
Certified Translator, stuck in Venezuela, looking for remote freelance work - Hernanaracena
http://www.cointotranslate.com/
======
firekvz
Hey there, another venezuelan here.

if you want to help this person PLEASE dont send any money without asking for
verification first, I have seen so many people lately using this "please help
me im venezuelan and i am in need" to scam money, there has been at least 5
sucessfull scams on r/btc, r/bitcoin and other online forums.

Also Please note that:

1- it's harder to change BTC for VEF than change USD for VEF

2- this domain it's registered at godaddys servers, meaning that what the OP
claims here: "Venezuelans cannot accept USD without a bank account. You can
use paypal but its hard to exchange from paypal USD to the venezuelan currency
(Bolivares)" is half incorrect and does not really applies to him, he had to
use either paypal or an international debit/credit card to pay for this
domain.

~~~
smallnamespace
To add to this to this point:

1\. USD is the de facto world currency, and many (most?) banks in the world
let you open an account in the local currency, plus another account
denominated in USD which is absolutely necessary for doing any sort of
international business

2\. Venezuela's currency collapse is a problem _mainly_ because it needs to
import goods (medicine, machine tools, etc.) from the international market,
which must be paid in USD, and which Venezuela now can barely source because
their oil industry (main source of foreign earnings) is falling apart [1]

3\. In most cases, USD is superior (more liquid, more easy to transact in, a
more stable store of value) to any cryptocurrency. View 'I'm Venezuela ergo
crypto' claims with skepticism, especially when they could be paid in USD to a
foreign account instead. Not sure what the exact situation on the ground is in
Venezuela, maybe it's very hard to receive USD because the government will
seize it, but that's the a situation a foreign bank account can solve.

OTOH, if the goal is to use BTC to pay for living expenses by converting to
bolivars, it's probably even easier to use USD.

[1]
[https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13803](https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13803)

~~~
jjeaff
That's not even close to an accurate assessment. Yes, you can technically have
a bank account in Venezuela denominated in USD. However, it would be
completely useless for a few reasons.

You cannot withdraw USD in Venezuela. Only Bolivares. And when you withdraw
Bolivares from a USD denominated account, the bank must do so at the official
rate.

The official government rate is a complete farce and has no bearing on
reality. If you were to pull out $1 USD from any bank in Venezuela, you would
get about 10 Bolivares. The real rate on the street right now is about 3
million Bolivares to 1 USD. [https://dolartoday.com/](https://dolartoday.com/)

In other words, with your USD denominated bank account, you would have to
withdraw about $300k usd to buy a bottle of coke.

As for getting an overseas account, that is extremely difficult if not
impossible without physically being in that country. In the US you cannot get
a bank account without some type of US id, either a SSN or TIN/EIN.

There are very few ways to get money into venezuela. One is to be lucky enough
to already have a foreign account or overseas family or friends with an
account. You can then transact with other locals who also have a foreign
account by transferring money to them electronically.

The other method is Western Union to an adjoining country like Colombia. They
go across the border get the cash and come back to Venezuela. Crossing the
border with cash is fraught with danger right now. The other option is simply
to travel outside the country but getting a travel visa to fly is exceedingly
difficult for most Venezuelans. Venezuelan officials have stopped issuing
passports to most. And countries like the US are not quick to grant a visa
considering the fact that the great majority of tourists from venezuela are
going to stay in the US permanently/illegally.

As for crypto... you still have to find someone else with money that is
willing to pay cash for a crypto currency. But at least the barrier of entry
for crypto currency is much lower right now that the difficulty of getting an
overseas bank account.

Things are very, very bad in Venezuela right now. Of course, that doesn't mean
scammers won't scam. But if the person is truly still in Venezuela, it is very
likely they are in dire straits.

~~~
smallnamespace
The thing is, I don't see how crypto helps solve _any_ of those issues you
enumerated.

I did specifically mention that regardless of whether you try to take crypto
or USD, if your goal is to immediately convert into bolivares for survival
spending, neither is easy or simple, since the government presumably wants to
seize any USD it can get its hands on (the extortionate 'official' conversion
rate just being a particular method of doing so).

> But at least the barrier of entry for crypto currency is much lower right
> now that the difficulty of getting an overseas bank account.

I don't see how that is the case, unless you have a specific example? Sure,
you can get a crypto account and perhaps get someone to pay you, but you can
equally well get a PayPal account denominated in USD, if you didn't already
have a foreign bank account.

Neither of those can directly translate into bolivares, but at least the
PayPal account can be be easily used to buy physical goods and perhaps get
them into the country if you can bypass or bribe your way through customs.

------
peterlk
In case anyone is not aware of the current situation of Venezuela. Here is a
recent explanation:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17408792](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17408792)

~~~
imbokodo
The EU has sanctions on Venezuela and the US keeps piling on sanctions and
newspaper reports say Trump is contemplating an invasion. Obviously these
external pressures will have a negative effect on the Venezuelan economy.

One reason for so much pressure is oil prices are rising and external forces
want things changed before that happens. Thus the talk of US invasion.

This is in contrast to the US-backed military overthrow of the Honduran
government, which has been slaughtering its political opposition. In fact,
these are many of the immigrants on the US border being discussed. The western
governments back the military and post-coup governments on that case, which
has been much more bloody.

~~~
swagasaurus-rex
Got any sources for this? Anybody know if these claims are substantial?

~~~
mc32
Maduro and Chavez just about every time on TV or radio claimed the US was
preparing an invasion, was subverting the gov't by way of the opposition, etc.
All the way back to the GW Bush, through Obama and till now.

Was/is Chavez/Maduro credible? I'll leave that up to you to decide.

The sitch down there is the govt's own doing. Nationalizing, expelling and
enacting policies which drove out Industry SMEs ensured that the country would
slowly but surely go downhill.

------
duxup
It's heartbreaking seeing what happened to Venezuela.

It is also really scary as Venezuela was doing relatively quite well compared
to other nearby nations. Democracy, functional institutions (relatively) and
then .... people chose to vote in some strong men who trashed it.

Granted oil prices would have resulted in real problems anyway, but nothing to
the extent we're seeing now. While nobody would want that situation, people in
a democracy chose people who set them on that path (since then it hasn't been
a democracy) ... and that is scary.

~~~
megaman22
Nationalistic socialist regimes almost always poison the ground beneath
themselves. Especially when they try to confiscate and nationalize major
sectors of their economies. The history of the last century is so replete with
instances of this being attempted and going disastrously wrong.

I can't reply for some reason, but: Ataturk should be forever revered for
being one of the very few who was able to steer a country through the narrows
between Charybdis and Scylla into a functional state.

~~~
duxup
Yup, Turkey is swimming in debt... and the water is getting deeper.

~~~
duxup
I don't know what you're saying there.

------
hackstack
Your page says "text that need to be translated" but it would read more
correctly as "text that needs to be translated". Just saying! Good luck.

------
flyGuyOnTheSly
Love the idea.

But I'm curious...

Is ~$12/page actually the going rate for translating english to/from spanish?

As $6,300 USD/BTC * 0.002 BTC = $12.6 USD

~~~
mdasen
[https://www.strakertranslations.com/translation-
pricing/](https://www.strakertranslations.com/translation-pricing/) \- $0.13 -
$0.16 per word which comes to $32.50 - $40 per 250-word page.

[https://gengo.com/pricing-languages/](https://gengo.com/pricing-languages/)
\- $0.06 - $0.12 per word or $15-30 per page.

[https://www.gts-translation.com/translation-prices-per-
word/](https://www.gts-translation.com/translation-prices-per-word/) \- $0.10
per word or $25 per page.

[https://www.onehourtranslation.com/translation/benefits/tran...](https://www.onehourtranslation.com/translation/benefits/translation-
price) \- $0.087 or $21.75.

It's certainly seems cheaper and Bitcoin fees seem relatively low right now
(at least compared to the end of last year). However, I'm not sure it seems so
significantly cheaper, especially weighing the 250-word one-size pricing.

Agreed that it's really cool, though.

~~~
flyGuyOnTheSly
WOW... no wonder there are so many AI startups working on translation.

I thought Google Translate uses AI now fairly perfectly.

Why is anyone paying a human translator $40/page when Google Translate is
"free"?

~~~
BrandoElFollito
Google translates "The IT group" to French as "Le groupe IL". Context matters.

~~~
flyGuyOnTheSly
That's good to know!

I haven't really used them for anything serious in the past few years which is
why I asked.

I had just read all of this AI stuff recently about Google using machine
learning/AI to better help it's instant audio translation service or
something.

Perhaps the only thing they machine-learned was the audio to text conversion
part? Not the translation part?

------
ryanchoi
I know people have concerns with altcoin longevity/soundness/security but in a
situation where every cent matters maybe an additional crypto to accept would
be NANO? Though it seems to be less bartered locally. I read this a few days
ago
[https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/8wfl2r/venezu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/8wfl2r/venezuelan_user_i_bought_102_kg_of_food_today/)

edit: Oh never mind, moments after I posted this i realized that with altcoins
you could end up even less crypto worth vs BTC than you'd save on tx cost. :)

------
aecorredor
Fuerza bro! Pa’ lante.

------
euske
While this looks interesting, it only helps one person/family. Is there any
other way to help the people in the country? I looked up a couple of websites,
but would love to hear people's opinions.

------
vorpalhex
Can you post a eth/bitcoin wallet address on your site?

~~~
leesalminen
I’ve submitted his web form requesting it.

------
semi-nontechncl
Have you considered accepting Nano instead of BTC? Nano is perfect for this
since there are zero transaction fees. Also, transactions are instant with
Nano. A lot of people in the Nano subreddit are trying to get Venezuelans to
start accepting and using Nano. You should definitely post in the Nano
subreddit if you start accepting payments via Nano. More info at Nano.org and
reddit.com/r/nanocurrency

~~~
armini
Build a profile on Peertal & happy to send you LTC payments on the platform
for translating our website.
[https://youtu.be/tkyH3JRxndc](https://youtu.be/tkyH3JRxndc)

------
howitworks
Good luck!

Are you still working on
[https://www.tryeffortless.com/](https://www.tryeffortless.com/) ?

~~~
Hernanaracena
thank you, This is not for me I'm just helping somebody in Venezuela (Yes, I'm
still working on effortless)

------
Exuma
How did you get stuck?

~~~
sebleon
Yes, incredibly difficult to get a Venezuelan passport now, these restrictions
prevents nationals from leaving en masse. Thousands of Venezuelans have
illegally walked out of their country, and making their way to my home country
Ecuador on foot.

~~~
thepumpkin1979
That’s correct, everybody is hungry so corruption is everywhere. To get a
passport you need to give the officer an iPhone 7 or a few thousand dollars. I
read this today, it’s pretty bad.

------
known
Venezuela is working on sovereign crypto asset backed by oil
[http://archive.is/Zdhxe](http://archive.is/Zdhxe)

------
gok
“Please help me use the blockchain, a ledger that can never be erased and can
be tracked back to you, to circumvent your country’s sanctions against mine.”

------
MarkMc
Why hasn't some cryptocurrency replaced the bolívar as the unit of currency
for most private transactions in Venezuela?

Given the Venezuelan government's poor economic management and tight
restrictions on foreign exchange transactions, if cryptocurrency was going to
overthrow fiat currency anywhere it should be in Venezuela.

~~~
azernik
I think you are aiming at this result, but to spell it out:

Because most cryptocurrencies are not suitable for use as a currency. They are
not stable units of account, are not as easy to exchange on an everyday in-
person basis as cash, and are only a stable store of value by comparison to
complete disasters like the bolívar. There _are_ attempts (e.g.
[https://basis.io/](https://basis.io/) or
[https://tether.to/](https://tether.to/)) to make a crypto-currency that fills
this niche, but they have flaws (Basis isn't deployed yet, and Tether is a bit
scary - it's backed by a single company that theoretically owns one dollar for
every Tether coin issued).

------
benryon
Has anyone gotten verification? Or where can I get some bitcoin to try it out?

------
hodljuna
Hi, sent you an email. Hopefully we can help each other out!

------
ebikelaw
Why not just dollars?

~~~
Hernanaracena
Venezuelans cannot accept USD without a bank account. You can use paypal but
its hard to exchange from paypal USD to the venezuelan currency (Bolivares)

~~~
vkou
How, and why is it easier to exchange BTC for Bolivars, then Paypal dollars
for Bolivars?

------
domlebo70
Great idea.

