<story><title>LocalBitcoins will discontinue its service</title><url>https://localbitcoins.com/service_closure/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pavlov</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;He took their cash and sold it to people like me - expats, tourists - for BTC, and sent the BTC to his partner in Miami, who changed it out to USD and put it into American bank accounts for them.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;And now assume that the cash in Argentina isn&amp;#x27;t coming out of mattresses but from criminal activities, and the people receiving USD in America are part of the same cartel. A 5% transaction fee on both sides of the Bitcoin trade is just 9.75% for the complete wash cycle — very low for textbook money laundering.</text></item><item><author>noduerme</author><text>Awwwww...&lt;p&gt;The original &amp;quot;meet in person&amp;quot; model was so good. All the bank transfers, paypal, etc. never made any sense.&lt;p&gt;Just a shout out to LocalBitcoins. When I was living in Argentina during the almost-hyperinflation of 2014 or so, I got &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; of my living cash in pesos and USD by selling BTC to local traders who I met on Localbitcoins.com. Usually I would meet them in a coffeeshop, have a coffee, wave my phone and transfer some BTC and they would hand me an envelope with $1000 USD and ARS$9000 that would cover my rent and food for the next month. The cost was +5% for the BTC-to-cash trade, but the exchange rate was &amp;quot;blue&amp;quot; meaning, at the time, one peso was officially worth $0.33 but the blue market had it trading at somewhere closer to $0.06... and trading for BTC got you the live blue rate. One kid I dealt with a lot had a wonderful business model. He was a math student at the university and opened an office buying and selling Bitcoin. When I asked him where he got all this USD &lt;i&gt;cash&lt;/i&gt; which was almost impossible to find in Argentina, he explained:&lt;p&gt;People gave it to him. Argentines who got 20% of their paycheck in dollars, or who had dollars stuffed under their mattresses that they couldn&amp;#x27;t get out of the country. They paid him 5% to move it out.&lt;p&gt;He took their cash and sold it to people like me - expats, tourists - for BTC, and sent the BTC to his partner in Miami, who changed it out to USD and put it into American bank accounts for them. So he got 5% on either side of the trade.&lt;p&gt;This was the moment, around 2013 or so, when I really believed BTC would be a unit of exchange that would break the artificial currencies around the world and serve as a leveler that would allow anyone with skill to work anywhere and go anywhere; it would demolish the old sclerotic monetary regimes.&lt;p&gt;Then it got regulated [edit: all its endpoints got pwnd], and Localbitcoins has not for a long time shown any P2P meetups for unregistered, silent trading-for-cash. That was its original purpose, and it served very well at the time.&lt;p&gt;In loving memory.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>noduerme</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure what your argument is. Prevent people from circumventing ridiculous local monetary controls - artificial currency pegs at 10x the value of the currency - because any money they have might be &amp;quot;criminal&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;You could also just define criminality as having money, and dispense with the pretense of legality, as has been done so many times in Russia. This is the despotism that normally results where there is no outlet for capital.&lt;p&gt;Although it&amp;#x27;s true, after a certain number of years in some places, everyone does become a criminal if you treat them this way; that should be obvious.</text></comment>
<story><title>LocalBitcoins will discontinue its service</title><url>https://localbitcoins.com/service_closure/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pavlov</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;He took their cash and sold it to people like me - expats, tourists - for BTC, and sent the BTC to his partner in Miami, who changed it out to USD and put it into American bank accounts for them.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;And now assume that the cash in Argentina isn&amp;#x27;t coming out of mattresses but from criminal activities, and the people receiving USD in America are part of the same cartel. A 5% transaction fee on both sides of the Bitcoin trade is just 9.75% for the complete wash cycle — very low for textbook money laundering.</text></item><item><author>noduerme</author><text>Awwwww...&lt;p&gt;The original &amp;quot;meet in person&amp;quot; model was so good. All the bank transfers, paypal, etc. never made any sense.&lt;p&gt;Just a shout out to LocalBitcoins. When I was living in Argentina during the almost-hyperinflation of 2014 or so, I got &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; of my living cash in pesos and USD by selling BTC to local traders who I met on Localbitcoins.com. Usually I would meet them in a coffeeshop, have a coffee, wave my phone and transfer some BTC and they would hand me an envelope with $1000 USD and ARS$9000 that would cover my rent and food for the next month. The cost was +5% for the BTC-to-cash trade, but the exchange rate was &amp;quot;blue&amp;quot; meaning, at the time, one peso was officially worth $0.33 but the blue market had it trading at somewhere closer to $0.06... and trading for BTC got you the live blue rate. One kid I dealt with a lot had a wonderful business model. He was a math student at the university and opened an office buying and selling Bitcoin. When I asked him where he got all this USD &lt;i&gt;cash&lt;/i&gt; which was almost impossible to find in Argentina, he explained:&lt;p&gt;People gave it to him. Argentines who got 20% of their paycheck in dollars, or who had dollars stuffed under their mattresses that they couldn&amp;#x27;t get out of the country. They paid him 5% to move it out.&lt;p&gt;He took their cash and sold it to people like me - expats, tourists - for BTC, and sent the BTC to his partner in Miami, who changed it out to USD and put it into American bank accounts for them. So he got 5% on either side of the trade.&lt;p&gt;This was the moment, around 2013 or so, when I really believed BTC would be a unit of exchange that would break the artificial currencies around the world and serve as a leveler that would allow anyone with skill to work anywhere and go anywhere; it would demolish the old sclerotic monetary regimes.&lt;p&gt;Then it got regulated [edit: all its endpoints got pwnd], and Localbitcoins has not for a long time shown any P2P meetups for unregistered, silent trading-for-cash. That was its original purpose, and it served very well at the time.&lt;p&gt;In loving memory.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>WhyNotHugo</author><text>&amp;gt; And now assume that the cash in Argentina isn&amp;#x27;t coming out of mattresses but from criminal activities&lt;p&gt;Nah, it&amp;#x27;s very common for people to have savings in cash under a mattress. We had crises before where banks essentially kept people&amp;#x27;s savings and they never saw their money again. Trust is the banking system is non-existent.</text></comment>