Nothing about the twitter account refutes what I'm saying about Venezuela. There's a certain quantity of BTC there already, and it's not nearly enough to replace all the money down there. They can't mine any because any big clusters of compute get nationalized [1], [2] and rewards are going down. That means they can either trade with outsiders, and in that case, doing so for USD they'd be 5X better off over the last two years. Or they trade with each other, in which case, it remains zero sum. Unless they are somehow more efficient at mining BTC than the Chinese who control more than 51% of the hashpower?
Nothing in that twitter account refutes that in Venezuela the minimum wage is $6.70USD per MONTH [3] so a single transaction fee is nearly a WEEK of wages. And that's up from $2.20 per MONTH so a single transaction fee was THREE WEEKS of wages.
LN transactions are "instantaneous and free" once you open a channel ($1.50) and lock in your balance, then close out your channel ($1.50). Again, two weeks wages.
Bitcoin is not a solution to the problems of Venezuela. Changing the government is. They're totally disconnected.
You claimed "Nobody in Venezuela has bitcoin." I provided evidence of a group making a difference in Venezuela using Bitcoin, so it does refute your previous statement.
I pity someone who is so offended by a simple technology.
Again, if they can trade with foreigners, they're better off with real currencies. I'm not offended, I'm exasperated. Bitcoin has been a solution in search of a problem for a decade, and each time it stumbles on an idea it's proven not to be effective and it's off to the next goalposts. This time it's Venezuela for some reason. They have real problems, and they need real solutions, not magic internet beans. If they really wanted to help the Venezuelans they'd do it using the best system, not their system -- this helps them, and hey, if the Venezuelans are better off for it, I guess that's fine too.
You're using Venezuela as an example of the success of "real currencies" hahaha
Look at Bitcoin's yearly lows, and tell me more people aren't finding it useful every year. Again, YOU mentioned the Venezuela example, and IT IS BEING USED THERE. I never claimed it would save that country, nor have I heard anyone else make that claim. Clearly some people there find it more useful than other alternatives to their hyperinflationary fiat currency.
Bitcoin doesn't care about Venezuela nor any other specific use case. It keeps existing because people keep running the software. You can deny this, but there's no point being exasperated over it. Just let it go and concentrate on whatever you do care about.
But don't go around claiming fiat currencies are the final solution when situations like Venezuela are happening right before our eyes.
I don't claim Venezuela's currency is an example of success. I'm saying that their currency's failure is a result of the failure of their government, and even waving a wand and switching everyone over to BTC (which again, the initial distribution problem) won't magically make their government work. They can't control BTC but they sure can control the populace. They'd make it illegal and beat everyone with BTC until they handed it in to the central government, and smash everyone's computers. Bitcoin's weakness there is still a rubber hose. I'm saying that trading existing BTC between themselves is a zero-sum problem since the total quantity of BTC and the total quantity of Bolivars (hence the total value) remains exactly the same within Venezuela, and mining isn't an option due to nationalization and low yields.
Trading with other countries opens up many different options for storing value like fiat currencies backed by 'stable' governments like AUD, CAD, NZD, USD, EUR -- or assets like gold, equities, real estate, etc. Each of which would have stored value 5X better than BTC over the last 2 years. However, the real issue remains, you have to trade to obtain either these assets or BTC and nobody wants to trade anything for Venezuelan Bolivars because they in turn don't believe they'll get anything for them. That won't be solved until the government is replaced.
Until the government is replaced any BTC "solutions" for the Venezuelans are efforts to legitimize BTC and increase the value of the holdings of the "helpers," not to really solve the problems on the ground there. If they were trying to help, they'd just raise money for NGOs.
Edit: ...and LN transactions are essentially instantaneous and free. Also you can’t program cash without a middleman.