Quote from: empowering on October 18, 2014, 04:33:37 PM

Hey Jorge will be pleased

http://www.coindesk.com/brazil-bitcoin-market-ignite/

Well, I am pleased that Brazilians so far have proven to be smarter than Argentinians. But we already knew that. Grin

The article claims that the BitcoinRain ponzi (that promised almost 10% return per month on your bitcoin investment) was closed by the Evil Government. I wish it was, but the government at the time did not even know how to spell "bitcoin". The story I have read, in this forum and elsewhere, is that one BitcoinRain investor eventually asked to withdraw his account, about 1000 BTC. Before executing the order, the owner went on vacation for a couple of days (so claim the reports), and then, in one of those bizarre "bitcoincidences", MercadoBitcoin was hacked and all bitcoins were stolen, including the holdings of the BitcoinRain fund, that were stored there. Eventually MercadoBitcoin provided its clients's bitcoins back, but the BitcoinRain investors never got theirs. The owner sold MercadoBitcoin, and the new owners do not see themselves responsible for the BitcoinRain hole.

The Brazilian Real is stronger than the Argentinian Peso, but both have fared much better than bitcoin in 2014. People who try to sell bitcoin as a way to protect one's investment from inflation should be jailed, IMHO.

The poor performance of bitcoin in Brazl may be due to the memory of TelexFree, a huge multi-level marketing scheme (bigger than bitcoin) that collapsed last year. Millions of people lost large sums of money, probably billions of dollars in total. Bitcoin is very different, of course, but it has in common that it is selling a technology that few understand, and has no backing assets. The last point seems to be what turns most people off as soon as they hear of it.