does not appear in the registry."
In a more recent post, DuB goes even further: "bye-bye debit cards, bye-bye personalized CVUs and bye-bye service payments on apps that allow #bitcoin and crypto trading, unless they do something judicially. The Argentine government should have long ago been labeled as a HR violator."
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216 sats \ 3 replies \ @gnilma 5 May 2023
Tyrants will fight and claw and do whatever they can to try to hold onto power; they will do whatever in their power to push away anything that might threaten their power over the people. The thing is, they can control and censor and limit banks, businesses, or corporations; but they cannot control nor censor an idea whose time has come. They cannot prevent people from adopting an idea whose time has come.
Bitcoin is an idea whose time has come; the idea of inviolable property rights, absolute scarcity, complete freedom to transact, fast and secure final value settlement over digital rails. The more governments try to censor and limit bitcoin adoption, the more people will question their motives, and the faster people will adopt bitcoin.
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21 sats \ 2 replies \ @eduardopro OP 5 May 2023
"...they cannot control nor censor an idea whose time has come. They cannot prevent people from adopting an idea whose time has come."
Here, here, my brother or sister. A toast in honor of those beautiful words.
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1 sat \ 1 reply \ @gnilma 5 May 2023
All credit goes to Victor Hugo. I'm just borrowing and paraphrasing his great words.
On résiste à l'invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l'invasion des idées.
One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.
Sauce
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @eduardopro OP 5 May 2023
Cheers to Victor Hugo and you, my friend.
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241 sats \ 3 replies \ @fedelang 5 May 2023
Well.. circular bitcoin adoption needs to start at some point. Paid for dinner yesterday with sats in my favorite bar in Patagonia.
Next they will be coming after P2P, this will be easy to track since banks as usual will be doing whatever the state ask them. So be prepared for tons of "my account got closed".
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @franzap 5 May 2023
How do you find places to pay with LN? or you orange pilled the owner of the bar?
El punto de P2P justamente es que no sea detectable. Por ejemplo una transferencia contra sats por Robosats, no veo cómo podrían hacer la correlación
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @clr 5 May 2023
Supongo que si ven muchas transferencias en tu cuenta bancaria, podrían bloquearte la cuenta y pedirte que justifiques el motivo de esas transferencias.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @franzap 5 May 2023
Por lo que tengo entendido la gente hace transferencias por CBU/CVU para cualquier cosa (ejemplo pagarle al Rappi). Además tu DCA, o más bien "PCA", podría ser semanal o mensual, resultando en sólo un par de transferencias. Dudo de la capacidad intelectual de estos neanderthales para detectarlo pero el poder de bloquear cuentas sí lo tienen
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31 sats \ 4 replies \ @faithandcredit 5 May 2023
If governments knew what was good for them they will realign with the people, serve and protect (their freedoms) instead of aggresively trying to control them and what not. I mean the government needs to know that its not particularly smarter than anyone else. This is the biggest problem we face today imo. People think government is some of sort wiser and more moral and just institution than any other but there is no evidence of this.
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111 sats \ 2 replies \ @SpaceHodler 5 May 2023
But that's not good for them. Fucking people over and stealing their time and energy is good for them, because they can they enjoy their lives, spend our money on drugs and hookers etc. But not for us and it is our duty to kill it.
I don't know anyone who thinks government is a wiser, moral and just institution. Everyone I know thinks government is a thug.
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @om 5 May 2023
Everyone I know thinks government is a thug.
Everyone I know IRL thinks that gov is a thug only because there are too many representatives of other parties in it, and people just need to vote harder for the good party (whichever it is) and then there will be no corruption whatsoever and everybody will live happily ever after.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @SpaceHodler 5 May 2023
A good party is a dead party. Government and corruption are synonyms.
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4 sats \ 0 replies \ @eduardopro OP 5 May 2023
I agree with everything you said.
In this case, I think the caveat is the deal the Argentinian government made with the IMF.
LOL, I just realized that I wrote *FMI instead of IMF in the article (In Spanish it's Fondo Monetario Internacional AKA FMI)
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31 sats \ 2 replies \ @om 5 May 2023
So with a view to prevent informality and disintermediation the gov bans formal intermediaries from serving their customers, leaving the customers with the options of using either informal intermediaries (cuevas) or P2P. Galaxy brain level, mission failed successfully.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @eduardopro OP 5 May 2023
Oh, you're absolutely right. This might kill some companies and scare others, but grassroots adoption will keep advancing. With this level of inflation, there's no other choice.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @franzap 5 May 2023
Exactly this. Bullish
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @franzap 5 May 2023
Good news either way
If Milei comes to power and shuts down the BCRA these idiotic rules will go away with it.
If not, nokyc P2P trade will increase which is exactly what we want
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @sudonaka 5 May 2023
HFSP hope that fifa trophy was worth it LUL
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @joda 5 May 2023
P2P... Who's going to sell their Bitcoin for worthless pesos? At what, 100 percent markup?
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