Quote from: BreathOfZen on January 22, 2014, 04:06:47 AM

Hi All,
I saw this article on new Argentine regulations to severely curtail online imports to protect the Argentinean economy from the terrors of Amazon, and it got me really antsy about a currency collapse there:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-25836208

As such, my next natural reaction was to wonder if it was possible for me (an American) to sell Bitcoins to people inside of Argentina, in exchange for goods shipped to me? It sounds like they have a pretty severe clamp on receiving shipments internationally, but are there any effective regulations to keep Argentinians sending out packages of Gold, Silver, Magic Cards, etc? To be honest, at this point working to get BTC into Argentina seems as much a mission of mercy as anything.

I was quite shocked when I read about these new Argentinean currency controls to stem the flow of "hard currency" out of the country. What you propose would divert hard currency (bitcoin) into the country so perhaps it would be tolerated (i.e., at the government level).

Many people (including myself) were inspired that the Dogecoin community was able to raise $30,000 to send the Jamaican Bobsled team to the Olympics. I wonder if the bitcoin community could achieve larger things to win positive PR like this (and get us yummy wine from Argentina in the process). Imagine if we could somehow create enough hype that it goes viral in Argentina that "there's a bunch of people that want to buy stuff from Argentina" and it really takes off---we get a small bitcoin->Argentina, goods->NA/Europe/etc economy going. This would give people more faith in the (truly) free market, belief in the idea of (truly) free trade, and optimism for the potential of this peer-to-peer electronic cash system called bitcoin. I'd buy wine, art, music, and a few other things that caught my eye too.

Sadly, there may be too much import/export controls to ever make this work, especially for the product I'd be most likely to buy (wine).