People in Venezuala wouldnt admit it out of fear

And bitcoin transactions can be relayed from any IP address, or used without the internet and broadcasted later, so we wouldn’t be able to know if transactions were originating there

Privacy feature undermining our ability to confirm our pre-existing biased, how quaint

The Open Money Initiative [0] has done qualitative research to help pin this down- from what I remember of talks they've given, the answer to real usage in Venezuela is somewhere in between. Crypto has certainly been helpful for capital flight, since smuggling eg gold outside the country is quite a bit more difficult to get through customs than a private key seed.

[0] - https://www.openmoneyinitiative.org/

I recall seeing a thread sometime ago where someone claimed to be a Venezuelan who was using Bitcoin. I can't find it, but my recollection of the discussion was that

a) people in Venezuela are using anything they can get their hands on as hard currency, and

b) Bitcoin was one of those things, but it was negligible usage at best.

Here's a great podcast episode with folks from the Open Money Initiative talking about the reality in Venezuela: https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/a-bitcoin-reality-che...

IIRC from listening, there are indeed some people who mine and those who use it as a store of value. And some people use it for remittance or as a portable non-hyperinflational asset. But in general, people are not really aware and dismiss it as a scam (it's understandable; even their own president tried to crypto scam them with the Petro).

It's far more probable that they use US Dollars.