Why are Venezuelan not switching to Bitcoin?

[DebitMe]

Is there anyone from Venezuala who is willing to ship their currency to me?  I am looking for a few hundred US dollars worth of Bolivars, and there will be a nice profit for the person who sends them to me.

[buwaytress]

Two arguments here stand out. How on earth can people abandon fiat for bitcoin when:

1. Blockchain simply cannot handle the extra 20 million transacts that will come daily (very conservative estimate). Should people wait 2 or 3 days to ensure they aren't victims of double spends?

2. Should electricy and internet get disrupted (a lot for more than half its population) are people going to simply pause trade and commerce?

[audaciousbeing]

Is there any law that say any country suffering inflation must switch to inflation. So if all Venezualans now switch to Bitcoin which is just 16million in addition to the number of people already involved what will now happen. Will they be better of or worse of than the current situation. Countries all over the world have suffered inflation at a particular point of time and what really reduce the effect of currency is sound economic policies and not just adoption of specific currency alone.

[FinanceUS]

Two arguments here stand out. How on earth can people abandon fiat for bitcoin when:

1. Blockchain simply cannot handle the extra 20 million transacts that will come daily (very conservative estimate). Should people wait 2 or 3 days to ensure they aren't victims of double spends?

2. Should electricy and internet get disrupted (a lot for more than half its population) are people going to simply pause trade and commerce?

Good points here. I'd added that still many people in this planet don't know what Bitcoin is.

One can't ask people in Venezuelan all switch to use Bitcoin when significant percentage of people there knows nothing about Bitcoin.

[Barbut]

Two arguments here stand out. How on earth can people abandon fiat for bitcoin when:

1. Blockchain simply cannot handle the extra 20 million transacts that will come daily (very conservative estimate). Should people wait 2 or 3 days to ensure they aren't victims of double spends?

2. Should electricy and internet get disrupted (a lot for more than half its population) are people going to simply pause trade and commerce?

Beside that people don't understand how many complications can this switching bring to people. What will happen with all the people without internet, and in far villages without any signal? If its easy for us here, that doesn't mean this will be easy for millions of people who live and work in Venezuela. This switching can create chaos in their country, they first need to understand blockchain in order to adopt it.

[abayan]

Two arguments here stand out. How on earth can people abandon fiat for bitcoin when:

1. Blockchain simply cannot handle the extra 20 million transacts that will come daily (very conservative estimate). Should people wait 2 or 3 days to ensure they aren't victims of double spends?

2. Should electricy and internet get disrupted (a lot for more than half its population) are people going to simply pause trade and commerce?

Good points here. I'd added that still many people in this planet don't know what Bitcoin is.

One can't ask people in Venezuelan all switch to use Bitcoin when significant percentage of people there knows nothing about Bitcoin.

Agree not all in venezuelan people know what is bitcoin or we cant say that they are really advance on technology so that they are capable on using bitcoin or converting to bitcoin. We should always think about technology in their country before talking about bitcoins.

[buwaytress]

Yeah... extremely naive to ask an entire population to just adopt bitcoin. Even if it were possible to do so, the outlay in tech investment and infrastructure (not even talking about internet yet, just phone lines and electricity) would dump the country in immediate and extreme debt.

Probably need to focus on the blockchain first and make it ready for mass adoption.

[severaldetails]

Two arguments here stand out. How on earth can people abandon fiat for bitcoin when:

1. Blockchain simply cannot handle the extra 20 million transacts that will come daily (very conservative estimate). Should people wait 2 or 3 days to ensure they aren't victims of double spends?

2. Should electricy and internet get disrupted (a lot for more than half its population) are people going to simply pause trade and commerce?

Good points here. I'd added that still many people in this planet don't know what Bitcoin is.

One can't ask people in Venezuelan all switch to use Bitcoin when significant percentage of people there knows nothing about Bitcoin.

Agree not all in venezuelan people know what is bitcoin or we cant say that they are really advance on technology so that they are capable on using bitcoin or converting to bitcoin. We should always think about technology in their country before talking about bitcoins.

People in Venezuela get screwd by their government every day.
That brings them to a general distrust against a lot of things.
What you can usually read about bitcoin in mainstream meadia is often not positive.
And when their first impression about bitcoin through the media was negative, I think there is distrust against bitcoin as well widely spread and will be hard to overcome.

[tyz]

No offense, but it would be helpful to explain why you want to buy Bolivars worth of several hundreds of US-Dollars which loses value from day to day. This sound a little bit odd when you do not provide a comprehensible explaination.

Is there anyone from Venezuala who is willing to ship their currency to me?  I am looking for a few hundred US dollars worth of Bolivars, and there will be a nice profit for the person who sends them to me.

[20kevin20]

How do you want them to be using Bitcoin when they cannot afford ANYTHING? Do you think they can afford a PC, a smartphone and... Most importantly, electricity bills?? They can't, so they cannot use any currency like Bitcoin (except for those that are rich out there).

[Supebox]

I just do think that its not need it to be honest and that duo to that they are not doing it.

[eternalgloom]

Two arguments here stand out. How on earth can people abandon fiat for bitcoin when:

1. Blockchain simply cannot handle the extra 20 million transacts that will come daily (very conservative estimate). Should people wait 2 or 3 days to ensure they aren't victims of double spends?

2. Should electricy and internet get disrupted (a lot for more than half its population) are people going to simply pause trade and commerce?

The Bitcoin network could handle it and transactions would still go through fine if you just add enough fees.
There will be services who will encounter problems, but if you just send coins personally you can guarantee your transaction is included in the next block by adding more fees.

[tee-rex]

Two arguments here stand out. How on earth can people abandon fiat for bitcoin when:

1. Blockchain simply cannot handle the extra 20 million transacts that will come daily (very conservative estimate). Should people wait 2 or 3 days to ensure they aren't victims of double spends?

2. Should electricy and internet get disrupted (a lot for more than half its population) are people going to simply pause trade and commerce?

The Bitcoin network could handle it and transactions would still go through fine if you just add enough fees.
There will be services who will encounter problems, but if you just send coins personally you can guarantee your transaction is included in the next block by adding more fees.

How could they possibly go through if there would be not enough room for them in the blocks? Only a small percentage of these transactions will get included with the rest being thrown away in a couple of days. Basically, it would mean that the majority of users won't be able to transact at all just because most transactions with be lost.

[Xester]

Yeah... extremely naive to ask an entire population to just adopt bitcoin. Even if it were possible to do so, the outlay in tech investment and infrastructure (not even talking about internet yet, just phone lines and electricity) would dump the country in immediate and extreme debt.

Probably need to focus on the blockchain first and make it ready for mass adoption.

Venezuela is a country who is suffering from poverty. It is one of the hostile countries due to conflicting political groups. Venezeluan cannot access bitcoin since people have more priority things to consider than just bitcoin. Large number of poor people dominates venezuela and their banks are in the brink of collapse. Poor people cannot purchase or avail any internet connection or own a pc or an android phone. They are relying solely in fiat currency since they have no access to bitcoin.

[STT]

How do you want them to be using Bitcoin when they cannot afford ANYTHING? Do you think they can afford a PC, a smartphone and... Most importantly, electricity bills?? They can't, so they cannot use any currency like Bitcoin (except for those that are rich out there).

This is really not true, what Venezuela lacks is innovation not wealth so much.  Its sad, I'd say they need capitalism and democracy but people will assume Im a radical or something.    This is the country with the worlds largest oil reserves for those who dont know.

Not the cheapest oil but the largest potential wealth per person on the planet.   They just have to be smart enough to extract this oil in an efficent way, I dont believe its anything as difficult as some of the Canadian oil which basically requires open mining.

They really do have the energy to produce electricity for bitcoin, I think this is a smart direction for them.  Instead we have China which does not have oil, not alot of energy per person and is reliant on rough coal burning quite alot.  The Chinese are using hydro power with alot of their bitcoin use, Venezuela could do this more easily I think but they need to engineer the correct extraction of their oil fields.  Under investment is most likely holding them back and now foreigners are too scared to 'help' as its seen as exploitive or profiteering in the political language that dominates

Venezuela  is poor because their political system has restricted free enterprise, thats my view of how events have gone there.  They make absolute laws to lock down people to what the overseers think is correct, a rich society gives credit to even the smallest elements who can come with a solution and profit from it.  Credit where credit is due, miss that and society becomes poor

[JANGKRIK BOSS]

A country to switch from currency to bitcoin surely required a lengthy process. The transition was at risk of incurring long-term economic recession, let alone no one can control the bitcoin. So when the prices go up and down in a quick, of course make the issue price of the goods in the country.

[tyz]

Two arguments here stand out. How on earth can people abandon fiat for bitcoin when:

1. Blockchain simply cannot handle the extra 20 million transacts that will come daily (very conservative estimate). Should people wait 2 or 3 days to ensure they aren't victims of double spends?

2. Should electricy and internet get disrupted (a lot for more than half its population) are people going to simply pause trade and commerce?

If electricy and internet should get disrupted then you can further pay with fiat of course but in a globalized and interconnected world as today, it will cause an economical crash and disruption. So that bitcoin can no longer be used as a payment then, is one of the smallest problems in such a situation I guess.
And it is not meant to use Bitcoin as a daily payment option but rather to save value in times of hyperinflation.

[Xester]

How do you want them to be using Bitcoin when they cannot afford ANYTHING? Do you think they can afford a PC, a smartphone and... Most importantly, electricity bills?? They can't, so they cannot use any currency like Bitcoin (except for those that are rich out there).

This is really not true, what Venezuela lacks is innovation not wealth so much.  Its sad, I'd say they need capitalism and democracy but people will assume Im a radical or something.    This is the country with the worlds largest oil reserves for those who dont know.

Not the cheapest oil but the largest potential wealth per person on the planet.   They just have to be smart enough to extract this oil in an efficent way, I dont believe its anything as difficult as some of the Canadian oil which basically requires open mining.

They really do have the energy to produce electricity for bitcoin, I think this is a smart direction for them.  Instead we have China which does not have oil, not alot of energy per person and is reliant on rough coal burning quite alot.  The Chinese are using hydro power with alot of their bitcoin use, Venezuela could do this more easily I think but they need to engineer the correct extraction of their oil fields.  Under investment is most likely holding them back and now foreigners are too scared to 'help' as its seen as exploitive or profiteering in the political language that dominates

Venezuela  is poor because their political system has restricted free enterprise, thats my view of how events have gone there.  They make absolute laws to lock down people to what the overseers think is correct, a rich society gives credit to even the smallest elements who can come with a solution and profit from it.  Credit where credit is due, miss that and society becomes poor

Yes the big fish in the industry can afford bitcoins, but what about the common masses. There is 76 to 80% of Venezuelas total population is below poverty line and that is why they have more things to consider rather than just accessing internet and buying bitcoins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Venezuela

Remember that Venezuela is considered as a murderous capital of the world and  that facts is given that people in Venezuela prioritize their safety rather than thinking of bitcoin.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/01/29/venezuelas-capital-worlds-most-murderous-city/79508586/

But it doesnt mean that there are no movement in Venezuela to use bitcoin, there are a few of course, and possibly in time they will increase in number. Hope the masses will also embrace bitcoin and not the elites only.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-bitcoin-idUSKCN0HX11O20141008

[X-ray]

How do you want them to be using Bitcoin when they cannot afford ANYTHING? Do you think they can afford a PC, a smartphone and... Most importantly, electricity bills?? They can't, so they cannot use any currency like Bitcoin (except for those that are rich out there).

Why you really think that most of people in venezuela are so poor that they can't afford such thing like a PC? If you go to the city there many people could afford that and even if they don't then they can simply go to the internet cafe which provide anything needed to connect to the internet

[cakravothy]

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 

bitcoin altcoin or another digital curency
can't replace and take over fiat money real money
in real life must use fiat money can transaction, without fiat money is very dificult
bitcoin until now noth physic only digital curency, and not regulate, so if use real life is very dificult and imposible can replace fiat money