Comment by mitxela
3 hours ago
Even in stable economies without capital controls you should be able to earn several percent spread, because supply of physical money changers (you) in any particular region is limited, it's risky for you (they may rob you), and you're providing a valuable service (exchanging without any paper trail).
Right, but the risk isn't really worth the reward in an economy that could've slotted this kid into a college job as a loan officer or something. I'm sure having large stacks of Benjamins at his disposal probably had something to do with it for him.
I wrote a paper around 2010 that tried to evaluate the potential value of Bitcoin as purely a method of exchange that bypassed traditional intermediaries, and came up with some ridiculously large figure that everyone dismissed. But one central point of the paper was that it should never be misunderstood as a store of value because its only inherent value was to bypass currency controls.