> If I understand your situation correctly, you are working in Argentina, but not paying income tax because you are a non-resident, and the source of your income is outside Argentina.

Very nearly—I'm working in Argentina, and the source of my income is outside Argentina, but I am not paying income tax because AFIP refused to issue me a CUIT without a work visa, but I'm not a non-resident; I'm an illegal immigrant.

> In that situation, I would look into setting up an offshore corporation with a bank account to hold the income, and then get a debit card that could be used in Argentina.

I have no idea how to do this, particularly without being able to leave Argentina. Also I don't think it's really a practical solution for the vast majority of people in either Argentina or El Salvador. (Also, most people bridle at taking the 38% haircut from the fake exchange rate, which at times has gone as high as 50%. In Venezuela it's sometimes been over 90%.)

> get cash from strangers, which I personally would be a little hesitant about, since there is a non-zero chance you are accepting dirty money and/or helping people circumvent currency controls

Any time you handle money, whether from a bank or anywhere else, you are accepting dirty money and/or helping people circumvent currency controls. The nature of money is that it is dirty and circumvents currency controls. That's the advantage money has over a gift economy: I don't have to worry whether the person I'm selling my car to, writing software for, or selling Bitcoin to is a good person or a bad person, whether when they return the favor it will be in spades or stintingly, or whether they will die or leave town before returning the favor. Of course I would like my money to fund good activities like education, family remittances to Venezuela, and abortion rights†, rather than bad activities like factory farming of livestock, constructing nuclear weapons, or exploitative garment sweatshop labor; but the nature of money is that it grants each individual the autonomy to make their own moral choices about how to direct their resources, rather than submitting each innovation for community assent. Sometimes they make the wrong choices, but that is better than not having the choice at all.

Similarly, the ice cream shop down the street has no duty to inquire whether the young woman buying ice cream earned that money from masturbating in front of a webcam for strangers on the internet, which I think is an occupation in which bitcoin is now very popular. Indeed, it would be unacceptable for them to make such inquiries.

I'm hesitant about getting cash from strangers for a different reason, which is what I thought you were going to say: they might shoot me or rob my house and take the cash back. With banks and Western Union this is a much larger risk.

______

† Abortion was illegal in Argentina until December. One of the things I did with my money in the past was to buy abortion manuals and give them away in the park. (It turns out there were legal drugs in Argentina which could produce safe first-trimester abortions.) Probably many people considered that money "dirty", but because we live in a money economy, the people who printed the books didn't have to worry about being turned out of their homes or going hungry as a result. Free abortion took a really long time to gain community assent.