Slashdot Mirror
Venezuelan Developers Are Using Bitcoin, Rare Pepe Trading Cards To Fight Against a Dismal Economy (cryptoinsider.com)
According to Crypto Insider, Venezuelan developers have been selling "rare pepes" -- trading cards that contain unique illustrations and photoshops of the character Pepe the Frog. While the trading cards started out as nothing more than a joke, many of them have been traded for thousands of dollars on the Counterparty platform, which is built on top of Bitcoin, and have provided a way for many developers to sustain themselves in Venezuela's poor economy. From the report: The basic idea behind the issuance of rare pepes on top of the Counterparty platform is that it enables scarcity in a digital world. Each rare pepe card is linked to a little bit of bitcoin through a practice known as coin coloring. Whoever owns the private keys associated with the address where the bitcoins that represent a specific rare pepe card is located is the one who owns that particular trading card. Now, a group of developers in Venezuela are building games similar to Hearthstone and Pokemon where the rare pepe trading cards will play an integral role. If you go to rarepepe.party right now, you're mainly presented with a video of what the first game based on the Rare Pepe digital trading cards will look like. The concept is similar to Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering where players essentially do battle with their opponents via characters on trading cards, which have specific stats and features. In this case, the characters are various rare pepes. With many rare pepes already released (you can view them in the official rare pepe directory), the developers behind Rare Pepe Party are attempting to provide a use case for these new trading cards. While some rare pepe cards already have stats on them, the developer who chatted with Crypto Insider says those stats may not mean much when it's time to play the game. While rare pepes are nothing more than fun and games for much of the developed world, they're a matter of survival in Venezuela. "We're based in Venezuela, and our business has been saved by bitcoin many times," said the developer. The developer claims roughly 80 percent of the offices around the area where Rare Pepe Party is being developed have shut down over the past year. The biggest businesses on their street have also dropped as much as 90 percent of their employees.
Their economy was almost entirely reliant on high oil prices. They never really tried to diversify their economy so when oil prices plunged so did their economy. On top of that their oil needs specialized refineries requiring them to send their oil to other countries to be refined. The main country providing refinery services are located in the US. At prices under $50 per bbl they are almost losing money on any oil they do manage to export. They also shot themselves in the foot trying to nationalize the assets of foreign oil services firms resulting in a huge decline of output and a cease in new projects being brought online. The one thing that can bring the wrath of the US government down hard is a country who tries to nationalize the assets of US companies. The most noteworthy examples of this can be seen in Iran, Cuba, and now Venezuela. And Venezuela has burnt all the bridges between them and the US. They can't ask the US for any help and even if they did the US wouldn't help them. The relationship is just to toxic.
The US now controls the global price of oil and natural gas. The US has been metering it's output just enough to make sure the prices stays under $50 bbl. At this price Venezuela's economy will not improve in the slightest. Russia is in the same boat. They are also over reliant on oil exports and are bleeding cash. The sanctions levied against them for their actions in the Ukraine have prevented any foreign investments in their oil industry leaving them with aging equipment and no new projects being brought online. Since the US can now export natural gas it becomes possible to supply all of the European countries and break Russia's monopoly.
The most successful countries in the world are socialist so it seems a strange statement. Norway has been rated the happiest country in the world with Denmark second. Both socialist.
Neither is socialist. Socialism: Government ownership of the means of production. Both Norway and Denmark are, by many measures, more capitalist than America. For instance, the Danish post office is privatized. If you at add in health care, America actually has a about the same government footprint as either. Social programs do not make a country "socialist".