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Venezuelans Flock To Cryptocoins Amid Spiralling Inflation (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg:
Demand for digital coins is soaring in Venezuela amid an escalating political crisis that has protesters demanding that President Nicolas Maduro step down. Inflation has spiraled to the triple digits, debasing the bolivar and depleting savings, while citizens struggle to find everything from food to medicine on store shelves. "If you're going to be in something volatile, you might as well be in something that's volatile and rising than volatile and falling," says Ryan Taylor, chief executive officer of crypto currency Dash Core, the third-largest digital coin by number of transactions... Bitcoin trading volume in Venezuela jumped to $1.3 million this week, about double the amount that changed hands two months ago, according to LocalBitcoins.com...
Venezuela's currency has become nearly worthless in the black market, where it takes more than 6,000 bolivars to buy $1, while bitcoin surged 53 percent in the past month alone. But it's not just about shielding against the falling bolivar, as some Venezuelans are using crypto currencies to buy and sell everyday goods and services, according to Jorge Farias, the CEO of Cryptobuyer.
Venezuela's currency has become nearly worthless in the black market, where it takes more than 6,000 bolivars to buy $1, while bitcoin surged 53 percent in the past month alone. But it's not just about shielding against the falling bolivar, as some Venezuelans are using crypto currencies to buy and sell everyday goods and services, according to Jorge Farias, the CEO of Cryptobuyer.
Let's go guys, buy Dogecoins too!
#DeleteFacebook
How's that working for you?
I'm sure cryptocurrencies are thrilled though, keeps the ponzi scheme going.
Again with this?
It looks like some people here really want the value of their Bitcoin to go up.
As a Venezuelan, I don't know ANYBODY using or accepting Bitcoin for anything.
"Rare Pepes" are widely used in South America in lieu of fiat currency.
The same thing will happen in the U.S. when people realize that the printed fiat dollar is only supported by the government forcing the other countries of the world to buy dollars in order to purchase oil. As oil becomes deprecated as an energy source people will be able to buy renewable energy in other currencies, making the U.S. dollar irrelevant and worthless.
according Joseph Stiglitz, World Bank executive, Nobel Prize winner, and Clinton advisor. With globalist experts like him setting economic policy around the world cryptocurrency volatility doesn't look so bad.
including money
It's only a matter of time now. Maduro has armed tens of thousands of militia gang members. The criminals are also armed and looting and killing at will. People are starving to death and will eventually face a choice between a slow lingering death or going down fighting. It will happen quick once it gets started. Mobs will break into the arsenals and loot the weapons. Military units will face a choice of whose side to join, as they did in Syria. Maduro has made many enemies who will take the opportunity to settle scores and lots of hungry young men with nothing to do and no prospects will relish the chance to bleed the elites. All that's needed now is a spark and Maduro is sure to bungle into one sooner or later.
What happened?
Did they run out of other people's money?
Like Greece? Detroit? Illinois?
Go to google trends, type in bitcoin, compare the search volume graph to the price graph of bitcoin.
If only Pinochet could help them...
The final stage of hyperinflation is usually some kind of "currency board", in which the central bank agrees to defend the local currency against some other standard, and the government is backed into a corner and reluctantly agrees. A gold standard is a special case of this; but any relatively stable substitute will work. Bitcoin has a reputation for volatility; but it pales in comparison to any currency that's in hyperinflation. If Bitcoin maintains popularity among the people, Venezuela's central bank might decide to become the first one to gear its notes to a cryptocurrency.
Trump destroyed that country.
Right now a lot of people use Bitcoin as a gold substitute. It's valuable because it's (relatively) secure and rare, exactly why people used gold for so long. But like gold, it's not actually practical for using as an everyday means of exchange.
Currency exchanges take too long to verify (half an hour or more), cost too much to do so (minor transactions can cost more to verify than exchanged hands), and the whole system sucks up a lot of power. While cryptocurrency as a valid backstop against incompetent governments is a great idea, a more technically proficient cryptocurrency, better designed for everyday transactions, would be a huge boon.
YOU...voted for this. No fucking complaining, OK?
Trump will do this to the US just like he did to VZ.
...for a country as big as Venezuela, the 3rd largest oil producer in the world? I'd hardly call that "flocking." Along with the other petrostates, Venezuela has bigger problems ahead even with POTUS' attempts to shore up the ailing fossil fuels industry.
There are always crazy Venezuelan gang bangs on chaturbate. They must be really desperate.
In the USA the central bankers are now arguing that their so called '2% inflation target' should be raised to a higher number because in their NSHO the country 'has been suffering from a low interest rate for a while', so they are saying it is OK to have a higher inflation targe for a while to 'even things out'.
A bunch of modern voodoo black magic mambo jambo is being pushed from government propaganda channels, government has no idea what it's doing but of-course we cannot admit this, admitting this would finally mean the realization that government should not be manipulating the economy in the first place.
Inflation that is not driven by any free market forces but that is being imposed upon an economy and the world by the desires of the central bankers and various government branches is a plague and this one has the power to destroy civilizations. Inflation is destruction of the money, it is the expansion of the money supply and under a central planning system it normally comes about by the inability of the system to sustain the high maintenance government that it amassed so now the inflation tax (theft via depreciation of the value of money) is imposed upon all who hold government controlled money and bonds.
USA created so many dollars and bonds not backed by any form of production since the Federal reserve was given the power to monetize government debt that it caused a massive shift of productivity from its own shores elsewhere (especially China, but even Mexico and other countries), who absorbed USA inflation while building up their own productive capacity. USA was losing the productive capacity it built up while it used gold as money and had much smaller government than any other country of a comparable size back in the 19th century. Of-course once the pretence of any form of actual reserve behind the dollar was completely removed in 1971, when Nixon defaulted on the gold dollar the exodus of jobs and productivity accelerated by some enormous factor. This also helped to create the massive disparity between the wealthy and the poor, with the poor suffering disproportionately from the government inflation policy.
Of-course in the West today inflation is mis-characterized as 'rising prices', however the correct definition of inflation is expansion of the money supply. Rising prices may result from that expansion but rising prices are a consequence of inflation, they are not the cause of it.
I think the USA Federal reserve itself has fallen into its own propaganda trap, completely forgetting what inflation actually. The Fed believes it can control the economy via the monetary policy. In reality the Fed can only create more or less inflation and manipulate interest rates to a higher or a lower degree causing more or less damage to the overall economy.
Inflation is not a good thing in the contracting economy and USA is a contracting economy. Deflation is not a bad thing in a contracting economy either, it is correlated with mal-investment failures and restructuring, so it is perceived as bad because people lose their jobs, however deflation also increases the value of savings and lowers prices, thus both reducing the economic impact on people who lose their jobs while increasing the value of the capital that can be used to restart the economy.
The government sees deflation as a scary thing that reduces its nominal GDP, reduces its tax base and most importantly is correlated to lower quality of life through fewer jobs and closing businesses, so the government never wants to allow deflation to work its way through the economy clearing bad debts and reducing the burden of all the mal-investment in the system.
All of these government fears find their way into the 'education' system (propaganda system) that teaches people the wrong lessons in history while destroying their ability to see reality and that's the real problem that we are facing today - a mis-educated population that doesn't understand anything related to economics.
An economically illiterate population is easily manipulated into voting for collectivist regimes that can only cause more damage and eventually.... "Venezuelans Flock To Cryptocoins Amid Spiralling Inlflation"
You can't handle the truth.
"If you're going to be in something volatile, you might as well be in something that's volatile and rising than volatile and falling," says Ryan Taylor, chief executive officer of crypto currency Dash Core..
Indeed. Just ask anyone from Zimbabwe, or Albania. (Disco Stu voice) "And if this trend continues... Eyyyyy!"
When oil prices plunged due to an expansion in world oil production capacity, Venezuela suffered shortages. Why? Clearly, capitalism fails to allocate resources efficiently.
In particular, capitalism has imposed an artificial scarcity of US dollars. The best solution is to give every Venezuelan a basic income in dollars, funded on the Fed's balance sheet at zero cost to taxpayers.
The US Dollar gets stronger the more there are. The Fed created $3.5 trillion after 2008 and despite predictions of hyperinflation, the dollar's international value has increased.
...by an even more corrupt new order.
The article talks about massive inflation related to bitcoin as if it is a recent thing. The graphs in the article show interest started over a year ago, yet the traded value of the currency is on par with what it was this time last year after a brief 10% dip 60 months ago.
What gives?
Like it could help. Look, the situation is hopeless: if you're not Venezuelan and you are in Venezuela right now, run away while you still can. If you're a Venezuelan and not in Venezuela right now, do not go back, ever. If you're a Venezuelan in Venezuela, kill yourself: it's way better than what's in store for you. If you have a family, put them out of their misery before you do yourself in.
If Zimbabwe's solution to their hyperinflation is anything to go by, then "using a currency that is not under the control of the morons in government" should stabilise Venezuela. Wait until people go to jail for not using the official currency in transactions and not accepting their miserable lives as the government intended.
Local currency is better than cryptocurrency
Casteism