[davidgerard]

Literally all coverage of Venezuela and bitcoin has come from bitcoin promoters, interesting-sounding claims being reprinted without verification. None of it I've seen traces back to anywhere else.

What we actually see: 370 BTC a week on LocalBitcoins, which is negligible in the context of the country.

The closest to a verifiable claim: that miners who were stealing electricity were arrested. Of course, stealing the electricity has long been a favoured Bitcoin mining strategy.

[lunulata]

@discodave Billions of dollars moved around is actual wealth that has impact on the "world outside the blockchain". A lot of cryptocurrency is being exchanged for goods and services outside of the blockchain. Considering the amount of wealth being exchanged with cryptocurrency it has more impact on the real world than 99% of businesses or startups have or will ever have.