Is this from personal experience? And is there any data available to show that it's doing significant volume in Venezuela versus other options?
Some links:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/venezuela-sets-new-bitcoin-vo...
https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-adoption-venezuela-research
If we call it a rough average of $10k per BTC, that's $5m/week, or $250m/year. That sounds like a lot, but it's still only ~0.1% of GDP. In contrast, if we look at M-Pesa in Kenya, they report for 2017 doing $62.6 billion in transaction volume, or about 80% of GDP.
So it's not clear to me that Bitcoin is a major player even in Venezuela.
I looked and Chainalytics claim Venezuela is world number 3 in bitcoin use. But it's not clear what they're basing that on. My (very limited) understanding is that they can't directly see the country of origin of a bitcoin transaction. So they must be relying on figures from exchanges or apps?
https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/venezuela-cryptocurrenc...
Does anyone know if you can tell country of origin of a transaction request? Maybe the IP sending the request is public to the network?
In this kind of setting, where the transaction is illicit, you wouldn't go through an exchange, you'd publish the transaction directly to the bitcoin network, and organizations like chainalytics do track the origin IP addresses.
Not to criticise but... Isn't the IP of a transaction initiator being public a bit of a design flaw? Is it just assumed that users will obscure their own IPs (vpn, tor, etc)? Otherwise my isp/government can see my transactions and infer wallet ownership and I'm suddenly very un-anonymous...
That said, someone who isn't in a position to monitor the L2 network can't know if you are initiating a transaction or simply rebroadcasting it.
Edit: apparently this has been delayed so you likely can't use it at this point https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/81503/what-is-th...
Bitcoin is only used as a bridge for exchange VES:USD a.k.a money laundering from corruption and drugs, with some remittances transactions caught in the middle of those laundry waves.
there is absolutely 0 adoption for bitcoin in Venezuela, Im a bitcoin enthusiast since 2011 and I hold bitcoin and I live in Caracas (capital) and move around all tech communities and yet to see a real crypto transaction. Some people used the “get rich quick” schemes from DASH and other silly alts and tried to make a big media (international media) about Venezuelans using bitcoin to try to money grab international money into their scams, they manage to convince some stores and local food chains to “accept” their silly cryptos but of course no one uses, yet they got the money from their international sponsors trying to force adoption in the country.. there is hillarious threads on DASH forums about it
You can read my other post on details on the only use for bitcoin in venezuela, that big money laundery called localbitcoins
The government needs to be replaced. This is the false promise of bitcoin. As long as the government needs to be replaced you have much bigger problems than the currency. As soon as the government is replaced, you no longer have to worry about the currency.
Bitcoin always has been, and always will be, a solution in search of a problem.
Forget Venezuela for a second and ask yourself how Bitcoin is helping the North Koreans.
No one claimed that Bitcoin is useful in NK so I don't get the point of the question.
The best way to deal with devaluation is just, spend the money instantly, is not really that hard, people barely get Venezuelan Bolivars (minimum wage is 3$ month equivalent) and like 90% of all transactions are already done in USD
So people really don't hold venezuelan bolivars for more than 1 day, savings in bolivars doesnt exist at all in this country.
In case you actually need to just save the money, you just trade it (it takes barely no time) for USD and hold the usd either in cash or in some usa bank (most people have access to them) or paypal.
So, the unofficial "forex" market is always there..
BTW this might sound funny but with only 450million USD you can buy the entire M2 in venezuela. So yeah, hyperinflation might be solved really easy whenever we actually get a new goverment
This is completely and absolutely false. I personally know hundreds of (mostly very poor) Venezuelans who absolutely depend on bitcoin and other crypto currencies to survive. The people I'm personally familiar with eke out a few dollars creating content on platforms like Hive and Steemit, trade their alt crypto for bitcoin, pool it crypto together, and have it sent to Venezuela in small bundles where they collect it and use it to supplement their very meager incomes.
Also, I'm not sure I'd call that significant Bitcoin adoption if their only use for it is as an intermediary to exit a different cryptocurrency.
As an active member for years I've chatted and interacted with them for years and gotten to know many of them quite well.
>Also, I'm not sure I'd call that significant Bitcoin adoption if their only use for it is as an intermediary to exit a different cryptocurrency.
Why is that so? As far as I'm concerned (as an early adopter of bitcoin and other crypto), Bitcoin's primary use has always been to fill the void when government-sanctioned currencies and financial systems fail. Without Bitcoin these poor people would be unable to cash out the fruits of their creative endeavors - its absolutely critical. Different people use Bitcoin for difference purposes, but none of these purposes is inherently less legitimate than another.
I wouldn't trust anything published by Chainalysis. Their accuracy is much lower than their reputation
Venezuela is often painted as a "Bitcoin solves this" poster child. Yes, Bitcoin is sent from the USA and other countries into Venezuela, mostly by Venezuelan expatriates to family. It's useful for buying USD in Venezuela. But USD liquidity in Venezuela is very weak, so Bitcoin doesn't really solve much at all there. You can't buy groceries in Venezuela with Bitcoin
>Does anyone know if you can tell country of origin of a transaction request?
You can not
> Maybe the IP sending the request is public to the network?
If the sender is using his own Bitcoin node, the sender's IP is known only to the other nodes the transaction was broadcast to. If the sender is using a third-party service, that service records the IP addresses of its customers in the same way as any Web site does, just as my IP is known to ycombinator when I submit this comment
Unless you have originally brought cash in the country and received some type of pre clearance from the government, it generally is not so easy to convert back to EUR/USD/etc and move meaningful amounts of cash out of the country.
Don't know what the adoption rate is in Argentina, but with inflation being 30 to 40% a year, why would you even bother holding local currency?