A ground-level account of how Libya's economic implosion destroyed private enterprise, told by Nasr Elhadi (EP 2).
From roughly 2009 to 2015, Nasr ran clothing franchises in Tripoli: New Look, Tommy Hilfiger, Timberland, Burberry accessories. At peak, he was opening a new store every six months. The model was high cash-flow — cheap goods, fast turnover, constant stock. New Look UK monitored his sales data in real time and shipped stock accordingly.
The entire operation depended on one assumption: the Libyan dinar was pegged to the dollar through the central bank.
When war intensified in 2015, the central bank stopped supplying dollars. The black market filled the vacuum. The dinar's exchange rate moved from 1.3 per dollar to 5, then to 7. Inventory sat unsold. Invoices came due in dollars that now cost five times what they had. Fifty customers became ten. Sales dried up.
Nasr spent roughly a year trying to keep stores open before closing everything.
Nasr said he had never understood money. He treated the central bank as infallible. He didn't understand currency as a commodity subject to supply and demand. He had no contingency plan.
This failure drove his later advocacy for Bitcoin and financial sovereignty — not as a speculative investment but as an escape from state control of money. A worldview formed by watching a trusted system fail his business in real time.