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by firekvz 3047 days ago
Venezuelan here.

This won't work.

Our problems go way beyond having a way to store our wealth

It's literally impossible to do bitcoin transactions in normal circunstances because this is not San Francisco and your regular store doesn't even have internet access, we have one of the worts internet acess in the world [1].

Then there is the problem created by the violence/crime[2]. I myself have to leave my phone at home everytime I go out, there is no way to take public transportation regulary without suffering a robery, it's just so common that it became a meme within Venezuelans.

There has been so many cases where people has been killed over the most stupid and trivial things to the point that if you google from venezuela "lo mataron por ______" (Murdered because ____) you get pages and pages of crazy reasons of why venezuelans have killed other venezuelans. Fast examples:

Murdered for playing carnival (throwing water ballons to other ppl during carnival, venezuelan tradition) https://www.el-carabobeno.com/lo-mataron-de-un-disparo-por-j...

Murdered to steal 60$ he had on his pocket: http://runrun.es/nacional/337760/monitordevictimas-mataron-a...

So now imagine someone figures out that I have bitcoins and that they have a value of lets say 300$. There is no fucking way I will risk my life that way.

So in order to use bitcoin in Venezuela i have to do this:

1. Risk my life by having to pull my phone or using my phone outside.

2. Risk my life by letting others know that I own/hold bitcoin.

The merchant has to:

1. Fight all the problems to be able to accept it (electricity problems, internet access).

2. Hope that someone doesnt just come into your store and steal your hardware.

3. Gov crazy actions.

------

[1] http://www.speedtest.net/global-index/venezuela

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Venezuela

3 comments

If you could choose between bolivares and some valuable cryptocurrency, what would you choose?
Obviously I would pick any crypto or any other currency everytime over VEF but thats just wealth storage.

It doesn't fix our economics problems, it doesn't fix our social problems.

And thats what this post was about, the guy intends to fix our economy or "Solve Venezuela’s Hyperinflation" by just giving away free bitcoins.

P.S: Me (and every other venezuelan) would gladly take the free bitcoin. But it will just make me have some extra $ held in some bitcoin wallet, I won't ever use it to go "buy coffe", most likely every young venezuelan who gets free bitcoin will use it to leave the country and scape from this madness

It pains me to hear that the situation is so dire in your country. Are there any plans to bring internet to the masses?
What happened to the 160 TONNES of Gold that Chavez repatriated in 2011? Where did that go??

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-15900885

Noone really knows but i guess they are slowly doing this: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-economy/venezue...
> Venezuelan here.

Thank you for injecting your experience. Its always good to see comments from people who are actually there!