Bitcoin Dreams Are Coming True in Argentina and Turkey

So, how has the bitcoin investment experience been for global holders outside of the local dollar system? Over the past five years, most bitcoin holders outside of the U.S. experienced greater gains in bitcoin (see Figure 1 below), due to the depreciation of their local currencies relative to the dollar as a consequence of the U.S. interest rates going up in addition to the 31% return of bitcoin relative to the dollar (see orange bar for bitcoin vs. USD return for comparison). Bitcoin over the past five-year period has been stronger than a stronger dollar.

Figure 1: Average five-year return of bitcoin holders by foreign currency. Source: CoinDesk Indices Research, FactSet.

Notable outliers over the period include Argentina (providing context for Milei’s primary election success) and Turkey (whose leader recently came around to reinstating traditional economic theories after a foray into “Erdoyanomics” in pursuit of the stimulative effects of lower interest rates). With five-year realized inflation for Argentina and Turkey at 60% and 33%, respectively, BTC holders in Argentina and Turkey have been able to preserve their purchasing power and mostly weather the political and economic conditions within their countries by leveraging a decentralized and digital store of value.

• BUFFETT RULE: Berkshire Hathaway Chair Warren Buffett, describing his firm’s investment objective, said nearly four decades ago: “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.” With the obvious caveat that this is not investment advice: There sure is a lot of fear out there in crypto. Bitcoin (BTC) just somewhat mysteriously (no, it probably wasn’t Elon Musk’s doing) plunged the other day. It’s left the market in the most oversold condition since the Covid crash in early 2020. A buying opportunity? You tell me!
• COINCIRCLE: While PayPal is no Mastercard or Visa, it’s also no slouch in payments. A major potential use case for stablecoins is paying for stuff. So, PayPal’s experience in the paying-for-stuff business is highly relevant as the company enters the stablecoins game, creating a real risk for the big incumbents USDT (from Tether) and USDC (which has been overseen by both Circle Internet Financial and Coinbase – until now). News broke this week via CoinDesk that Circle and Coinbase are dissolving the partnership that had governed USDC; Circle is bringing USDC fully in-house, with Coinbase remaining associated by getting (apparently by paying no cash, per the CoinDesk story) a minority equity stake in Circle. Coinbase downplayed any fears of PayPal. “I really do believe PayPal grows the pie for us,” a Coinbase executive told CoinDesk’s Ian Allison, who broke the news. I guess we should watch the stablecoin market cap leaderboard.
• HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL: Despite the massive gains this year in bitcoin and other digital assets, it’s hard to argue these are wonderful, comfortable times for crypto. The blow-ups of last year continue to weigh on the space, regulators are on the prowl, etc. Nevertheless, there is a pretty clear sign of optimism: People keep launching new blockchains. What this actually means or will amount to is really hard to say. One of them – Sei – is built for low-latency applications such as trading … just like Solana, Sui and Aptos before it. None of those have exactly upended how Wall Street works.