Editors Note: This article comes fromOrange Book (ID: chengpishu)Editors Note: This article comes from
Orange Book (ID: chengpishu)
Orange Book (ID: chengpishu)
, by José Rafael Peña, published with permission.
Regarding Venezuela, many people know that its exaggerated inflation is a model of the bad effects of the failure of the central banks monetary policy.
So for many digital currency believers, this country is naturally on their side.
But is this really the case? Perhaps only the people living there really know.
The author of this article is a Venezuelan citizen who has only accepted BTC for salary for more than 2 years, and recently paid for the medical expenses related to the birth of his child through Bitcoin.
But in his eyes, digital currency cannot save the country.
The following is the original text, enjoy:
9.30 is the day my child was born, thanks to my hard work and Bitcoin, my favorite little angel was born in Venezuela with dignity.
Surviving in this country is not easy. At the beginning of the year, a cup of coffee costs 450 VES (official currency), and by the end of September, the same coffee costs 14,000 VES. So I have only accepted Bitcoin for salary settlement for more than two years.
So when I knew I was going to be a dad, I started planning how I would pay for the associated medical bills.
My baby was born in a private clinic, and the price for delivery starts at $1,500, and the price for a cesarean section starts at $2,500. In fact, this is the relatively cheap private clinic I can find. Many clinics cost more than 6,000 US dollars for the birth of a child.
The minimum wage in Venezuela is 300,000VES, equivalent to 16 US dollars a month.
Here you may ask, why have you been denominating in US dollars?
I will tell you that due to inflation, people in Venezuela will pay attention to the VES/USD exchange rate. Compared with the US dollar, the commodities here are actually relatively stable. Merchants also accept direct payments in US dollars.
So why do I tend to use Bitcoin over USD in the long run?
If I want to exchange US dollars in Venezuela, I can only ask friends around me for help through social software such as instagram and whatsapp to see if they are willing to exchange some US dollars for me, then we agree on an exchange rate, and finally agree on an offline location. When transferring the VES to the bank, he gave me the cash in his hand.
Using Bitcoin is another story, I just need to sell my Bitcoin on LocalBitcoin, and after a while, the corresponding remittance will hit my bank account, of course sometimes you encounter a bad counterparty, the transaction may be cancelled.
Finally, another big reason to use bitcoin is that I have made money on the way up.
So is digital currency the savior of the Venezuelan people?
The phenomenon seen by the outside world is that on LocalBitcoin, Venezuela is the region with the best traffic.
。。。。
Digital currencies like Dash claim to have more than 2,500 merchants in Venezuela
Many startups always like to come to Venezuela to distribute airdrops.
The Venezuelan government has issued its own petro currency, promoted state-backed exchanges, and so on.
But the reality is that most of the people around me dont have virtual currency, for example, my family doesnt know how to buy Bitcoin at all.
For those merchants who claim to be supported, the actual situation may be that in a certain area, there are a few people who understand what digital currency is, and when this person is at that merchant, they support digital currency payments. Without that person, digital currency is useless.
As for the encouragement of national policies, it just makes Crypto less underground. If you ask a Venezuelan on the street what digital currency is, the answer with a high probability is still a scam.
In addition, there are some people who do not know the situation and want to come to Venezuela to mine, then you may pay a large amount of machine import duties. Another part of the risk comes from the chaotic government relationship. You have settled the tariff and persuaded an official to let you mine legally, but after a period of time, you may still be taken away by the police. If you do not have a direct relationship with the government, legal Mining is still difficult.
