It is not news that Argentina is going through difficult times. Economic turmoil has become an almost normal variable for the country, with a history of cyclical crises that seem to repeat themselves over and over again. Argentines know that it is a devaluation and loss of value of the Argentine Peso against the US Dollar. But little by little, more and more people are finding another alternative to the Argentine Peso. And then the question arises: What advantages does Bitcoin have over the Argentine Peso?
We could start by talking about the properties of money: scarcity, durability, divisibility, fungibility, portability, recognizability. But beyond these characteristics that are studied in the academic cloisters, the strengths of Bitcoin demonstrate that its potential is well above the fiat currency of. So, we will analyze here, some properties of Bitcoin, which make it more attractive than Argentine fiat money.
Security: Bitcoin is more than a currency. It could be said that it is a whole monetary system. But, unlike fiat money, security is based on cryptography, and the blockchain technology that supports it. It has its own characteristics of public key and private key encryption. Being a decentralized system it is more resistant to computer attacks.
Decentralization: Bitcoin is not a currency issued by any central institution that responds to personal, governmental or corporate interests.
Limited quantity: How many times have economists and journalists been heard in Argentina talking about the problem of monetary issuance? And what is worse, some continue to argue that issuing more Argentine pesos could be a solution. We can see that with the Argentine Peso there is then an unlimited amount, which can mean high inflation and loss of value. But, in the case of Bitcoin, the story is different, since its quantity is limited to 21 million, the price of Bitcoin will always tend to go up as its demand increases, since the supply of quantity of coins will always be the same.
Confidence:People who do not know Bitcoin often ask what it is backed by, as if the Argentine Peso had some kind of support. And this is where you can see a kind of paradox. The trust of Bitcoin exists because it is not necessary to trust any government, body or institution that is behind it. The Bitcoin network has a distributed book architecture that allows users not to depend on third parties to take care of their money. Here is a point to keep in mind. In the traditional system, banking institutions keep citizens' money with the promise that it will be returned to them when they have it. But, how many times has this been included in Argentina? It is enough to remember the times of confiscation of deposits or of "corralito". Bitcoin shows a clear advantage here,
Trajectory: The longer a good is perceived as valuable by society, the greater its attractiveness as a safeguard of value. It could be said that Bitcoin does not yet have an important trajectory, but if we think that it is a technology that was born eleven years ago, we can no longer say that it is a new technology. And the number of users continues to rise. The trajectory is becoming more and more serious. Bitcoin is backed by a long and established history, and it is hardly displaced by a new one.
Impossibility of counterfeiting: Any conventional fiat currency in the world (here we can include the dollar, euro, peso, etc.) can be counterfeited, with the risks that this implies for its holder. Bitcoin, on the other hand, cannot be counterfeited, which places it in a privileged position compared to other forms of money.
Resistance to censorship: This characteristic is fundamental, and it is possibly one of the best that comes to be understood by Argentines. It is a fortress that puts Bitcoin safe in matters that have to do with mass surveillance and also with arbitrary, political or interested decisions. Resistance to censorship implies how difficult it is for an external organization such as a government or a company to prevent the owner of Bitcoin from being able to use it freely. It also implies that no government or company can change the rules of the game of the system. Something that is common in the Argentine monetary system.