Bitcoin Forum

Due to rampant inflation/corruption in Venezuela, quite a substantial percentage of the population had chucked their investments into btc.

Looks like the political problem might be resolved shortly, if it does btc will fall if currency controls are relaxed and the population feel more comfortable.

Expect a 15/20% fall as a result.

There are no Venezuelan exchanges worth bothering with. Venezuelan volumes on Localbitcoins are the easiest accessible metric. Volume last week was 1100 BTC. That's nothing.

Venezuela has zero effect on prices. It being transformed by the power of crypto is a story rolled out by Bitcoin fans to make themselves feel more special.

If you bought btc in Venezuela your probably smart enough not to use a local exchange. So yes your right but that wan't my point.

Without an exchange there's no way of setting the price. Localbitcoins will create its own prices either by referring abroad or settling on what local people will accept which is the more likely one considering how hopeless the local economy is. Both scenarios mean Venezuela has absolutely no effect on the Bitcoin price.

Locals can't get to foreign exchanges to dump or buy so there is no wider effect no matter what happens there. We see this in plenty of countries. In Iran the price was double the market rate elsewhere for a while. It's in a bubble so it'll be ignored by everywhere else.

Well not since the internet was removed, but prior to that, lots of the population bought btc from foreign exchanges for various reasons. Suspect this money will be repatriates soonish.

Any article to share about the political turmoil in Venezuela getting resolved?

Do you have statistics to verify that indeed Venezuela holds as much as 15%-20%? Because I'm assuming that this is your argument in the beginning.

But If I have bitcoins stash somewhere else, I just wouldn't dump it right away just because the political problem has been resolved. Based on my experienced living in a country wherein a political dictator was ousted many years ago and a promise of a new system and change, our country still hasn't improved and corruption/inflation still exists even today. Not a smart moved for Venezuelan to "crazy dump".

Venezuela is very small economically. And the use of Bitcoin over there was a lot more marketing than something concrete, unfortunately. It will not have big impacts if there is a big sale of BTC over there. Even because the economy will still be destroyed for a long time. And there is still a possibility of some internal strife and perhaps even civil war.

btw, Trump has recognizes opposition leader as president (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/23/enezuela-trump-president-juan-guaido-maduro-recognition-news-latest)

Venezuela is the least of your problems as a BTC hodler. The USD is racking up trillions upon trillions worth of debt, Trump has the government on freeze for all time records, Euro is facing a massive crisis with Brexit, Greece and other countries.

This is a time for gold and Bitcoin. If anything, it is a always a time for gold and Bitcoin. Since when can you trust with 100% of your portfolio in non-neutral assets? it's a dumb idea.
But specially given the current geopolitical clusterfuck I don't find good arguments to dump Bitcoin and gold and go all in on the S&P500 and similar.

wrong.
mostly because you have to way of proving this and your stats saying "substantial percentage of population" is only your guess. there has been an increase in number of people investing in bitcoin and getting involved with it but most of it was NOT because of corruption,... it was due to the fact that cryptocurrencies have been advertised a lot in the past two years because they wanted to introduce their own cryptocurrency (Petrol) and needed the awareness increased.

@gentlemand mentioned an important fact, additionally Venezuelans aren't trading bitcoin on regular exchanges such as Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp,... which are determining the price which means whether they buy or sell it won't change the price.

Under these circumstances, Bitcoin can only be updated in Venezuela itself. On the world market of cryptocurrency, this will not have significant value. Just why the communists are falling in Venezuela? Is the Maduro regime communist? In addition, the military coup there the other day failed, several dozen military arrested. Another thing is interesting: how will pensioners survive there, receiving a pension in El-Petro?

Venezuela's economy will take a long time to recover, so the Bitcoin sales will continue for a few more years. We thought that the political change in Zimbabwe would fix all their economic problems when President Mugabe was removed, but we were wrong, because the streets are burning and the authorities are killing people again.

Political changes does not guarantee immediate economic recovery in a country.  ;) Also, many of those Bitcoin buyers will not trust the government and they will hold those bitcoins as security.  ;)

This is wrong on many accounts. Most people did not buy bitcoins for holding (some did of course), but mostly to evade the draconian exchange control in both directions. A Venezuelan can't easily buy USD, but can buy BTC and sell it for USD. If someone wants to send USD to the country, doing it directly will most likely either be seized or forced thru an absurd "official" exchange where they are valued half of the street prize. So again, buy BTC with your USD, send those BTC, and the local sells the BTC for VES (local fiat, currently the world's worst inflation, above a million percent a year).

As others have told you this would NOT affect bitcoin's price on a global scale. In fact, if the socialist regime falls, the economy would flourish and it would mean more wealth and bitcoin purchases. After all, it is harder to invest in bitcoin when your monthly wage is under 8 USD a month...

As for exchanges, localbitcoins is the only one that matters. The others are garbage, nearly zero volume or outright scammers.

@OP I don't know why you are focusing on a small country. Small economy countries won't affect the world economy too much. I'm more worried if the top-20 countries by GDP collapse. Moreover, historically, the 3rd world (or developing) countries never became the technology driver. Technology adoption always came from the developed countries first.*

*CMIIW

is there really a connection between venezuela, being a communists type of government and the bitcoin or rather the crypto world, i dont see any connection between these three so it means it wont affect the price of bitcoin in the crypto market. And i dont think venezuelan had a greater impact in crypto world as of these days.

How much of the total amount of BTC in the world can be in Venezuela?

We might be scared if there is the same situation in one of the Asian countries, but I think Venezuela's influence is not great.

I don't think we should think about the relationship between the Venezuela falling and btc falling. Because clearly, there isn't any relationship between the two. Both are different parties in different aspects. And when it comes to the rise or fall of bitcoin, no one really knows what will happen in the future. Every thing you read is just a mere speculation.

lol...I have never seen a so deep analysis on price bassd on Venezuela and their so called economic problems like this before. Anyway i think you're a bit right because every single entity in the cryptospace is important at this time but one thing I believe is that Venezuela has little effect on the overall performance of Bitcoin in terms of volume, trading, transactions of use cases, etc. I'd be more concerned about Europe/America and some Asian countries (Japan, South Korea)

Its going to get resolved one way or the other, watch the news.

You don't need to sell 15% to make the market fall 15%. You should really know this if you're playing the markets.

That's what I was going to say.

Venezuela economy is tiny. In a country where 1 USD is enough money to live for some days/weeks, they really can't have no impact in BTC price.

BTC is something for very closed circles I'm Venezuela. Only people with very high financial and cultural standards are buying/mining.

And if the economy recovers there, it will be very good for bitcoin, in my opinion.

If there is somehow a higher adoption there, when the economy recovers those adopters may increase their holdings if they have a better financial situation.

Economy of Venezuela will take a long time to recover, so the Bitcoin sales will continue for a few more years. Anyway, Venezuela should be always thankful to cryptocurrency for saving their country from economic downfall because of the hyperinflation rate they have been experienced many years ago.

I don't see myself celebrating a psychopathic government that forces men to hunt rats on the streets to feed their families just because they will buy my bags and pump my gambling coins.
I'm extremely happy about Venezuelans and hope that political change does indeed happen. Hopefully Russia and China don't intervene like they've announced.

I agree with gentlemand that Venezualans probably don't own enough money to make a difference. Bitcoin's daily trading volume is currently 5 billion dollars. Bitcoin is mainly traded for USDT and USD. Fiat curencies that matter here are those of the main Asian countries (China, Japan, South Korea). There could probably cause a 15-20% fall if they acted together, but Venezuela is a very poor country. Moreover, I don't think that politicial issues that have been going for a while there can really be resolved shortly, as you say.

Because every damn time anything worth mentioning in the news is happening somebody finds a way to link it to a new bull or bear run for BTC, no matter how far fetch and stretched and packed and unpacked it is.

The average wage is 5$, 5 (five) f-i-v-e dollars a month!!!!!
There are currently ~ 20 million left in the country with less than half of them working.

How could they ever influence the price or what you have to drink or smoke to imagine it is beyond me.


Yeah, cause it is so damn easy for a guy in Venezuela to send a wire to a bank in hong kong.
Especially since the wire fee is about 5 monthly wages.

- What is the percentage that each person bought in bitcoins?

- What was the value that each person bought in bitcoins?


even if Guaido proclaims himself president of venezuela, unfortunately Maduro still has support from the military, the judiciary and the police. he has control of many things, this problem will not be solved so soon


 ???

Looks like some people are under the delusion that some appointed guy in a suit self-proclaiming itself the president of Venezuela suddenly solves the fiat clusterfuck crisis. Even if it's backed by big nations, you have to be naive to not see that US involvement is mostly due they seeing a nice set of resources to take from Venezuela. I want to make it clear that im not supporting the socialist shithole delivered by Maduro, but neither im deluded enough to not see that USA doesn't really care about the people suffering there, they just want the oil and gold. Now if the side effect of all this intervention is positive it's yet to be seen. My main point is, the underlying fiat weakness is still there no matter how many times the presidents are switched around, so I don't see how any of this doesn't fall into a case of permabull Bitcoin long term regardless of outcome.

Guaido did not proclaim himself, he was proclaimed by the National Assembly, the Legislative branch that Maduro decided to outlaw because he and his group feels omnipotent to do anything they please. The so called "support" is eroding faster than the bolivar, precisely because Maduro thinks the economy is only for imperialist pigs or something.

The situation is deteriorating fast, because many countries recognize Guaido but not Maduro, for example the United States. Maduro in anger just ordered all US personnel from the US Embassy out of the country, but the US gov. refuses to comply because Maduro is illegitimate and lost the authority to dictate Venezuela's foreign policy. In fact, diplomats from various countries are already presenting credentials to Guaido.

So what is Maduro going to do now, attack the embassy? Good luck with that... You will see how truly thin is this "support" Maduro really has. His government is falling to pieces, and he himself is accelerating the process. There are rumors the military might turn at any moment, and the police is a joke, more like a band of criminals in uniform. Oh and the judiciary? Those appointed to the supreme court by him and the 2nd in command? They simply obey because they themselves have criminal records. It is a gang, with boss, lieutenant, tugs, etc.

Whatever happens in Venezuela the effect on bitcoin is ZERO, the OP is wrong.

Some good points in this thread. And some pretty bad ones.

I thought that Venezuela was doing ok with its crypto? Before all those political nonsense has begun it demonstrated a good attitude to crypto in general. Hope they'll cope with it.

The "political nonsense" started years ago (arguably decades ago), it was only slowly getting to boiling point. Precisely because of this nonsense (socialist economy) the local fiat was thrown in the garbage, and people desperately sought for ways to survive, one way is crypto.

After things change, i think people will remember fondly about true crypto (Bitcoin) and be positive for future legislation. While the current illegitimate government made a facade of a crypto, and also made a facade of being "crypto friendly" (they aren't, just to their close "friends"), it turned out to be a huge disappointment. A state backed ICO scam.

Irrelevant since 100% of Venezuela trading goes OTC on Localbitcoins (well maybe not %100 since I think there are some marginal exchanges but anecdotal volume)


Guaido seems like the textbook US-appointed actor to take over another oil-filled country. But nontheless Maduro is a nutcase, he said the help that was being sent to Venezuela (food and other basic goods) were poisoned or cancerous, the situation is just insane, I don't see good outcomes. Maduro will not give up, is probably going to end up like Gadafi. Venezuela will become another US colony, but overall life quality will probably rise so most people will not care.

I don't think that if Venezuelan public will start selling all their bitcoin's at once. There are many reasons as to why this will not happen.
If at all the political problem get resolved, we are not sure that it will even create an impact on bitcoin's price since the Venezuelan dominance over bitcoin is not so great.
Besides that bitcoin's price is already low so do you think people will start selling all their coins at such a low price when they bitcoin can grow so huge in a short time.