Venezuela Breaks Bitcoin Trading Records with 500M Bolivars per Week

The new Soverign Bolivar is a weak desperate attempt at the Venezeulan government to combat runaway inflation with its normal currency, the Bolivar. Its inflation is just as bad as Zimbabawe, although devaluation isn't occuring due to moneyprinting, but rather low oil prices in 2015, which the Venezula economy mostly relied on. Its cheaper to use Bolivars as toilet paper than actual toiletpaper most likely.

Venezula is currently making an attempt at introducing a cryptocurrency of its own, but without the technical infrastructure or trust to back it.

I have been told that US dollars are treated as the formalized currency over there. But its illegal to trade US dollars to bollivards and can only be done in the black market, getting caught lands you in jail. Resorting to cryptocurrency/black markets makes more sense, as transactions are more secure and less volatile. IIRC mostly everyone still has access to smartphones/computers and potentially VPN's so trading makes more sense. Potentially as well local P2P wallet trading as well

I have known friend's families who have had lost everything due to government takeovers on their small businesses when Chavez originally took over. Maduro isn't doing the country any favors either

edit: O.K. Apparently, that's not VEF but VES, so it should be about 8K iPhones or a volume of about 8 Million USD.