Venezuela Trades Over $60 Million in 2019 So Far

Dima Zaitsev shares his thoughts on crypto’s role in mitigating political and economic turmoil.

Bitcoin adoption in Venezuela has surged in 2019 due to increasing economic instability in the country.

Venezuela is currently seeing heated political clashes between longtime President Maduro and opposition forces. Under Maduro, Venezuela’s economy collapsed, causing hyperinflation of the local currency, the Sovereign Bolivar, and making everyday essentials like food and medicine hard to come by.

In the face of crisis, Venezuelans have turned to Bitcoin to help preserve wealth and reliably transact. Bitcoin’s borderless nature insulates it from the destabilizing forces at work within the nation. Because crypto is decentralized, Venezuelans do not have to worry about the government tampering with monetary policy, which has been an issue in the country for years.

Since the beginning of 2019, Venezuelans have traded over $60 million in Bitcoin. Maduro noticed the drain of wealth from country’s economy into Bitcoin, but thankfully, can do very little to curtail it. The government introduced a 15 percent fee on BTC remittances, but it will likely prove impossible to enforce.

Dima Zaitsev is excited about the Venezuelan peoples’ scrappy economic moves, “Venezuela is proving what crypto enthusiasts predicted for years. Decentralized, borderless currencies work and prosper in the face of instability, acting as refuge from corruption and violence.”

In developed countries, Bitcoin was often decried for being far too volatile to reliably transact with, but Dima says that is changing, “volatility is relative, and we’ve seen Bitcoin stabilize significantly in the past few months.”