{ "episodeId": "SLP498", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "bowtiedmara": { "name": "BowTiedMara", "role": "guest", "tag": "BOWTIEDMARA" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:09", "start": 8.53, "text": "Hi, you're listening to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics brought to you by swan dot com. Today my guest is BowTiedMara. He is in Argentina and we talk a bit about geo arbitrage, FX in Argentina, Bitcoin use and where things are going with CBDCs. Now, before we begin, the team at swan dot com is all Organizing Pacific Bitcoin Festival, it's coming back this year. It's going to be on in LA in October on the 5th and 6th. The feedback from Pacific Bitcoin last year was fantastic. There is an awesome lineup of speakers, people who have already been announced, such as Jimmy Song, Elise Kaline, Pierre Rochard, Lynn Alden, Greg Foss, Preston Pish, Corey Klipstein, and so many more. And of course, I'll be there, and I'm looking forward to seeing you all there. There will be multiple stages. This is a fantastic opportunity Bitcoiners, and if you have family or friends, this is the perfect opportunity to bring them along. This is a great chance for them to see that Bitcoin is real, that there's a real movement here. It's not just a bunch of internet nerds, there's a real movement. And as you know, to expect from the swan dot com team, Pacific Bitcoin will be Bitcoin only. It's going to be an awesome celebration of Bitcoin. So come along, get the tickets over at pacificbitcoin dot com and use code livera for a discount. And now onto the episode with Mara. Mara, welcome to the show. Hi, Stefan, nice to be here. Yeah, so Mara, I've been following some of your work in terms of your writing, as well as some of your Twitter commentary, and I thought it would be interesting to talk. I know you have a bit of a focus around geo-arbitrage, mobility, dealing with currency issues, obviously, as you, you've, you've said that you're in Argentina, and I think that'll be interesting for some listeners to talk about how that's working with, obviously, with the local currency, with With Bitcoin and all of these things all together. so do you wanna just give us a little bit of a background on yourself and what your focus is?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "02:08", "start": 128.13, "text": "yeah, so, I'm originally from the Netherlands, and I moved here in, in two thousand five, to Argentina, and, yeah, I-- When I started out here, I, I really tried to, you know, be the, the normal immigrant in terms of, you know, trying to, set up a local business, hire people, et c of course, I was, you know, in a very Dutch kind of mindset where I thought like, okay, this is gonna work this way, but then after a few years of living here, I actually, you know, found out that it, that wasn't gonna work just because of the, currency situation. so after a few years, I, switched the billing completely to the US. I made a lot of business trips, a lot of referral business, et cetera. And, now I just, only, work with, with the US and maybe one or two European clients. But, yeah, that way, you know, you're able to, live a lot better here, on a dollar standard, so to say, versus, you know, relying on the local economy." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:12", "start": 192.42, "text": "Yeah. And a-as I read from some of your articles, you also talk a little bit about Bitcoin, also, correct?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "03:18", "start": 197.92, "text": "Yeah, yeah, that's correct. Yeah, I've, Seventeen, and, you know, I, I started out with, the whole crypto kind of, universe with a lot of different coins, et cetera, but, after a while, sort of distilled, and I'm, I'm kind of like a big, Bitcoin maxi in a way. I also see some value in, in Monero, just as, you know, a digital form of cash, maybe, because it's so much easier to, to have privacy on, on that chain, but not really as a store of value compared to" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "03:54", "start": 234.28, "text": "Maxi at this point." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:56", "start": 236.15, "text": "Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, certainly I, I take a Bitcoin only focus, and obviously my show is Bitcoin focused. but let's talk a little bit about, I guess, broad, broader, where things are going. I think even your, the title of your blog is actually also about geo-arbitrage and mobility, but you've also been writing about this concept of cohesive immobility. So do you wanna just expand a little bit, what are your views on what's coming there?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "04:21", "start": 260.89, "text": "so yeah, that, that's a, an article that I wrote a few weeks ago, and basically my-- the idea of coercive, mobility is that, the state, basically comes into communities, and always, jails or locks up the same people, and, and that's like they're, they're coerced to get out of that community, and that's basically an ongoing process. And I inverted that, theory or that idea to coercive immobility, because what we're seeing nowadays, And it started with COVID and maybe even before that, is that the states are, are trying to make it more and more difficult for people to travel. you can see this in, in many multiple, layers. Like for example, talking about the climate, people shouldn't take planes that much. Like, for example, when I talk to, friends in, in, in Holland, it's, it's really crazy that some of them actually canceled their holiday trips just to, you know, not have as much, emissions by taking a plane. So that- I mean, it's really, yeah, the, the brainwashing is really up to that level already, and, I think that will only intensify, and the climate is like a perfect excuse, to install all kinds of, measures and, Ways in which, you know, a central bank can, can limit your spending or basically determine what you can spend your money on, which is something that China is, the pioneer in, and, you know, I think in Europe especially, China is seen as like this, this great, technocracy that, everyone should follow, like the big example. so I'm pretty sure that, you know, with the whole, vaccine passport idea combined with the CBDC, it will be It'll be very easy in the, upcoming future just to limit your movements basically, because, in a cashless society, what's gonna happen is, you know, everything is traceable, where you spend your money on. there's no, anonymity anymore, which is so nice of cash, even though, you know, it might not be great store of value, it still gives you privacy. So they can't really see, authorities can't see what you spend your money on. Now with the CBDC, that's- That's completely different, and, you know, basically you can get caps on, CO2, products, et cetera. So, oh, you're already at your CO2 limit, and Mastercard is running, trials with this. other, credit card providers also offer that. We have the whole ESG narrative, and I think that's only gonna, gonna increase. And, and the worst thing is, like, I think, really think, I don't think there's some kind of conspiracy around this. I really think the This is a good thing for the environment. Everybody's really worried about it, and, that's just a, a great way to install more control over the, the population, i-in that sense." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:17", "start": 436.74, "text": "Sadly, I think, and I've spoken about this publicly before, and I think maybe-- Well, I'm curious to hear what you think, but my view on this is that unfortunately, most people, they just wanna fit in with the tribe, right? They don't care, even if it's wrong, they would rather be with the tribe than be on their own and correct. And sadly, what does that mean? It means a lot of people just go with the narrative, whether that's COVID, whether it's climate hysteria, whether it's, you know, you name it, they'll just go Unfortunately, there will be a lot of people who are very much pro whatever the propaganda is put in front of them. If the narrative is, \"Oh, be very afraid, you need to lower your emissions, you need to eat less meat or whatever,\" you know, \"Don't eat healthy food, you know, be a vegan, eat the bugs, whatever,\" you know, a lot of people will just go with that narrative. But then the question is, for those people who do, you know, whether they are libertarians by principle or whether they just, you know, they're a freedom-loving person" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:12", "start": 492.06, "text": "I think what are the ways that those people will find a, a pathway forward? And I think part of that is what many people in this sort of Bitcoin and libertarian and sort of expat communities are, I guess, focused on. I'm curious if you have any reflections on that idea." }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "08:30", "start": 509.71, "text": "yeah, yeah, definitely, and that, that's also where, where we come back to, to Bitcoin, because basically that's the only way, where you can, you know, send or receive, money without anybody interfering with it, and that's so, so powerful about, the whole, network, and because it's so, decentralized, it's gonna be very hard for a state actor to, do something about that, Which you, you know, that's a, a factor that you don't have with all the other coins that have founders, pre-mines, et cetera. They're just a lot easier to coerce, and I think that is gonna be a, a very important, property of, well, I, I don't wanna call it, you know, black market money because then it, it already, ties a sort of i- illegality to it, but I do think that's where we're going if cash is, prohibited, at a certain point, or Everybody wants to use digital payments, you know, no matter what it is, because frankly, if, if you go to Northern Europe, there's already a lot of stores where you can't even pay in cash, and people have less and less cash on them, and oh, it's so convenient to pay everything with your credit card or your, debit card, and, and of course, that's true, but it comes with a caveat that, you know, you do lose control over your privacy and your spending, which makes it really easy, for the ECB to afterwards a digital euro and, just make sure that, you're spending your money on the right things, that, you know, they think you should spend them on and not something else." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:05", "start": 604.54, "text": "And, yeah, I, I agree. I think we should try to fight the war on cash I, you know, for me personally, I try to earn and spend Bitcoin and Lightning, directly. But if I can't use that, then my next priority, if I can, is physical cash. And only after that's not possible, that's where I'll look at, you know, digital fiat, you know, ca-cards and so on. So, but I, I think of it like we can stave off that CBDC future if more of us use cash, right? Because in some sense, we're keeping it alive, right? But I'm curious, your idea there And cash usage." }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "10:42", "start": 642.35, "text": "Yeah, so, so my perception of cash has changed dramatically since moving here because before I was kind of like in the, in the mold of, you know, everything how convenience, et cetera, but after, living here for so long, it's, it's really clear that, you know, cash does have, a very important use case, and basically I think about forty or fifty percent of the whole Argentine economy functions on cash or at least, you know, in the, sort of gray sector where a lot of people, for example, will receive, a certain salary, and that's why the stats you, you see, in terms of, you know, graphs, et cetera, are always like a bit off because everybody receives a certain salary on paper, and that's what they use in those stats. But then on the side, they will usually, you know, receive another twenty-five percent or fifty percent, just, under the table, on top of that salary. And that's just so, the companies don't have to pay that much tax because taxes here are really insane. So everybody tries to, avoid taxes as much as possible. Of course, that's not legal, but, you know, that is what happens in" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:48", "start": 707.95, "text": "practice. Yeah. And I mean, Tips, and workers obviously love receiving tips in cash, because, well, whether they disclose that or not is, up to them, and I, I presume a lot of those types of workers aren't, aren't declaring those on their, government income taxes. So I guess cash is another thing that sort of keeps that alive. And so in terms of where things are going, you've also commented on this idea that when these CBDC environments are coming, it's, it'll matter what environment you're in In, because if you're in, let's say, a very high compliance environment like the US or the EU compared to other environments, it might be a different story. So can you explain your views on that or maybe elaborate a bit there?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "12:34", "start": 753.78, "text": "Yeah, so, technically what, Argentina, for example, has created and, and it lives a little bit in all of the La-Latin American countries, the informality, but especially here since there are so many tariffs, taxes and rules and regulations for every rule that's, that's implemented Or, you know, thrown upon the population by the politicians, there's somebody who finds a way around it. And basically the whole, game here in society is, trying to game the system as much as possible because a lot of people aren't just not, in agreement with, you know, what those funds are used for, et cetera, and they really try to, to get around it as much as possible. And, you know, with success. So every single time there's a- There's a new rate, for example, because we have, I think, right now about twenty dollar rates, it's really, insane. every single time there's a, there's a new rate. So for example, now they, made a more favorable rate for, agro exports just, so those agro producers start to, liquidate their, their crops, which is happening now, but because they were waiting for something like that. So they were just basically, okay, you're gonna get, so because Argentina has really high tariffs, on, on those exports, so it's a lot of cash coming in for the, central bank coffers as well. that if you don't give us a, a better ter- a better exchange rate, we're just not gonna liquidate those crops and we're just gonna sit on them. So, they finally did that and now, there was, you know, record exports after that. so, there's always like this, this game of, of cat and The government, and consumers, and basically for every rule, there's an exception or a way to, to get around it. And, and that creativity really, you know, gave me another pr- perspective on what government and the nation state actually means. because, you know, from the outside, if you look from the outside into Argentina, you know, it's tax hell, it's really bad, but when you're actually in Argentina, you can see that nobody, nobody gives a fuck. Right. And I think that's an interesting" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "14:54", "start": 894.33, "text": "point because certainly there are places where, I think that's a-- there are other countries that have a similar thing like that, that from the outside it can look like there's all these rules, but actually on the ground, it's not really enforced or certain elements are just not acting like that. And so in some sense, this top-down bureaucracy view, they might have this idea about certain rules, laws, let-regulations, et cetera, that they are pushing out into the world, but actually on the ground, very few people are obeying that. Maybe that's just not how it is in practice. So, while we-- before we get further into the dollar rates and all this, I'm curious, could you just explain for us a little bit about why Argentina? Like, why, why are you in Argentina as opposed to some other place or a low-tax place or even just back in the EU? What was it, what, what appealed to you about Argentina?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "15:42", "start": 941.77, "text": "so yeah, my, my major in, is in Spanish literature, so I was always like attracted to, to Spanish, to language, and So after I finished, I just, started traveling around. I was also doing a, Portuguese course, on the side. That's where I met my, my first wife. She was studying in, Buenos Aires. She is actually Brazilian, but she was studying here in Argentina, because a lot of Brazilians study here because everything is free. so public universities are free even if you're, foreigner. same with healthcare, it doesn't matter. And that's also, I mean, one of the reasons why Argentina has, issues paying the bills, because, you know, if everything is free, somebody's paying for that eventually, and, that money has to come from somewhere. So you can see here in, in certain universities, this like sixty percent is, is Brazilian, because in Brazil there's a, a quota, for example, for, something like medicine, and here there's not, and everybody can just go in, and, in Brazil they would be forced to, if they're not, if they don't fit in the quota, they And, pay tuition, but here, you know, they can, come here, do the medicine, and then they leave. So also in terms of value for Argentina, they're basically just educating a lot of people here and sending them off a-right after. So there's not a lot of value that sticks in Argentina in that sense. so yeah, then I moved, here, right after I finished, studying in the Netherlands, and then, that was around two-two thousand four, two-thous- 2005. And, after a while, we separated, and I just stayed here, you know, trying to, to make a living locally, and then afterwards, switching to something else. So I came here basically with literature, which doesn't really pay the bills. I tried to, you know, get a position here at the university, but I, you know, I saw the salaries and stuff, and I thought, \"Well, I'm not gonna survive here if I, I want to do this.\" So eventually, I completely shifted and started learning, programming and digital marketing, and I got a job in that, worked for a while for a company, and then afterwards, I decided to, to create my own company, and, I've been doing that ever since. So, at first here just locally, and then afterwards, I just, focused on, the international market and mainly the US." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:13", "start": 1093.39, "text": "Yeah, right. And I think that's a common theme that we see with Argentina is, people doing geo-arbitrage, this idea of earning from wealthier countries from customers who pay them in the wealthier countries but living in countries where, let's say, the cost of living is a bit cheaper. So I guess you're interested in that and you're focused on that case." }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "18:35", "start": 1114.88, "text": "Yeah, so for me, it was kind of a natural, a natural way of, of going around things because I was actually forced to do that, otherwise I would have probably moved back to Europe, you know, or maybe try the US because, it's really, It'd be hard to live on a peso standard here, plus there's, you know, a plethora of other, difficulties that you come into touch with if you start a local company, hire local people. So one thing that happened is, you know, we had employees here, and here, there's really like a suing culture. So every single time you fire an employee, they will basically start a lawsuit and bleed you dry, and the justice system is all geared towards the employee, they're always right. So it doesn't really matter what you do, but you're gonna have to pay something. And after a while, that was just like, you know, we had to leave the office, we had to, we basically lost most of the company savings. And, and, you know, then I sat down and had a real hard thinking, it's like, yeah, this isn't gonna work here locally. So, you know, then I just set up an international company and, and started working from abroad." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:41", "start": 1180.51, "text": "So in a way, it reminds me of this idea that you can pick and choose from the different Going to one place and doing everything there, that you could be, having staff that you're paying others overseas and not necessarily having to deal with Argentinian-- well, at-- not having to deal with Argentinian labor laws as much, right?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "20:04", "start": 1203.8, "text": "Yeah, exactly. So, that-- and that has become more and more, easy, and I, I think that's also one of the, the main theses in, in the Sovereign Individual, that book, for example, is, that you can really pick and choose your jurisdictions, and nation states to be able to, you know, tax you, control you, et cetera. And, and the counterpoint to that is, that's why I also think that they will, start to push harder with CBDCs, with movement control, et cetera. So it's sort of like a two-way system that is working against each other, because at this point, I think we're at the, the peak of how easy it is, because for example, I, I have, a, a US client, and they work with All based here in Argentina, they don't have a local company and they do everything through Deal. Now, and, they're contractors on Deal, so they, need to provide, sort of the their tax, IDs, et cetera, locally, to Deal, and the rest of the taxes and all that, those, labor related issues is, is on them. I, I see maybe in the future that, things like that are gonna be more complicated, but right now it's very easy to do such, things, and as a company, internationally, you don't have to worry about any of those lo-local, laws, et cetera. So that's, really positive, but, you know, whenever I see, big supranational organizations talking about, You know, worldwide taxation, et cetera, I, I sort of see that, you know, they wanna do something about it, and, one of the things that I also focus on a lot is, investment migration with my company, and, basically what we're seeing there is that they're trying, especially the EU, is really cracking down on citizenship by investment programs, even if they're not within the EU. So lately, they've been putting pressure on Caribbean, islands, that offer CBDCs, basically saying, \"If you don't up the price, we're gonna take away your Schengen visa free access, et cetera.\" And Saint Kitts already, succumbed to that, and they basically said, \"Okay, we're All the price, to maintain that, Schengen access, and the EU is doing that, same thing within Europe, really trying to get rid of all the golden visa programs, while at the same time, you know, they, allow hordes of, illegal, immigrants basically to come in. So it's, it's kind of a weird, policy, but, that's, that's what I see, like, you know, they're trying to make it, harder for capital to People, and, and that's, I think a global phenomenon. I think that, that will only increase." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:52", "start": 1372.08, "text": "I see. And I, I think I agree. That's definitely the direction we see some of these large, you know, EU-style, government organizations going. But on the counter side, there are still other countries who are competing for people. And so I think it's an interesting dynamic to see that because in some ways, you have some countries who are trying to compete and trying to attract people there, and then- On the other hand, you have, let's say, the EU trying to make it hard for people to do that. So do you just see, more and more countries trying to compete, or do you see more companies or countries rather just going, \"Oh, okay, we'll go with the global minimum tax, or we'll go with, et cetera, whatever bureaucracy you want, EU\"?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "23:36", "start": 1416.05, "text": "so yeah, I think there, there's a divide there because what you basically see in, in South America is that, they will me- remain neutral, for example, in a, conflict that we have right now, with, Russia and Ukraine. Brazil, Argentina, like most countries here, they're sort of like, okay, it's not our problem. you guys, fight it out, and we're not gonna take a stance on this because, you know, it's, it's not our issue," }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "24:05", "start": 1445.09, "text": "Still has visa free access for Russians, so does Brazil, and of course they, they have, birthright citizenship here. so a lot of, Russian, migration, you know, upper middle class, middle class, have come here, with, you know, pregnancies and, just, started to have kids in Argentina. the estimates are that it's about fifteen thousand so far, that, that have done this, and about half of the, those people People actually stay in Argentina because once you have, a child here, the child is automatically, Argentine, and then after one year more or less, the parents can also get citizenship. so of course, you know, if you're on a Russian passport, or Belarus, for that matter, 'cause they also have visa-free, access still, it's very compelling because then afterwards you can actually use that, those Argentine passports to travel around, and, Argentina has the- The best, passport in terms of visa-free access, of South America, the only one that, you know, could potentially be better is, is Chile because they have, ESTA visas for the US, but they don't actually have more, visa-free countries. That's, Argentina's number one there. So yeah, having that versus a Russian or a Belarusian passport is of course, phenomenal. so that's happening a lot and, and Argentina's not trying to stop that either, because- Because, in terms of, of freedom of entry, freedom of living in Argentina, the constitution is really phenomenal, in my opinion. once you are on Argentine soil, even if you're a tourist, you're considered an inhabitant, and the inhabitant has the same, rights as a citizen or resident, doesn't matter. So once you're on the soil, you basically, get the same rights. That's also why it's so hard for them to, To charge, in, public, hospitals or public universities, for foreigners because basically they can't do that because that would create, a distinction which doesn't exist in the constitution." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:18", "start": 1578.15, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. CoinKite dot com is the creator of my favorite Bitcoin hardware device, the Coldcard, and this is an ultra secure device that you can use to generate your Bitcoin private keys and write down your twelve or twenty-four words. And of course, there is a pre and post pin, so keep that in mind when you're writing things down. And you can use this device without even plugging it into a computer, which is a fantastic improvement in terms of giving yourself that additional peace of mind because with Bitcoin Bitcoin, you need to keep your private keys secret, and the features and the tools that the cold card gives you help you do this. Over at CoinKite, you can find a range of other devices, and of course, you can pre-order the new device which is coming, it's called the Q1. So to find all of that, go to CoinKite dot com and get a discount on your cold cards using code Livera. Mempool dot space is the leading Bitcoin and blockchain visualizer. You can do all kinds of things there, whether that's looking at Bitcoin on chain, you can Target the fee for your transaction, and you can even use the Lightning Explorer to explore things like which Lightning nodes are big or well-connected. They've even got a mining dashboard, so there's all kinds of statistics and things that you can find over at mempool.space. And don't forget, it's open source, so if you don't wanna trust somebody else, you can host it yourself and run it on your own. They've got new features coming, so keep an eye out on the website and on the social media channels over at mempool.space. And now back to- The show. Yeah, that's an interesting point. I, I wasn't aware of that. I am aware though that the Argentinian citizenship cannot be renounced though. That's an interesting one, isn't it? So what do you, what do you think about that?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "27:58", "start": 1677.7, "text": "Yeah, I, I, that's always one of the, things that, that, Twitter brings, brings up a lot, like all the passport bros on Twitter, is always like, \"Yeah, but you can't renounce the passport, man.\" And it's like, \"Yeah, So if you have one of those two passports, you're gonna be taxed worldwide no matter where you live, and of course, you can renounce those, and you can't renounce the Argentine passport. But at the same time, how many Eritreans are paying that tax? Like, and that's the, the question you need to ask with Argentina, is like, if they would ever implement something like that, nobody's gonna pay taxes. Like, seriously, all the Argentines just be, \"Yeah, okay, nice story, bro.\" It's like, 'cause in the country, if, with actual residents, you know, a lot of things they're just going around it, and especially if, if they're living in another country and it's just gonna be, oh, and I can't renounce, okay, well, I'm not gonna pay tax either. So I don't think that's that much of an issue, to be honest, because I also think like if they would ever do citizenship based taxation, then that they would have to adjust that law that you would actually be able to renounce, 'cause it would Value forever. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:19", "start": 1758.85, "text": "And I mean, as I'm sure you're familiar with the sovereign individual, they, they might well look for ways to try to, let's say, trap people into their tax net or into their, you know, to stop people from leaving, you know, that, like we've seen that historically, that, that, that's happened. So I guess maybe that's where some of the concern is coming from. But, I mean, certainly I agree with you that, While the stated law written on paper might be one thing, what happens in practice is another, and that in that scenario, well, if you're, if you have an Argentinian passport, and you're overseas working somewhere else, well, what are the-- what's the possibility that the Argentinian government would go after you there? It's kind of unlikely, right?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "29:57", "start": 1796.82, "text": "Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, the enforcement is already so hard, locally, just in the country, you know, it's, it's almost-- well, I wouldn't say Work very well compared to, you know, real failed states, but like there's no real enforcement from the state, and it's really weird that, you know, in a country that has so many rules and regulations on paper, and that's why in terms of economic freedom, it's always like in the, you know, the bottom part, compared to Europe or the US. I've never felt more free in terms of not having the state breathe down my neck here versus Europe, for example. In Europe, I was constantly aware, of, you know, that, that state Control, be with cameras or, you know, what everything is being tracked all the time. And of course, yeah, you know, I'm, I wasn't doing anything illegal, so in that sense, like, I, I could use the excuse, yeah, but, you know, I'm not doing anything illegal, so I don't care. But I did care because I just don't like that, you know? I just want, to live my life without, you know, state breathing down my neck all the time. And that's basically something With not a lot of people, and, you know, you're left to your own devices, go do whatever and see how, how you survive. And I, that's something that I really like about Argentina." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:16", "start": 1876.29, "text": "Excellent. And I guess w- on the topic of survival in Argentina, can you share any insight for people on, let's say, security in Argentina, like crime rates and things like this? Is that a problem for people, like petty crime, or is that, like, presumably, obviously, you, you find it acceptable?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "31:33", "start": 1892.92, "text": "Yeah, so, that's always," }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "31:39", "start": 1898.88, "text": "come up with to not travel to Argentina, for example, or South America for that matter, because the crime rates in, South America are higher than, you know, most countries in Asia, for example. But at the same time, in Argentina, crime rates are, are very low, compared to other countries in the region. you know, it's not like in Brazil where, you know, people will hold you up with, maybe a gun or something and, and try to rob you. There is a lot of petty crime here in terms of, you know, snatching your phone or, if you, if you're not paying attention, maybe, snatching a wallet, but it's, it's the same thing in any big city. in that sense, it's, it's not that different. If you just pay attention and you're not flashing around your wealth or your latest iPhone, then, there shouldn't be an issue at all. I have, you know, not on board, but I've, I've never had any issues here you're not gonna have, many problems with, you know, holdups or robberies and, and that kind of stuff. That, that happens on the peripheries, like in the more, you know, working class neighborhoods, so that's the stuff that you see on the news, and that's why most Argentines, they have this, this feeling that, you know, oh, the country's so unsafe and insecure, because that's the thing that is portrayed on news and social media like all day. If one thing happens, you will see All day, and just that one thing, so that already indicates to me, you know, that it's, it's not really that much of an issue, because it's always like, you know, and it can be a really small case that, you know, in the US would never get as much attention, for example, and, and here it's like, oh, you know, and everybody's talking about it, and, it's the only thing they, they talk about for a day. and in the interior, it's even less" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "33:38", "start": 2017.58, "text": "Et cetera, it's, it's really super chill. so, I've also lived in Brazil for a while, and, you know, Brazil is definitely a different animal in that, in that sense. I lived in Sao Paulo, where, you know, if you would just, not pay attention and, go from one really classy neighborhood and just walk down, the wrong corner, it was just like, oh, all of a sudden I'm in like a, a semi-favela with junkies, fighting over the To run now. Yeah. That, that happened a couple of times, and, you know, that kind of, situation doesn't happen here at all. Like, there are some, you know, mini, mini slums, here and there, but, you know, normally you don't come there, especially not if you're a tourist, so you won't really notice, anything of that nature. Right." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:31", "start": 2071.48, "text": "Okay. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about the US dollar, the Argentine peso, Bitcoin as you were saying, there are multiple rates for the Argentinean peso, and so the typical thing I've heard, like in, not just Argentina, but in other countries in general, is that there's often a government rate, but that rate's not realistic, and actually the real true rate is, you know, is worse than that or is, you know, higher than that, but the government doesn't wanna make it look bad, so they'll have a set rate at a particular level. So can you explain a little bit about how that's working in Argentina?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "35:06", "start": 2105.98, "text": "yeah, Bank, they basically set a fictitious rate that, you know, nobody, follows because, there's caps on buying dollars. So as soon as they installed those, caps with a limit of two hundred dollars a month that, you know, you can buy at that rate, the parallel market emerged and, basically that's the blue rate, which is double the official rate, because the demand for dollars is just so high. So everybody, Just, buys dollars on that secondary market, which is, you know, technically illegal, but, nobody does anything about it. And the official rate is used for some importers and, and other services, but because dollars are so scarce, scarce right now, like seriously, the, liquid reserves are minus, I think, fourteen billion dollars right now. It takes a long time even for imports to clear now. So they, have a sixty-day window, for the government to say, \"Okay,\" Okay, you can get dollars at that price. At, while at the same time, you know, for politicians and their families, they can buy dollars at that price without any issues. that's also in the small print of, of the covenant. So we're, we're seeing the cantaloupe system like in real time here in Argentina, where they, they get, you know, anything that's, that's coming from the printer, they get it the quickest, they get access to dollars, they know when a devaluation is gonna happen, and sometimes it With, you know, bond purchases and selling, directly from the government, in volume, that, you know, oh, there's gonna be devaluation or, you know, right? Sort of like, you can, you can see it on the graphs, like, this is Yeah, exactly. this is not normal behavior." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:51", "start": 2210.95, "text": "Yeah. One quick question on this. So on this, official government rate, if you, let's, let's say a foreigner comes to the country and they've got their debit card or credit card and they tap and pay, are they getting the official government rate there or they, you know, what rate is being used at that point? It's not the mid-market rate?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "37:07", "start": 2227.1, "text": "so yeah, at, I think, from last year onwards or starting this year, they changed that rate because basically they Because all the, tourists that came here, were just gonna swap on the, black market, to get a better rate, whereas if they would pay with their credit card, it would be twice as expensive because they were paying the official rate. so they changed that and they now apply a, which, which is called the map, rate, which is just like a ten percent below the blue rate. So you're, you're getting a lot, a lot better rate. It's still not, exactly the blue rate, but it's Huge amounts of cash with you all the time, then that's a good option. I, I would say, you know, it's still worth the, exchanging on the black market just because a lot of businesses don't accept credit cards, or they will give a cash discount, et cetera. So it's still worth it to, at least when you visit, you know, bring a decent amount of dollars with you to exchange, on the, on the mar-black market. one thing that you do have to keep in," }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "38:19", "start": 2298.51, "text": "As crisp as possible. it's called the Blu-ray because of the blue stripes in those new, hundred-dollar bills. so, yes, so, so that, that's why it's called the Blu-ray. And if you have, what's called the small heads, one hundred-dollar bills, with the smaller, Benjamins, those are, worth, a five percent less on the market. So, nobody wants them because apparently they're more easily forgivable, et cetera. So, They get a discount and, frankly nowadays nobody wants to touch those. So it's nice when I go to the US, I just tell my cuaiva, \"Hey, give me all the small heads and, at a discount,\" and then I, I spend them in the US because there nobody cares." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:00", "start": 2340.22, "text": "Right. So you get a little arbitrage there as well. Okay, interesting." }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "39:03", "start": 2343.38, "text": "Exactly." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:04", "start": 2343.94, "text": "So do you wanna tell us a little bit about how this works in terms of people using these markets? And of, of course, if, you know, Bitcoin and maybe some of" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "39:18", "start": 2358.13, "text": "So, there's, most Cuevas, which is basically the money exchanges, on the black market, what they will do is, they will exchange cash, dollars for pesos at that black market rate or vice versa. They also, if you want to get money into the country, let's say I want five thousand dollars, bringing that to Argentina from an, an account offshore, of course, you're not gonna send that through the banking system because of all the- Issues with holdings, et cetera. so what they will do is they'll say, \"Okay, you need five thousand dollars here, I will match you with a local, that wants five thousand dollars offshore, you transfer it to that account and, you get the dollars here minus four percent, which is their fee, and you can, have that either in cash, dollars or cash pesos. And of course, you're not gonna say pesos, you just...\" Swap, dollars over time to pesos as you need them, just because they depreciate so quickly. So, that is one way through the traditional banking system which is kind of like a triangle, and then there's some, younger cuevas or, you know, with younger people, more millennials that are also familiar with crypto. the most traditional, cuevas don't handle crypto or Bitcoin, and there, I've swapped a couple times with Bitcoin. The problem with that is that there's, because of the volatility and the s-- and the settlement times, if you don't do it through Lightning, and most of these go really on chain, so it takes a while Well, for it to clear, the price can, you know, fluctuate, so most cuyas they will rather prefer, a stable coin, just because of that, because otherwise, you know, you, you agree to a price and then it's harder to, stick to that price because they might lose out or you might lose out if you use Bitcoin. so most of those, transactions are used, with USDT, and then funnily enough, and, and I love this because- Because, you know, everything is always about, yeah, decentralization, et cetera, and here just everybody uses USDT from exchange to exchange over the TRON network, which is the only use case for TRON in this world is because it's cheaper transaction fees. So that's the only thing that counts." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:42", "start": 2502.15, "text": "Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, decentralization just became a theater, and it's just kind of like regulatory arbitrage. I mean, they might as well not be using a blockchain at that point, right? It may just literally be a spreadsheet on Excel somewhere. but because it's a block, well, it's a blockchain, and because, you know, I guess that's, that's what people believe, right? And they, and if that's what allows the, this kind of fiction to proceed, then that's what they're doing. now, I guess the way I'm seeing it is the US dollar demand is different to Bitcoin demand, right? Like, if you are a Bitcoin hodler, that's a different thing because you actually want to save and hoddle Bitcoin. You know, I, I, I get some Complaining online that, oh, see, lo-look, there's, there's this big use that Bitcoin isn't solving. But at, at the end of the day, if a person doesn't want Bitcoin exposure, you know, I'm not putting them down or something, but maybe they're just not ready for it yet. Maybe they aren't in the economic position to be saving with Bitcoin. At least that's how I'm thinking about it. Of course, I earn and spend Bitcoin, and I would love to see more people do that, but I think I'm also trying to be realistic" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:54", "start": 2573.92, "text": "Cases where, look, if someone wants USD exposure, well, then they're just gonna, they're gonna do whatever the cheapest and fastest thing for that is, right?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "43:03", "start": 2582.55, "text": "Yeah, exactly. I, I think you're, you're, spot on there, because, what happens is there's a lot of people, that, you know, younger people that do save in Bitcoin, and they just don't touch that at all. And the reason why they use, so much, stable coins and dollars is just because that is all, you know, month-to-month" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "43:24", "start": 2603.92, "text": "They need to swap back to pesos, so those dollars always need to be on the, on the go and ready for them to change it to pesos whenever they need it. So, it's, it's really, more of a practical issue, and those aren't really savings. So, you know, if people really wanna save, they will either have dollars in cash or, you know, if they're, already up to the, you know, Bitcoin hodl, mode, then they will People, saving Bitcoin, and I know quite a few people, 'cause the Bitcoin community here is, is pretty big, there are quite a few people that, that do that. And of course, those need to be savings that you don't need at all, and, you know, that can be tough here in this, economic environment where, you know, most people just live month to month and, and they will need all the money that comes in." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:13", "start": 2653.04, "text": "Yeah, and, I know also actually Moon Wallet. I know the Moon Wallet team are Argentinian as well, so" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "44:25", "start": 2664.58, "text": "yeah, and, and the Bitcoin Foundation here is, is really big. They, they do a lot of, mining courses and, yeah, it's a great community, you know, some big, events also around Bitcoin, and I think it was around five years ago that, there was still some, you know, really die-hard Bitcoiners here, you know, one that I, I personally know and, well, he left from Mexico now. But he was, seriously doing all of his finances on Bitcoin. He didn't spend any fiat, and he was just living, on a Bitcoin s-coin standard for everything. And I think he still does that, even in, you know, traveling around, et cetera." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:06", "start": 2705.85, "text": "Yeah. And so out of curiosity, for someone who wanted to go to Argentina and spend Bitcoin and try to do that, how feasible is that, or is it more like you'd basically need to sell for cash and spend cash mainly?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "45:18", "start": 2718.35, "text": "Yeah, y-you're gonna have to s- You're gonna have to swap for cash because most, you know, businesses, they don't, they don't even have a Bitcoin wallet or they wouldn't know how it works or they would become suspicious that, oh, maybe it's a scam, because there's been, there have been so many scams here with crypto, specifically. And I don't know if you read, but like last week, a guy got, dismembered, he was also like a crypto trader, but basically was scamming over, yeah, tons of people," }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "45:51", "start": 2751.46, "text": "The, the stigma of that kind of, you know, scamming, crypto, sphere is around any, anything related to crypto, even Bitcoin, that, you know, people will perceive it that way. So, it, it's not, not that easy to spend Bitcoin here, and, frankly, not even easy to spend dollars because, you know, the businesses just won't have the, change or, you know, it will be very hard for them to justify Applied in their, administration because what rate are they gonna apply? You know, 'cause technically they would have to do, use the official rate, so nobody wants to, use dollars for day-to-day transactions here. So you just, you know, everything gets swapped to pesos and then you pay in pesos." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:37", "start": 2796.95, "text": "Interesting. Because I've noticed in some other countries, you know, again, not insulting Argentina or something, but other countries I've seen, some of them will do it where you can pay with USD, but they'll give you change back in their local currency. But that Liquid and stable exchange rates, and as you said, in Argentina, that's, not a given, of course, with the twenty different rates and, you know, maybe people would fight over what rate should be applying. There should be, you know, because obviously the customer will say, \"No, I want the blue rate,\" and the, the merchant might say, \"No, no, I wanna give you a lower rate so I can, you know,\" so, you know, there's obviously gonna be arguments around that too." }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "47:12", "start": 2832.29, "text": "Yeah, and for, for, for, for bigger items," }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "47:22", "start": 2841.98, "text": "in, in dollars, and, for property, it's actually very rare that you can pay, in pesos, or it will have like a, a very high, rate tied to that. But most, second, hand homes, or used homes, they will always be traded in, in dollars. So if you wanna buy an apartment or whatever, it's always gonna be, dollars. It can be a bag of cash or, you know, just a, a wire. most people also have US bank accounts. What happens a lot of times is that the owner will just say, \"Okay, I just, deposit the, funds into my US account. It doesn't even touch Argentina, you just pay the local taxes here on, based on the contract, and, and that's that.\"" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:05", "start": 2885.13, "text": "Oh, wow, okay, so yeah, it's just like the transaction was just not even done inside the Argentinian banking system at all, like it's just all happening outside, okay, great, yeah. Of course, we would love to, you know, I would love Not there yet, and we have to, we have to kind of grow the base of Bitcoin users and grow the, you know, win, we have to win hearts and minds in some sense. And so I guess let's talk a little bit about some of the property market in Argentina, because you've written about this also, and you've been speaking about it. You've been talking about how they use US dollars for pricing, they have different markets in terms of already existing properties and then off plan, or I, I forgot the exact term for that, but if you could maybe spell out a little bit of How the property market works there for people who are, you know, thinking about, you know, pi-thinking about that, and so, yeah, oh, one other question, can you buy property as a non-resident of Argentina?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "49:03", "start": 2943.04, "text": "yes, you can. there's no limitations. The only limit there is for buying property, as a foreigner is, even as like a foreign, resident is, agricultural property, and the limit is that there can only be, Max of fifteen percent per province in the hands of, foreigners. and right now, none of the provinces is even close to that. I think, you know, the, the highest, is about six percent, so, you know, you can still buy whatever you, whatever you want here, there's no, limits there. and, and that only goes for rural property, so, you know, a lot of acreage, et cetera. But, you know, apartments, you know, don't even fit that profile you feel like" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:53", "start": 2992.56, "text": "Yeah. And when it comes to getting residency rights in Argentina, do you need to buy a property above a certain threshold like other countries have that? Is there a threshold here or how does that work?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "50:04", "start": 3004.05, "text": "so Argentina doesn't have a golden visa, where if you buy property, you automatically get residency. So, you have to get residency through other means. And, one of the most, popular visas is the rentista visa, which is basically, a pensioners or a passive income visa. they recently upped the amounts. according to the official rate, it should be around two thousand dollars a month that you need to be show, that you can sustain yourself. Income But that can be thousand dollars depending on, you know, what kind of exchanges you use. So basically, I know some people that use, Western Union, they send, because Western Union uses the, the blue market rate, which is kind of funny, so they, they use Western Union, they get in all those pesos, they, and then afterwards deposit them on their bank account to show the government, hey, look, I made, you know, two thousand dollars this month, and then afterwards they, they swap it back to, to dollars and they, Basically only, had a thousand dollars per month instead of the two thousand which is on paper. so I mean, there's a, there's a lot of ways around that, but that, that's the most, the most common way," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:15", "start": 3075.08, "text": "yeah." }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "51:16", "start": 3076.22, "text": "yeah, after two years of, you know, showing that you have a tie, ties to the country, you can already apply for citizenship if you wanted to. So it's also one of the fastest routes to citizenship if you actually live in the country, and it's, you know, a pretty decent" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:34", "start": 3093.69, "text": "Having, giving birth in the country as well, that's another way. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "51:38", "start": 3097.5, "text": "Yeah, exactly." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:38", "start": 3098.42, "text": "Yeah. Interesting. so I guess in terms of where things are going more broadly, you know, if we zoom out a little bit and we think about, you know, where things are going with CBDCs, right? do you have any views there? I think you've mentioned that you believe around twenty thirty they're going to be commonplace. So do you wanna expand a little bit on your views there?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "52:00", "start": 3119.59, "text": "yeah, so, the trials that we're seeing, around CBDCs in, in, you know, multiple countries, they're, they're expanding. you can see Fed now in the US, which technically isn't a CBDC, but it's, it's like the road to a CBDC. ECB, is running, trials that are already, you know, ready to, to launch, like they, did in China a few years back when they launched the first CBDC. that's- Probably gonna happen towards the end of the year, and the EU is, particularly, you know, scary in that sense that, they also have one of the, best, in quotes, ID, digital ID programs. that is the program that, the UN wants to use for vaccine passports, et cetera, i-if they would come around, you know, that's the, the model that, that they would use. That's already, been decided. That's also one of the reasons why, I, I believe in the US it was, New York that had like a similar, vaccine passport, program that was terminated because of that, because that's basically gonna be the blueprint. Now, of course, nobody knows if that will actually come to fruition, but, I do think that in Europe, specifically, they will, start tying your digital ID to, the CBDC. Eventually, and I already see it within the Netherlands, for example, if I want to do anything, government related, it's all digital ID. You can only log in with your digital ID, and, you know, it's tied to an app on your phone, you need to be physically, there, it's, it doesn't use biometrics, but, it's, it's really-- I, I lost my access once, and it's hell to get it back. that was a few years ago. So, so, you know, I, I still have it, I need it for, for some, things that, you know, a- a-admin stuff that I need to do in Holland from, from time to time, and, you know, I can see that completely being woven into, your bank account, your financial data And everything is already so, intertwined in Europe that, you know, won't be that hard to roll all these things out. Like for example, I opened up a, a Greek bank account, a few years back. and, that already appeared on my, Dutch, tax, system like, almost instantly. So it's already all connected, no matter what country in the EU you're in, like all that data is being shared and, will pop up, you know, everywhere. So, so yeah, that's something to, to look out for in that sense. you know, I'm, I'm happy to, live here where, you know, majority still uses- Cash, I don't see a CBDC coming anytime soon. They might try, and the nice thing then is, like, they can try, and I'm pretty sure that within a week, we have a similar black market, parallel market situation where just everybody starts, you know, buying stuff with Bitcoin or whatever. It would a-actually, launch, a, a Bitcoin standard way quicker, I think, if, countries like Argentina try to outlaw it and, try to install like a CBDC, because they're so used to cash, so I, I think that would be very interesting. And the IMF, actually, one of their pinpoints for Argentina, which is the country with the biggest loan, I think it's almost sixty percent of the whole IMF portfolio, is Argentina. That's why it's too big to fail. one of their points was that they should really crack down on, on crypto. So w- I, I've been seeing that with local exchanges already that, you know, the requirements are, are, more and more complicated, in terms of, Data sharing, et cetera. so they, they're trying to, go after it, but at the same time, they're, they're failing, because, you know, people still, use it a lot. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:10", "start": 3370.32, "text": "yeah, and as we saw with El Salvador, obviously the IMF were going against them, on Bitcoin also, so, it may be a related thing or for similar reasons that they were doing that. But I think coming back to that broader theme we were mentioning is that some of these big bureaucratic governments and states are Trying to either increase the taxes or make it hard for people to leave, but then at the same time, there are other options around the world, and I think people can just open their eyes and open, you know, be a little bit more open-minded to options that are out there" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "56:46", "start": 3405.54, "text": "Yeah, yeah, definitely. But, you know, people are really rooted in their, in their communities and find it very hard to, to leave, you know, which is understandable, as well. And of course, everybody's also-- or not everybody, but I would say the bell curve is real in terms of the bell curve meme. that, that is a real thing. you know, the, like you, you said, like the everybody goes and, stands behind the current thing, and that is really what is happening. So, you know, if You know, these countries are very dangerous, then, you know, eighty percent of the people will prob-probably think, \"Oh, yeah, I shouldn't go there,\" you know, so the, the people that look for alternatives, are always in the minority, I think, and everybody, the, you know, eighty percent will just accept their situation as is and, and try to go along with that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "57:37", "start": 3457.12, "text": "Yeah, but I, I do believe Bitcoin will drive a shift longer term. I believe that even if it is a minority, even if it is like Of ten percent, let's say, I think that ten percent will drive a broader shift in society, like to the rest of the world, but it's gonna take some time to get there. It's not gonna happen tomorrow. So I think, until then, you have to, you have to sort of learn to play the game and do a little bit of, you know, for some people, that's doing the geo-arbitrage game and just being a little open-minded to different options that are out there. so Mara, prob- it's been a great chat with you" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:15", "start": 3494.92, "text": "He's thinking about, going to Argentina. Do you have any advice for somebody who's considering Argentina?" }, { "speaker": "bowtiedmara", "time": "58:21", "start": 3501.39, "text": "so yeah, I have, I'm, I'm pretty active on Twitter, you, you can see my pinned tweet has a lot of recommendations for Argentina, goes from, you know, currency to, restaurants, et cetera, in Buenos Aires. so yeah, if you, need, you know, additional, advice or whatever, you can always DM me on, on Twitter, and I'll, I And of course, you know, if you wanna read more about Argentina's history, currency issues, et cetera, I also, have a, a, a blog, so you can also, read more on, on that blog. and yeah, I think- if you have any questions, just, just, hook me up on Twitter and, and I'll respond." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "59:07", "start": 3547.35, "text": "Excellent. Well, thank you. Yeah, thanks. Show notes are available at stephanalivera dot com. Thanks, and I'll see you in the citadels." } ] }