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Comment by climber_mac | Hacker News Reader

I'm from Venezuela, and happen to know a few people that are mining bitcoin down there. Electricity is incredibly cheap! You practically don't have to factor electricity costs in your operation. Yes, the grid is very unstable, but you can always by generators that run on gasoline (which is also incredibly cheap! a full tank of gas for your car will cost less than 0.1 USD.)

Now, this is obviously horrible for the environment. But what can you expect when your own currency is being rapidly destroyed by the power-hungry idiots that have taken hold of the country. Let's hope for a brighter future.

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Can you shed a light on how is the situation there? The media made it seem like nobody is surviving right over there. I hope you are safe.

I have actually been living in Canada for 4 years now. Everything is a very hairy mess; I was there in the summer of 2015 and remember thinking "Wow! Things can't get possibly worst than this", and then I went back unexpectedly late this year and I can't tell you how much worst things are looking.

The infrastructure is collapsing, finding food to eat is a game of going to every supermarket in the city, among other things. I think my Dad puts it really well when he says that Venezuela has had a reversal of all the progress we made for decades; people have lost a lot of their values simply because life is so tough.

> I'm from Venezuela, and happen to know a few people that are mining bitcoin down there

Is there any evidence government cronies are mining Bitcoin en masse?

> Is there any evidence government cronies are mining Bitcoin en masse?

I'm not quite sure why people who have contacts in the government would need/want to run bitcoin.

If you do have reliable contacts, the best way to make money (as I understand it) is from import/export fraud, as well as exchange rate trickery.

Bitcoin seems like it's something you can do without government contacts.

The main point is that you need to be holding a currency that isn't the bolivar, because the year-over-year inflation rate is something like EIGHT HUNDRED PERCENT as of Dec 2016.

USD, Bitcoin, commodities, food ... anything has better return than that.

800% is soooooo 2016. The International Monetary Fund is planning 1600% for 2017. http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/07/19/congratul...

Yeah. I think the point I was addressing is that if you had government contacts, you wouldn't need bitcoin.

You'd be squeezing your contacts for hard currency, which is simultaneously more lucrative and easier than mining bitcoin. Bitcoin is for people who are locked out of official exchange rates.

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