Last night, the documentary film Bitcoin:in Buenos Aires had its Canadian premiere at Toronto’s Decentral, a collaborative working and meeting space.
Following the film, its director Valerian Bennett joined the event via Skype to talk about the process involved in creating it, his creative vision, and more.
The film itself focuses on the difficult financial situation currently facing people in Argentina. Their currency is losing value at a rate of around 30% per year, which has many Argentines worried about their savings. And while it’s technically illegal to convert Argentine pesos to any other currency, the black market for US dollars is enormous, commonplace, and surprisingly tolerated.
“The underground US dollar market is a common thing,” said Bennett, “but hasn’t been shown in this light.”
The film takes us into an underground US dollar exchange, called a “cuero”, where people can exchange their persos for dollars relatively freely. However, this situation is far from ideal since the authorities can and sometimes do crack down on these operations.
Bitcoin can change that, though.
Bennett’s vision for the film was to showcase “real people, using real technology, to solve real problems” Argentines are currently facing. And to do that, he’s talked with some of the major players in Buenos Aires’ Bitcoin community, including representatives from Bitex.la, BitPagos, Bitpay’s Argentina office, and the Bitcoin Embassy out of which many of these companies operate.
Nubis Bruno, Bitex.la’s CPO, said in the film that if anyone can benefit from Bitcoin, it’s Argentines. And with the Bitcoin industry quickly growing there, it seems as though they’re already prepared to take advantage of it.
Of course, that doesn’t come without risk.
Bennett doesn’t believe the central bank has much interest in Bitcoin at this point due to the sorry state of their economy. “Economic chaos on one level provides an opportunity for Bitcoin to fluorish,” he said. “When you have a 20 storey building on fire, the fire department isn’t going to turn its hose on a guy smoking a cigarette across the street.”
Nevertheless, Ethereum’s Anthony Di Iorio, who hosted the meetup, mentioned that he had worked with people in Buenos Aires in the past, and that “they do live in fear of what they’re doing there. They are at risk and they do have some concerns.”
Bitcoin: Buenos Aires will be available on Bennett’s site, theprotocol.tv, this Friday. Watch a sneak peak of it below:
Bitcoin: Buenos Aires Reveals A Harsh Reality For Argentines
No comments:
Post a Comment