
Venezuela Breaks Bitcoin Trading Records with 500M Bolivars per Week - TrinidadTobago
https://247cryptonews.com/venezuela-breaks-bitcoin-trading-records-with-500000000-bolivars-per-week/
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Kagerjay
I was having a conversation yesterday with someone from Venezuela.

The new Soverign Bolivar is a weak desperate attempt at the Venezeulan
government to combat runaway inflation with its normal currency, the Bolivar.
Its inflation is just as bad as Zimbabawe, although devaluation isn't occuring
due to moneyprinting, but rather low oil prices in 2015, which the Venezula
economy mostly relied on. Its cheaper to use Bolivars as toilet paper than
actual toiletpaper most likely.

Venezula is currently making an attempt at introducing a cryptocurrency of its
own, but without the technical infrastructure or trust to back it.

I have been told that US dollars are treated as the formalized currency over
there. But its illegal to trade US dollars to bollivards and can only be done
in the black market, getting caught lands you in jail. Resorting to
cryptocurrency/black markets makes more sense, as transactions are more secure
and less volatile. IIRC mostly everyone still has access to
smartphones/computers and potentially VPN's so trading makes more sense.
Potentially as well local P2P wallet trading as well

I have known friend's families who have had lost everything due to government
takeovers on their small businesses when Chavez originally took over. Maduro
isn't doing the country any favors either

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Jeff_Brown
Hyperinflation cannot, although inflation can, be the result of a change in
commodity prices. Commodity prices are (to much less than an order of
magnitude) constant worldwide, and Venezuela is far from the only economy
overwhelmingly dependent on oil, but those others are not seeing triple-digit
inflation rates.

Hyperinflation is the result of printing money.

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mrtksn
That appears to be about 2000USD a week. A volume of two iPhones.

edit: O.K. Apparently, that's not VEF but VES, so it should be about 8K
iPhones or a volume of about 8 Million USD.

~~~
wyldfire
1143 BTC != 2000 USD

From [1]:

> They changed the color of the bank notes and increased their denomination.
> Then they said they would lop off three zeros. And when that didn’t seem
> enough, they announced they would cut off two more.

[1]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/world/americas/inflation-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/world/americas/inflation-
venezuela-currency.html)

~~~
mrtksn
500,000,000 Bolivars == 2012USD

[https://ibb.co/cDcbCp](https://ibb.co/cDcbCp)

~~~
wyldfire
The amount cited is 500,000,000 VES, not 500,000,000 VEF.

From [1]:

> The bolívar soberano (... ISO 4217 code: VES) is the main currency of
> Venezuela since 20 August 2018. Since that date, it has been due to replace
> the bolívar fuerte (strong bolívar, sign: Bs.F., ISO 4217 code: VEF) after a
> transition period.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_bol%C3%ADvar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_bol%C3%ADvar)

~~~
mrtksn
noted.

