@d5000, It's hard for me to imagine living in a country with such inflation, because here in the EU it's mostly single-digit numbers, and yet in the last few years everything has become more expensive, quite a bit. Considering that I keep all my bills, I came to the conclusion that I pay for groceries 30-50% more than before the pandemic, although some things have become more expensive and much more than that.

Argentina is really facing a big challenge and maybe you just need someone like Milei to do radical things in an effort to try to bring about positive change. However, I wonder if Argentina can improve its situation on its own or if a lot depends on external factors - because some people obviously do not want Argentina to be placed alongside other South American countries, of course with the exception of Venezuela, which is in the worst situation by far.

I did not participated in those discussions when he got elected AFAIK but I just read some news mentioned above by tbct_mt2 that some news outlets chose wrong words to show he will make BTC a legal tender in Argentina while he did not made any of those statements instead he want to dollarize the central bank and wants to give freedom of transact.

I agree with you, he did not mean to make it more legal or whatever some news outlets mistakenly shared, his stance was just to compete or improve the fiat. BTC won't be used as currency even if I am not wrong BTC is not normally being used as currency in El-Salvador even.

Yeah - it looks like an exhibit for sure, not booming with life - young people like bright light and how they dance with their work, it would be more appealing for sure, in my opinion

Actually there are some examples of countries which have adopted a foreign currency unilaterally, e.g. Ecuador in 2000 and Bosnia (with the Euro) in the 90s.

They do not even need an agreement with the US because the dollars already circulate in the country. The same situation applies to Argentina, de facto it's already a "bimonetary" country. You can open USD bank accounts in Argentina, for example. In the 90s there was already a "currency board" and the Peso was pegged to the US dollar. But that policy broke in 2002.

The US could of course pressure Argentina with commercial agreements to not adopt the USD. But why should they? They're interested in preserving the US dollar's importance. And the Fed would not have to care about Argentina neither: the worst that could happen is that Argentina fails in its dollarization attempt and could return to the Peso.

Milei's idea is not to ban the Peso but to allow a free competition of currencies, as written in an earlier post. This means that he does not only aim to eliminate the concept of the Peso as legal tender, but to break with the complete "legal tender" concept (which is a forced obligation to use a single currency). De facto this could lead to a complete dollarization if people try to get rid of Pesos. That's what happened in El Salvador for example, where a national currency, the Colón, (pegged to the USD) still exists in theory but lost almost all importance.

The first steps to "free competition of currencies" were implemented by a decree in late 2023 already, when contracts are allowed in any currency or value, including Bitcoin.

Closing the Central Bank indeed isn't easy as it has also other functions than just currency policy, like the supervision of commercial banks. What Milei aims to since he's in power is however something different: to pass regulations banning excessive currency emission ("money printing"). In part this has already been implemented.

The problem for Argentina is all the DEBT is based on Argentine Pesos, which has been dramatically inflated over 4 years

In 2021 $1 US gave you 100 Argentine Pesos

Today $1 US gives you 1000 Argentine Pesos

https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=ARS&view=5Y

The government has to do something about all the old debt, while trying to move to more stable ways to "store value" in whatever money they plan to use.

When I was there, getting the Pesos was extremely difficult and their is a blue market as well as a regular market rate to get their Peso, so it's still quite a mess there.