Comment by firekvz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by firekvz | Hacker News Reader

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Bitcoin adoption in venezuela is Absolutely fake/nonexistant

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

>Bitcoin adoption in venezuela is Absolutely fake/nonexistant

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.

https://hive.blog/

https://steemit.com/

You personally know hundreds of people there? That seems like quite a lot. How did you meet them?

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.

>You personally know hundreds of people there? That seems like quite a lot. How did you meet them?

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.

How do you deal with the ongoing devaluation of the bolivar currently?

Truthfully? There's no good answer, period.

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.

How is the USD helping the North Koreans?

No one claimed that Bitcoin is useful in NK so I don't get the point of the question.

They print USD. And perhaps buying methamphetamine -base-products from China or whereever is more plausably deniable or less WONG or whatever than f around with chinese bills. Whatever they do, they're doing all kinds of shit. And they print USD, or has, and, everything else they do isn't really great, all the time. They counterfeit USD and probably tons of other shit. All the 'coinage' in paper-form from everywhere around the country or the world probably, bar the 3d and biometric and advanced shit probably. It's all shit over there man. In terms of the governance, governing, it's not good!

The point is that yes, an authoritarian government can definitely just shut down bitcoin, so authoritarian government resistance is not a feature of bitcoin.

Sorry for late answer.

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

Thanks for this. Given the level of ungrounded Bitcoin hype that's always going on, I'm not surprised to hear it. Once again, Bitcoin turns out to be mainly useful for light financial crime.

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