Why are Venezuelan not switching to Bitcoin?

[Divitiae miserae]

Jesus Christ I need to get down there and buy some property while the getting is good.

Bitcoin is great for exactly this kind of thing but I'm sure the US dollar works just as well, and so would any other stable currency.

Real estate in Venezuela is the store of value par excellence and prices are quite high even at the black market rate. You can see it yourself.
As techgeek has said it'd be a bet, specifically on the rise of the oil price.

@Yakamoto
Who undestands Bitcoin has the capacity for eluding Internet censorship.

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[tyz]

The prices for real estates on this site are in the Venezuelan currency. This is actually not a proof of high real estates prices because the currency is loosing value form day to day. When you could show me a site where prices are in US-Dollar then i would believe you. Further, the market for real estates in Venezuela is restricted for foreign investors. But this is the prerequisite for good price development.

Jesus Christ I need to get down there and buy some property while the getting is good.

Bitcoin is great for exactly this kind of thing but I'm sure the US dollar works just as well, and so would any other stable currency.

Real estate in Venezuela is the store of value par excellence and prices are quite high even at the black market rate. You can see it yourself.
As techgeek has said it'd be a bet, specifically on the rise of the oil price.

@Yakamoto
Who undestands Bitcoin has the capacity for eluding Internet censorship.

[Barbut]

The Venezuelan people are suffering under high inflation (official inflation rate is 124%, inofficial rate is 720%). Why do they not switch to Bitcoin or alternative coins? Do they not know about Bitcoin or do they do not have access to Bitcoin buying options? This is really a mystery for me 

Becouse bitcoin is p2p any gov will not switch to any p2p currency,thay will loose power over people that way

Nothing more to add. They just can't allow it, cause they will lose all power over the people of that country. I think this is exactly the case with whole world. Bitcoin need to grow much more before something like that happen, in some moments I doubt we will be alive to see that. Hope die last.

[Divitiae miserae]

The prices for real estates on this site are in the Venezuelan currency. This is actually not a proof of high real estates prices because the currency is loosing value form day to day. When you could show me a site where prices are in US-Dollar then i would believe you. Further, the market for real estates in Venezuela is restricted for foreign investors. But this is the prerequisite for good price development.

I thought division was taught at the elementary school.

Consider this apartment randomly chosen: one billion bolivars

Now consider the latest black market rate:


1,000,000,000 VEF / 1096.15 VEF/USD = 912,283.90 USD

The premise is that you already have the dollars in the country and that you manage to convert all of them at the highest possible rate.
Also, it's not hard nor expensive to find nominees, come on.

[Divitiae miserae]

Most of the time, if not always, it's not necessary to convert your dollars as they're well accepted so it's a matter of bargaining over the exchange rate.

[MTBTT]

I think Venezuela can still count their currencies to survive. VEF is still very strong. rate to the dollar is still strong enough
so there is no reason for them to leave their currency

[Divitiae miserae]

Last June the IMF inflation forecast for this year was 720%. Considering that inflation is defined as the annual price rise of a given basket of goods, when most of them are no longer available, conceptually, inflation would be infinite relative to those unavailable goods (you can pay an infinite amount of money but you still receive nothing).

The current minimum monthly wage is 15,051.17 VEF or 13.73 dollars at the black market rate. Hardly and indication of strength.

[lemmyK]

Sadly said country sits on  enormous oil wealth. . And can not get the most out of it after good high prices on crude..
 After that there is a huge mental problem on a massive scale. Certainly from people in  venezuela do not expect some use bitcoin . Absolutely not.
  Socialism in venezuela not fail, but something else... people.. and over again and again

[Divitiae miserae]

Oil was a blessing as well as a curse for Venezuela: the country is suffering from a severe case of Dutch disease and if you add the fact that the extractive industry is a simple source of revenue which can be easily seized by the Government to fund unproductive activities and countless subsidies, all other economic activities get crowded out. When the price of the only asset you have plummets Mrs misery quickly arrives.
Of course, the sheer scale of the mismanagement and corruption only worsened the situation.

[expert4knowledge]

Bitcoin is not a stable coin, suppose they change to bitcoin and in one day bitcoin price collapse. Then the economy collapses badly.

You do not seem to realize they are currently experiencing hyperinflation. Even if BTC goes down in dollar terms it is still probably gaining strength in Venezuela's currency. BTC would be much more stable and save wealth than VEF at this point, without a doubt.

I know but even in that case BTC is not trustable, another problem for BTC is that it is an electronic currency and they needs lots of infrastructures for using it and also the price change in seconds so in different hours of a day for buying a kilo of potato people must pay different amounts of bitcoin.

The price is already changing on a daily basis. It increases.Aleays  At least with BTC it would depreciate in price. That is not a price variation they would mind. The problem is as you say infrastructure not price stability. Price stability has nothing to do with why it has not been adopted. BTC would be far superior to VEF.

But such switching is very expensive and suppose bitcoin comes back to previous days that changed a lot, I do not consider such transformation a long term solution.

[tyz]

But the question is how easy you can get US-Dollars or other stable foreign currencies in Venezuela in these times?
I guess you need to get it from the black market. This however means that  there is a big extra charge on it. For that reason, aquiring Bitcoins is cheaper and more saver.

Most of the time, if not always, it's not necessary to convert your dollars as they're well accepted so it's a matter of bargaining over the exchange rate.

[Divitiae miserae]

@tyz
If you have bolivars you pay in bolivars. I was considering the hypothesis of a foreigner with greenbacks who wants to acquire real estate in Venezuela.
As I said, rich Venezuelans don't need Bitcoin to preserve their wealth and, as far as I'm concerned, its main use is for remittances, that's why it is cheaper than it would be if it were quoted in "black" dollars: Bitcoin local market is permanently skewed to the sell side.
Bear in mind that there is no such thing as middle class in this tropical country.

[Evildrum]

Did not even think about looking into real estate, nice way to kill some time online.
It seems to be a catch 22 for most of these economically challenged areas. If we could brainstorm a way to get Countries like this interested it coul reflect well for us all.
Atms to costly but some kind of service around the cell phone.

[Hirose UK]

why should they? they even arrested two guy that were mining there, i see no reason for them to embrace bitcoin, after that thing happened

agree with that statement. since they arrested two people because of mining, I think they hate bitcoin. or probably they don't really know how bitcoin works or they're affraid of bitcoin power that can't be controlled by them.

[Divitiae miserae]

@Hirose UK @Amph

They were arrested because they didn't have the necessary import paperwork for their equipment (everything is a bureaucratic mess there) and also because there were references to the black dollar rate alongside the bitcoin price, if I understand correctly.

Consider also that the country is plagued with rolling blackouts which are even threatening Venezuela's sole source of income, which is why the two guys got in trouble in the first place: the State electric power organization Corpoelec detected an unreasonable consumption spike in the city of Valencia, where miners were based, as a result of mining.

[alyssa85]

According to the following article dated 8 March 2016 Venezuelans are switching to bitcoin:

http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/the-stunning-rise-of-bitcoin-venezuela/

[Divitiae miserae]

@alyssa85

The only exchange in Venezuela, SurBitcoin, couldn't cope with the new registration requests, got one of their bank accounts blocked due to the activity surge, their only employee working in Venezuela allegedly was arrested by the SEBIN (the poor guy received no assistance or support by the exchange owners) and now it looks like they have internal liquidity issues judging by customers' complaints on their Facebook page (their site is paved with grammatical errors and they don't have Twitter, ergo caveat emptor).

In October the exchange had a daily volume of 200 BTC, far more than nowadays.

[tyz]

@alyssa85

The only exchange in Venezuela, SurBitcoin, couldn't cope with the new registration requests, got one of their bank accounts blocked due to the activity surge, their only employee working in Venezuela allegedly was arrested by the SEBIN (the poor guy received no assistance or support by the exchange owners) and now it looks like they have internal liquidity issues judging by customers' complaints on their Facebook page (their site is paved with grammatical errors and they don't have Twitter, ergo caveat emptor).

In October the exchange had a daily volume of 200 BTC, far more than nowadays.

Thanks for this extensive post with all the useful links. I read through all articles. To me it seems as if the Venezuelan government really afraid of Bitcoin. That a Bitcoin exchange has less volume compared to the times when the crisis was less strong, speaks volumes for me.

[Divitiae miserae]

Well, frankly, president Maduro could decree Bitcoin to be illegal overnight.

To me one of SurBitcoin managers, Rodrigo Souza, made two fatal errors:

• showing the bitcoin price also in dollars in his exchange (reckless and useless as a. you can't trade dollars there and b. there are countless other pages which show the price in dollars) thereby giving a pretext to the SEBIN to initiate an investigation;
  
• he reacted to the Venezuelan State television VTV legally unfounded reports by saying they were conducting a "false propaganda", which is true, but voicing dissenting opinions against the dictatorial establishment isn't very helpful.
  

Had he stayed under the radar SurBitcoin and their customers would be faring much better.

[HeroCat]

Then some rich guy must buy computer for each venezuelan and also pay for Internet connection. This can cost a lot, so it is not so easy task - there are around 20 millions people, who need computer. Check here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Venezuela