A Vietnamese man saved 4,100 dongs (worth almost 1 oz of gold) with the bank in 1983 and forgot about it. In 2002, the bank returned him 110,000 dongs (which was around $8). And no-coiners say crypto is a rugpull. People don’t realise many fiats are rugpu

This is a common story for a lot of Vietnamese people in the 1980s as told in the online newspaper Vietnam Net. The local currency, Vietnamese dong, was devalued many times with inflation over 400% for several years in the mid 1980s.

Inflation history and forecast in Vietnam

Another reason is that Vietnam implemented a currency denomination in 1985, in which 10 old dongs were exchanged for only 1 new dong. A lot of people suddenly have their wealth slashed 90% after a day.

I guess many Vietnamese have PTSD with the dongs and develop a habit of converting their dongs into gold, USD or Bitcoin. According to an analysis, Vietnam ranks 1st on global crypto adoption index. Now, I don’t actually 100% trust the data due to their methodology, but I can somehow understand why Vietnamese invest so much in crypto. It’s simple - they don’t trust their dong!

Global crypto adoption index

You may raise the question - Is it just Vietnam or this is an issue in many corners of the world?

Nowadays Vietnam has a stable economy with inflation rates under 5% since 2014. However, let’s see some countries out there: Venezuela, Turkey, Lebanon, Iran, Argentina just to name a few. Have a look at this map and see how things go:

Inflation around the world, 2020 IMF data

Now I don’t mean to say crypto will replace fiat, but many people don’t actually realise that fiat is also a type of slow rugpull (or fast!, as the above example in Vietnam in the 1980s and a bunch of countries right now). No-coiners often look at Bitconnect or Squid coin and say “Look, cryptos are rugpulls” but forget the fact that fiat currency loses value every day. Even the USD or EUR are not an exception, it’s just happening quite slowly that people are sleeping on it.

What do you think of inflation and the world's economy today?