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One Year of Javier Milei: Why Argentinian Crypto Folks Can’t Get Enough of Him

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It has been almost exactly a year since Javier Milei became the 59th President of Argentina.

Inaugurated on December 10, 2023, the flamboyant libertarian economist — a former goalkeeper who cloned his dogs and called central banks “the worst garbage that exists on this Earth” — had vowed to end the South American nation’s hyperinflation crisis and to drastically reduce government spending.

Since then, Argentina’s monthly inflation rate has fallen from 25.5% in December 2023 to 2.7% last October. The government has registered a fiscal surplus for nine months in a row, a substantial achievement considering it’s been running deficits since 2008. The Argentinian peso isn’t in freefall against the U.S. dollar anymore. And while the country’s economy is projected to have shrunk by 4% in 2024, a 6% rebound is expected in 2025.

For at least some, the biggest surprise so far is that Milei actually followed through on most of his campaign promises, according to Alfonso Campenni, Latin American growth lead at Matter Labs, the main developer behind the Ethereum layer-2 protocol ZKsync.

“For Argentinians, it’s super hard to understand the concept of a politician doing his job,” Campenni, a native of Buenos Aires, told CoinDesk in an interview. “At this time of the year, people are usually mad because they can’t buy things for Christmas [because of hyperinflation]. But now it’s like: ‘Okay, maybe this is something new.’ It’s peaceful, it’s super weird.”

“I was at a tech event where Milei was invited. He got a standing ovation when he arrived on stage,” Jack Saracco, another Buenos Aires native and the co-founder of crypto payment platform Ping, told CoinDesk. “Most Argentinian crypto people love what he’s doing. There’s a meme going around: ‘When are we going to be able to vote for him again? Because I would vote for him over and over again. He’s doing exactly what I voted for.’”

The reforms have had costs, though. Argentina’s poverty rate spiked to almost 53% in the first six months of 2024, from roughly 42% in the second part of 2023, as Milei’s administration slashed funding for a number of welfare programs and laid off tens of thousands of public employees.

“During the campaign, he said, ‘I won’t lie to the Argentinians, we have very tough years ahead of us,’” Campenni said. “He was super honest on what will happen [in the years to come].”

Milei’s ideological kinship with crypto

The crypto sector’s enthusiasm for Milei is notable considering that, unlike President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, the 54-year-old economist hasn’t shown particular interest in developing a national regulatory framework for digital assets.

“His primary focus has been addressing the country’s economic crisis,” Juan Aranovich, an Argentine research analyst at crypto venture fund Ryze Labs, told CoinDesk. “These initiatives have dominated his agenda and left little room for crypto specific policies.”

Even so, the crypto scene, locally and internationally, has resonated with Milei’s brand of libertarianism.

Bitcoin was designed to permit individuals to transact digitally without third-party intermediaries, and Satoshi Nakamoto’s message in the Genesis Block is an explicit criticism of Western monetary policy in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

Milei, for his part, vowed during his presidential campaign to shut down the Argentinian central bank, telling Bloomberg: “Central banks are divided in four categories: the bad ones, like the Federal Reserve, the very bad ones, like the ones in Latin America, the horribly bad ones, and the Central Bank of Argentina.”

The Argentine president has yet to follow through on that particular pledge. In the meantime, he has encouraged a dollarization of the nation’s economy, meaning to increase the circulation of U.S. dollars and reduce the population’s reliance on pesos.

“Dollarization is a fiat-based approach which contrasts with Bitcoin’s vision of decentralized money,” Aranovich said. “[American crypto entrepreneur] Balaji Srinivasan called Milei a Bitcoin President, but this is a misinterpretation of his stance.”

Saracco agreed. “I don’t think dollarization is the best way to go, because we will basically be adopting the U.S. dollar inflation,” he said. “The U.S. is doing a pretty poor job at auditing government spending, and at not funding so many wars. … If we dollarize our economy, we will be at the mercy of Washington.”

That’s why, at the end of the day, crypto in Argentina remains a grassroots affair. Chainalysis ranked the country number 15 out of 151 countries in terms of crypto adoption in its 2024 report. The country’s stablecoin trading volume, already on a steady rise, exploded three months into Milei’s term. Yes, the government has been relatively supportive of crypto technology, but decades of economic mismanagement have created high levels of distrust in public institutions. That distrust will compel Argentinians to keep using crypto even if the economic crisis ends, Saracco argued.

Coming back to Argentina

For years, rampant inflation compelled Argentinians to try and save money in U.S. dollars, to the point where the state imposed currency controls, placing a $200-per-month limit on the amount of dollars Argentinians can legally purchase. This, in turn, birthed a cash-based black market where greenbacks — called blue dollars, for the blue stripe found on $100 bills — can be exchanged for a much higher rate than the official one.

One year into Milei’s presidency, these capital controls are still in place, though the government has rolled out a tax amnesty program to encourage Argentinians to deposit foreign currencies into bank accounts, thereby drawing the money back into the formal economy. Roughly $277 billion U.S. dollars are thought to be stashed away outside the financial system, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Census.

But the discrepancy between the official dollar/peso rate and the blue dollar/peso rate has shrunk to almost nothing. In the days before Milei’s election, you could get 350 pesos for one dollar at the official rate, but close to 1,000 pesos per dollar on the black market. The official rate is now at 1,032 pesos, while blue dollars cost 1,090 pesos. For Argentinians, it’s a sign that the economy is healing

“Normally everybody is talking about politics all the time, all day long, everything is politics here, politics and football,” Campenni said. “Now nobody is talking all day about politics. … It’s like you’re at a sunset and everything is okay.”

The fact that Milei is famous internationally is a point of pride, too. The Argentine president was the first foreign leader to visit U.S. President-elect Donald Trump after his electoral victory in November; his meetings with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk have also boosted his image abroad and at home, according to Campenni. “I’ve been to Istanbul and Denver and everybody was calling Milei a superhero,” he said.

For Aranovich, the big test will be the midterm elections, scheduled for October 2025. These, he said, will provide insight into the public’s perception of the government’s shock therapy policy. Milei’s political party, La Libertad Avanza, currently has 40 seats out of 257 in the nation’s Chamber of Deputies, and seven seats out of 72 in the Senate. The party has held a solid lead in most opinion polls for the legislative elections, but a lot can happen in the span of 11 months.

Campenni is optimistic. “A lot of people left our country during the COVID pandemic, and now they’re coming back to Argentina, because there are a lot of possibilities,” he said.

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Can Bitcoin Benefit From Trump Firing Powell? Turkey’s Lira Crisis May Provide Clues

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The week has begun on an interesting note, with the U.S. dollar crashing to three-year lows alongside losses on Wall Street, yet bitcoin, which usually follows the sentiment on Wall Street, stands tall.

This could just be the beginning.

The shift away from the USD and toward seizure and censorship-resistant assets like BTC and stablecoins could accelerate if President Donald Trump follows through with his reported plans to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, which have pushed the DXY and U.S. stock markets lower today.

That’s the lesson from Turkey, which has seen its currency, the lira (TRY), collapse over the years mainly due to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s repeated interference in the central bank’s operations. The sliding lira has triggered a capital flight into BTC and stablecoins since at least 2020-21.

Trump’s issues with the Fed

Trump has feuded publicly with the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Jerome Powell, for years, criticizing Powell for being too late on rate cuts even during his first term when interest rates were way lower than today.

However, Trump’s criticism has recently reached a fever pitch with reports suggesting he is looking for ways to get rid of Powell, who recently warned of stagflation even as the President reiterated calls for lower borrowing costs while suggesting there is no inflation.

Powell’s patient approach follows a trade war-led spike in survey-based measures of inflation expectations, which could always become self-fulfilling.

Still, on Monday, Trump went further, calling Powell a «major loser» and warning that the economy could slow down unless interest rates are immediately lowered.

Lesson From Turkey

Erdogan began interfering in the central bank’s operations in 2019, and since then, the lira has collapsed sevenfold from 5.3 per dollar to 38 per dollar.

It all started with Turkey’s inflation rate reaching double digits in 2017. It remained elevated in the subsequent year, which prompted the country’s central bank to increase the one-week repo rate from 17.5% to 24% in September 2018.

The move likely didn’t go well with Erodgan, who issued the first decree dismissing Central Bank of Turkey (CBT) governor Murat Cetinkaya in July 2019. From then on until the end of 2021, Erdogan issued multiple decrees dismissing and hiring several CBT officials. Amid all this, inflation remained elevated, and the lira continued to depreciate at an alarming rate.

«We certainly don’t believe in high interest rates. We will pull down inflation and exchange rates with low-rate policy … High rates make the rich richer, the poor poorer. We won’t let that happen,» Erdogan said in 2021.

As of 2025, Turkey faces an inflation rate of nearly 40%, according to data source TradingEconomics.

This episode serves as a cautionary tale for Trump, highlighting that tampering with central bank independence — especially in the face of looming inflation — can erode investor confidence and send the domestic currency into a tailspin.

This does not necessarily mean that the USD will crash exactly like lira but may see significant devaluation.

Perhaps it could prove even more destabilizing for global markets, considering the dollar is a global reserve currency, and the U.S. Treasury market is the bedrock for international finance.

If better sense fails to prevail, U.S. investors may feel incentivized to move away from U.S. assets and into BTC and other alternative investments, just as Turks did.

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Bitcoin Holding Near $87k While Stocks Slump a ‘Strong Sign’ of Maturing BTC Sentiment

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Bitcoin (BTC) is taking a stand even as the broader stock market keeps sliding down to its tariff-related lows on Easter Monday.

The top cryptocurrency is up 2.3% in the last 24 hours and now trading for $86,800 for the first time since April 3—the day after the Trump administration unveiled its new tariff policy. Mainly buoyed by bitcoin, the broader market gauge CoinDesk 20 Index has risen 1.17% in the same period of time, with most tokens relatively unchanged.

Crypto-linked stocks have also remained stable, with Coinbase (COIN) and Strategy (MSTR) down 1.2% and 1.3% respectively, and major bitcoin miners such as MARA Holdings (MARA), Riot Platforms (RIOT), and Core Scientific (CORZ) slumping between 2% and 3%.

The crypto market’s resilience is noteworthy considering that the S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Dow Jones have gone lower by 3.35%, 3.5% and 3.27% respectively, making their way back down to the tariff-related lows of two weeks ago.

Gold, meanwhile, is up 2.9% and is now trading for $3,400, while the DXY (an index that measures the strength of the dollar against a basket of other currencies) reached its lowest level in three years.

“Was today’s tandem rally in bitcoin and gold merely holiday-driven noise, or a meaningful shift towards bitcoin as a safe-haven asset? The latter would mark a material change in how traditional finance views bitcoin,» analysts at crypto trading firm QCP Capital wrote.

«With Europe still on holiday, market confirmation may take a few more sessions. The correlation between bitcoin, gold and equities is one to watch closely.»

Meanwhile, Lawrence McDonald, former head of U.S. Macro Strategy at French investment bank Société Générale, said that it may be time to sell gold in favor of bitcoin.

“Bitcoin has NEVER held up this well with a VIX near 30,” he posted on X, calling bitcoin’s resilience a game-changer. “This is a strong sign of a maturing bitcoin market (good news) and colossal encroaching fiat currency stress, USD.”

BTC vs. SPX (CoinDesk)

The weakness of stocks and the U.S. dollar, put into perspective with bitcoin and gold’s strength, may be due to investors’ concerns about Trump potentially looking to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

Earlier on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump continued putting pressure on Powell, whom he called a “major loser” in a Truth Social post, sending an already shaky stock market even lower.

Trump demanded that Powell and his team lower interest rates “NOW,” arguing that there is currently “virtually no inflation” and that costs for many things are declining. Nevertheless, Trump said there’s a threat that the economy will slow down unless the Fed cuts rates.

Powell’s term, which started when he was appointed by Trump himself during his first four years in the Oval Office, is set to end in May 2026, but Trump has been trying to find a legal way to fire Powell beforehand.

The Fed Chair has previously argued that there is no possible way for the U.S. President to remove him under the law.

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Vitalik Buterin Proposes Replacing Ethereum’s EVM With RISC-V

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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared a new proposal over the weekend that would radically overhaul the system that powers its smart contracts.

Buterin’s suggestion, which he posted on Ethereum’s primary developer forum, involves replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine, the software engine that powers programs on the network, with RISC-V, a popular open-source framework that offers built-in encryption and other benefits. .

The EVM is a key piece of Ethereum’s underlying design and has been seen as one of the main elements that helped the network succeed in a crowded field of other blockchains. Many non-Ethereum networks have used the EVM to build their own chains, as has a growing ecosystem of layer-2 networks built atop Ethereum, including Coinbase’s Base chain.

The EVM has long played an essential role in Ethereum’s development. Other chains that use it can seamlessly connect with apps on Ethereum, and developers on EVM-based networks can transition more smoothly to building applications directly within the Ethereum ecosystem.

Buterin argued that transitioning Ethereum to a RISC-V architecture will “greatly improve the efficiency of the Ethereum execution layer, resolving one of the primary scaling bottlenecks, and can also greatly improve the execution layer’s simplicity.” (The execution layer is the part of the network that reads smart contracts.)

The RISC-V architecture, which has seen limited adoption in other blockchain ecosystems, like Polkadot, could offer «efficiency gains over 100x» for certain kinds of applications, according to Buterin. These improvements could reduce the network’s costs — long seen as a major barrier to adoption.

Among the primary benefits of RISC-V is its native support for certain kinds of encryption. Transitioning to the new architecture could, in Buterin’s view, be a simpler alternative to the community’s current plan, which involves rebuilding the EVM around zero-knowledge cryptography.

Buterin’s proposal is something developers would tackle over the long term, comparable to projects like the Beam Chain, which is looking to revamp Ethereum’s consensus layer.

The RISC-V comes at a time of broader soul-searching for the Ethereum community. Recently, transaction volumes have declined, and Ethereum’s token has lagged behind the broader market.

Earlier this year, the Ethereum Foundation, the primary non-profit that supports the development of the broader Ethereum ecosystem, underwent a leadership transition in an attempt to remedy the impression among community members that the ecosystem lacked a clear roadmap and was losing its lead compared to competitors.

Read more: Top Ethereum Researcher’s Dramatic Proposal Draws Standing-Room-Only Crowd in Bangkok

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