[conmarap]

Venezuela has had a long history of high inflation, much like Turkey. The problem is not that, it's that people lost faith in the currency and all the non-circulated (ie savings or foreign reserves) came into circulation again very fast, flooding the market and ultimately causing hyperinflation.

[beojan]

> it's that people lost faith in the currency

What do you think happens when you devalue your currency to pay your debts?

[conmarap]

High inflation due to government-initiated devaluation has happened even in the US, but it didn't result in a hyperinflation. The Weimar Republic is a good example of a government that got screwed because of this.

What makes hyperinflation unique is that the price is ultimately sunk by the actions of panicked citizens who rush to spend their fiat currency because they think that it won't have value in the coming days/weeks/months. This is like a domino effect and eventually everyone jumps on the bandwagon, thus flooding the market with currency that wasn't circulating or contributing to the GDP.

Hyperinflation usually comes right after a short-lived deflationary period which, in turn, comes after a very long period of high inflation (10-30% typically). You can clearly see the pattern in Venezuela's inflation chart: https://www.businessinsider.com/venezuela-hyperinflation-cha...

Because of this $1 equals 206941.00 Venezuelan Bolivar, up from $1=119k Bolivar from a month ago, which in turn was up from $1=10 Bolivar from February (according to Google - not sure how accurate it is).

[beojan]

I think that's the mostly useless official exchange rate rather than the defacto one.