In bankrupt Lebanon, locals mine bitcoin and buy groceries with tether, as $1 is now worth 15 cents

▤ Summary

But by 2019, as Lebanon plunged into a financial crisis following decades of expensive wars and bad spending decisions, a decentralized and borderless digital currency operating outside the reach of bankers and politicians sounded a lot like salvation. The local currency has lost more than 95% of its value since Aug. 2019, the minimum wage has effectively plummeted from $450 to $17 a month, pensions are virtually worthless, Lebanons triple-digit inflation rate is expected to be second only to Sudan this year, and bank account balances are just numbers on paper. Tourism and international aid, plus foreign direct investment from oil-rich Gulf states, also went a long way toward shoring up the balance sheet of the central bank, Banque du Liban. Those payments, however, began to slow through the 2010s amid unrest throughout the region, and the growing prominence of Hezbollah – an Iranian-backed, Shiite political party and militant group – in Lebanon alienated some of the countrys biggest donors. When Gebrael needs cash to pay for groceries and other basics, he first uses a service called FixedFloat to swap some of the bitcoin he has earned through his freelance work for tether (also known as USDT), a stablecoin that is pegged to the U.S. dollar.

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