Let’s talk about currency resets, hyperinflation & Argentina, as discussed in my recent episode with Agustin Kassis:
Argentina: We Don’t Trust, We Verify - Agustin Kassis | Ep. 117
🎙️ Agustin Kassis is a Bitcoin developer, entrepreneur, and founder of La Crypta in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As a self-taught programmer since age 11 and serial entrepreneur with seven startups, Agustin discovered Bitcoin in its first years. This conversation explores Argentina’s unique position as a potential Bitcoin adoption leader, shaped by decades…
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Chat GPT helped me summarize Argentina’s monetary reset history:
🇦🇷 Argentina: 150 Years of Inflation, Collapse, and Reset
What makes Argentina unique isn’t that inflation happened, it’s how often it happened, and how consistently it reset collective memory. Roughly once per generation, the currency collapses, is renamed or restructured, and trust is asked to start over. Each time, people believe a little less.
Late 19th century: the original break in trust
By the late 1800s, Argentina was already learning a lesson it would repeat many times. Persistent fiscal deficits, war spending, and weak monetary institutions slowly ate away at the value of the peso moneda nacional. Inflation wasn’t yet called “hyper,” but the damage was real: savings eroded, confidence cracked, and Argentinians began to internalize the idea that money issued by the state was not something you held long term.1975–1976: the Rodriazo shock
A century later, that distrust exploded into open crisis. In what became known as the Rodrigazo, the government abruptly lifted price controls and devalued the peso almost overnight. Inflation shot past 300% annually, wages collapsed in real terms, and daily life became a scramble to outrun rising prices. It wasn’t just an economic event—it was a psychological one, permanently embedding inflation fear into the culture.1985: the Austral promise
The government responded with a familiar move: a reset. The peso was scrapped and replaced by the austral, cutting three zeros and promising a fresh start. For a brief moment, it worked. Prices stabilized, hope returned, and people dared to believe again. But fiscal discipline didn’t last, and once credibility faded, inflation crept back in—faster than before.1989–1990: money stops working
Then came true hyperinflation. Prices were rising so fast that cash lost value within days, sometimes hours. Annual inflation approached 5,000%. Supermarkets changed prices multiple times a day, wages lagged hopelessly behind, and the austral effectively stopped functioning as money. Argentinians learned, in real time, that money could simply… break.1991–2001: stability by peg—and its collapse
In the early 1990s, Argentina tried a more radical fix. Another reset replaced the austral with the peso convertible, rigidly pegged one-to-one with the U.S. dollar. For nearly a decade, stability returned. Inflation vanished, trust rebuilt, and a generation grew up believing the nightmare was over. Then the peg snapped. The 2001 collapse brought default, frozen bank accounts, mass protests, and yet another destruction of savings—this time overnight.2018–present: hyperinflation without the label
Today’s crisis doesn’t come with wheelbarrows of cash or a formal currency replacement, but the pattern is unmistakable. Inflation returned to triple digits, capital controls tightened, and multiple exchange rates fractured reality. The peso still exists on paper, but in practice Argentinians treat it as a short-term transaction tool—saving in dollars, goods, or anything that holds value longer than a few weeks.
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I was recently banned from Stripe, so I cannot have paid memberships on Substack… but there’s always another way!
