Venezuela: Crypto's law is enacted

[YOSHIE]

I don't know whether this post is good or bad, the point is that at the Bitcointalk Forum there are still those who care about the country of Venezuela, which is still the neighbor of the United States, I personally still support you there.
I have friends in Venezuela, and he told me about the crypto that is happening in his country right now, in the development of crypto he is now telling,
On January 31, 2019, the government decree by outlet announced in official government media, the official RRU Crypto, in Venezuela, applied the rules of miners, crypto entrepreneurs, which were approved by the National Constituent Assembly of Venezuela. This provided a positive definition of the key crypto termsuch as crypto assets, Blockchain, mining, cryptography, Bitcoin etc., to introduce the concept of sovereign crypto assets - any currency issued in Venezuela and authorized by the government.
"Whether this will work about crypto in Venezuela is now facing a severe economic and political crisis. Petro oil is nothing but a" curtain of smoke "to cover hyperinflation."
I am very concerned, about the current situation in Venezuela, with this enactment, hopefully it can rise up the economy in that country, keep the spirit of this comrade the beginning of goodness for your country.

[logfiles]

Not a bad post but this would do better at least in the Politics & Society.
The Meta board is majorly about forum developments, appeals, and feedback from people about the new changes.
So if you can just press the move button for a better discussion there.

[poochpocket]

Yes, this is a very great news for the whole crypto community, and it states that cryptocurrency can help any country to form a stable economy and it is a perfect alternative to the current corrupt economy in every country.

This will prove as an example to many other economically unstable country's that crypto can make any economy stable and smoothly working in many ways.

[Artemis3]

I have friends in Venezuela, and he told me about the crypto that is happening in his country right now, in the development of crypto he is now telling,
On January 31, 2019, the government decree by outlet announced in official government media, the official RRU Crypto, in Venezuela, applied the rules of miners, crypto entrepreneurs, which were approved by the National Constituent Assembly of Venezuela. This provided a positive definition of the key crypto termsuch as crypto assets, Blockchain, mining, cryptography, Bitcoin etc., to introduce the concept of sovereign crypto assets - any currency issued in Venezuela and authorized by the government.

This "law" is technically void, but it would take too long to explain here the parallel congress installed by Maduro's regime. Its formally called a "constituent decree", take what you will from the meaning of that... According to Maduro, the National Constituent Assembly is above the constitution...

But for those who still foresee operating under the de-facto goverment, the document has things like:

• Miners and anything crypto related must be registered (and you thought KYC in exchanges was bad...).
• If you don't have a "mining permit", you can get heavy fines, around 18k USD.
• Any startups, anyone making a wallet, coin or exchange must be registered to Sunacrip.
• Sunacrip will establish and collect taxes the registrants have to pay for their activities.
• This institution will also carry out inspections and can seize equipment and assets from people who are deemed outside of the "decree".

The document is located here: http://www.minci.gob.ve/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Gaceta-Oficial-Decreto-Constituyente-sobre-el-Sistema-Integral-de-Criptoactivos.pdf

As things go in Venezuela, that document is conveniently NOT in text form, but is printed and then scanned (as idiotic as that sounds). So no google translate without OCRing the thing first...

[tvbcof]

From my own personal day-1 in crypto-land I've seen real distributed crypto-currencies as a way for individuals to voice their support for efforts they find agreeable and voice their dis-satisfaction with entities who are, or who become, dis-agreeable.

This capability is significantly less practical under a debt-based monetary framework such as the privately owned and very secretive fiat monetary systems controlled by central banks.  These have been dominant in the recent past.  Some people call these 'Rothschild bank' systems, but the inherent lack of transparency makes it practically impossible to confirm or deny this contention.

A small but interesting set of nations are said to not harbor a 'Rothschild Bank.'  Syria, Iran, and North Korea.  Of course this sounds good (the the conspiracy theorist's ear) but it's difficult judge how accurate the contention is.

Anyway, I'll take a strong look at the crypto-currency efforts of political entities who are unwilling to 'take the mark' so-to-speak.  If only for strategic reason that if they can pull it off it will be helpful toward a situation where control of currency in a monetary system is not as much of a 'free lunch' as it has been over the last few hundred years.

[tvbcof]

Let's design an ideal 'crypto-currency' for a nation under sanction from the existing monetary titans/private owners (currently the so-called 'petro-dollar' world reserve currency.)

Let's use Venezuala as an example, but there are others past, present, and future.

The elected government of Venezuela has certain needs for the people of the country.  Weapons to fight invaders, food and medicine for her citizens, etc, etc.  In natural resources, Venezuela is quite wealthy in oil and gold.  The sanctions are designed to make it difficult for the current government, and future 'objectionable' governments, to capitalize on the nation's wealth.

Venezuela can use her resources as a 'reserve currency' but still needs an 'exchange currency' to get the things she needs to survive.  Note that the 'exchange', meaning the 'circulation', is what the sanctions attack.  The end-goal of the current operations against Venezuela is, of course, to capture Venezuela's 'reserve currency' in the form of resources and hand control back to multi-national corporations, and again, depriving Venezuela of an exchange currency via sanctions for long enough is hoped to achieve this effect.

I suggest the following design:

• Complete and guaranteed transparency to that 'investors' can be confident that they won't get cheated.  FULL 'open-source'.
  
  (The 'modern' banking system relies on secrecy and opacity to serve the purposes of it's owners.  The opposite is the goal here.  Everyone should be able to assess certain parameters of every unit of value.)
  
  
• Accrual of claims on reserve assets (oil, gold) based on the number of 'circulations' of a particular coin.  That is the metric which defines the value to the people of Venezuela.  The 'sanctions-busting' numeric.
  
  (This exchange currency is not 'fungible' and not meant to be.  The trusted authority will devalue, deprecate, and remove from circulation coins which don't move.  Conversely they can enhance the value of coins which circulate a lot.  This thwarts a common form of attack involving simply buying up a currency (by a well funded and dedicated attacker) and burying it in the back-yard leading to death by inflation.)
  
  
• The currency would be fully 'pre-mined' by the issuer and proof-of-stake giving the trusted entity (whether the current elected government or some other entity) full control and immunity from superior resource attacks (e.g., 51%.)  I would suggest that the design calls for migration to a proof-of-work scheme over time, though with a 'shuffle' of algorithms to avoid ASIC development.  Alternatively, the currency could EOL when the threat of loss of 'reserve' is gone and the reserve tokens are paid off (via drilling, gold mining, etc.)

The flow would be something like this:

• sanctions-buster gets guns, intelligence, food, penicillin, whatever into the country.  Get's paid in Boliv-coin issued by the trusted authority.
• sanctions-buster exchanges Boliv-coin on the open market for other crypto or whatever.
• Boliv-coin speculator buys from sanction-buster (or his broker) and redeems Boliv-coin as a claim on future reserve assets.
• Boliv-coin is re-circulated by trusted authority at an increased value based on the number of circulation cycles.

It can be anticipated that the 'Boliv-coin speculators' will often be insiders from the current banking system operating on their own (just like what happened with Bitcoin in the early days) and scum-bags like Soros.  That's fine because

• it will only help the true goal which is circulation, and
• these scumbags may be less inclined to help the existing power structures win if they will do better by capitalizing on their own speculation in the success of their personal asset claims.

---

The down-side for the current elected government is that 'anyone can do it'.  The side which seems most likely to both

•  A) prevail in obtaining or retaining control of the reserve assets
•  B) actually make good on paying off the speculators

will have the most well performing 'exchange currency'.  That is, as long as the 'speculators' are driven entirely by greed, but this is not necessarily a rock solid assumption.

[Artemis3]

Let's design an ideal 'crypto-currency' for a nation under sanction from the existing monetary titans/private owners (currently the so-called 'petro-dollar' world reserve currency.)

Let me counter your proposal: Legalize bitcoin. Allow both the crypto and the fiat to coexist, people get to freely choose in which to pay and be paid with. Same thing some countries have with the USD running in parallel to their local fiat.

I don't particularly like when politicians attempt to make their own coin, because they mess with it in ways they don't fully understand, and degrade it back to an even worse version of the fiat it was intending to replace. If we just legalize bitcoin, that remains completely out of their control, perfect.

I would like to remind you that Venezuela is not "under sanction", specific individuals of Maduro's regime are. But in case a country did wanted to put another under sanction, most cryptos would be suitable to evade that.

The big irony is that in Venezuela, the only sanctioned are the people by its own regime that imposed severe controls to foreign currency exchange...

PS: "Trusted authority" is anathema to decentralization and transparency...
And Maduro is the one rejecting the humanitarian aid that is piling in the borders, we shall see if the people can break this self imposed blockade soon...

[DayTrader27]

Amazing. What does it mean for Venezuelans? Would you be able to trade with Crypto?

[mayo2u]

This "law" is technically void, but it would take too long to explain here the parallel congress installed by Maduro's regime. Its formally called a "constituent decree", take what you will from the meaning of that... According to Maduro, the National Constituent Assembly is above the constitution...

But for those who still foresee operating under the de-facto goverment, the document has things like:

• Miners and anything crypto related must be registered (and you thought KYC in exchanges was bad...).
• If you don't have a "mining permit", you can get heavy fines, around 18k USD.
• Any startups, anyone making a wallet, coin or exchange must be registered to Sunacrip.
• Sunacrip will establish and collect taxes the registrants have to pay for their activities.
• This institution will also carry out inspections and can seize equipment and assets from people who are deemed outside of the "decree".

The document is located here: http://www.minci.gob.ve/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Gaceta-Oficial-Decreto-Constituyente-sobre-el-Sistema-Integral-de-Criptoactivos.pdf

As things go in Venezuela, that document is conveniently NOT in text form, but is printed and then scanned (as idiotic as that sounds). So no google translate without OCRing the thing first...

That is horrendous; especially the third point where all wallets must be registered. This decree kills crypto right out of the gate.  This may have been out of ignorance - that making wallets is a rare activity and that people only have one wallet - or it may have been done on purpose. I don't know. Either way, being involved in crypto remains functionally illegal.

[Lucusfoundation]

Totalitarist government, expect totalitarist laws.

Let's hope that Venezuela rises again!

Living in Argentina, Venezuelans are a blessing for us! They come with engineering degrees and start to work inmediately. You have a home here friends!

[KingScorpio]

Totalitarist government, expect totalitarist laws.

Let's hope that Venezuela rises again!

Living in Argentina, Venezuelans are a blessing for us! They come with engineering degrees and start to work inmediately. You have a home here friends!

jes, welcome them as cheap money earning cattle to strengthen the real

[Artemis3]

This just in:

"Government" of Venezuela dictates controls for sending crypto coin into Venezuela.

0.25€ minimum per transaction, up to 15% of the amount.

Sunacrip can establish maximum limits, and they just established 10 Petro as that limit (The Petro has a fixed price equivalent to around 60$).

Only a Socialist government could ever think of putting obstacles to foreign money flowing IN the economy...

Feasibility of actually enforcing this? Lets just say, we have decades of similar stupidity. In Venezuela most video games and toy guns are "illegal", along with currency exchange or free market prices of many many things.

But, this garbage "rule" gives the goons even more excuse to seize equipment and imprison people they don't like. Socialism as usual...

[ololajulo]

Inflation of the height 10000000% should affect any worth of money or asset. Money has lost its worth cause u cant buy what want even with your money in Venezuela. Crypto can only be a distracting development to the terrible economic condition

[Artemis3]

Inflation of the height 10000000% should affect any worth of money or asset. Money is worthless. Money has lost its worth cause u cant but what u want even with your money in venezuela

The local fiat is worthless, but there are many people surviving with (foreign) money sent by relatives from abroad. Because of the foreign currency exchange "controls", a good chunk comes via crypto coins.

They don't want this to occur freely, but they don't have the technical means to stop it. They can, however affect many more innocent people struggling to survive socialism holding til the day it falls. Being starved of their illicit money abroad, they now want to steal even more from the people directly.

[KingScorpio]

Inflation of the height 10000000% should affect any worth of money or asset. Money has lost its worth cause u cant buy what want even with your money in Venezuela. Crypto can only be a distracting development to the terrible economic condition

jes what can you buy with crypto in venezuela the continuous volatility in the countries financial system is an important reason for its inability to have long economic production chains, and century old traditional family corporations that create high quality products like in germany

you get just crappy and simple stuff for money there and it gets worse every day.

you know whats missing and why the economy in venezuela fails to be as good as in germany or usa?

a mental prision, like religion that makes the workers sticky to their specialisation, similar like cells in a human body there are liver cells hearth cells etc.

in the spiritual realm there is stability, you should ask the user blackdecker about that.

you can only fix venezuela by basically establishing a rule of engineering foundations + introducing a cultural spiritual realm (missioning). that wont be perfect. but it has to be done.

or the way the spaniards did -> christian nobility (controlling the financial system) + missioning the religion.

you wont get something stable and sticky there on an other way.

everyone that figures out the capitalist system immediately wants to shift from worker (selling his time) towards lord/capitalist (living of the work of others)

[Lucusfoundation]

Totalitarist government, expect totalitarist laws.

Let's hope that Venezuela rises again!

Living in Argentina, Venezuelans are a blessing for us! They come with engineering degrees and start to work inmediately. You have a home here friends!

jes, welcome them as cheap money earning cattle to strengthen the real

Not really. They are getting the jobs that argentinian's say do not exist, proving that big part of our population is actually lazy.
Many of them come and when everything finishes will leave back towards Venezuela.
But many others are adding value to our country, and will stay. Argentina needs good people to come right now. For many years we let many criminals in! We were going the same road as Venezuela, thankfully, we changed!

[Spendulus]

Inflation of the height 10000000% should affect any worth of money or asset. Money is worthless. Money has lost its worth cause u cant but what u want even with your money in venezuela

The local fiat is worthless, but there are many people surviving with (foreign) money sent by relatives from abroad. Because of the foreign currency exchange "controls", a good chunk comes via crypto coins.....

Before crypto there was Zimbawee. During the early days of crypto there was the Cyprus bank crisis.

Venezuela is to be a case study in the influence of crypto currency on a nation experiencing hyper inflation. Theoretically, the crypto should significantly lower the amount of human suffering.

[awawo]

The enactment of a crypto law will give room for proper regulations to take place, Venezuela is one country that has embrace cryptocurrency in recent time and this law will go a long way to proof Venezuela readiness to tap into the crypto network.

[mayo2u]

This just in:

"Government" of Venezuela dictates controls for sending crypto coin into Venezuela.

0.25€ minimum per transaction, up to 15% of the amount.

Sunacrip can establish maximum limits, and they just established 10 Petro as that limit (The Petro has a fixed price equivalent to around 60$).

Only a Socialist government could ever think of putting obstacles to foreign money flowing IN the economy...

So sad, but true. Every few years we go through this foolishness that "this time" we can make socialism work. First, equality of outcome can only exist under coercion, so anyone who relishes individual liberty will be horrified by life under socialism.

Second, even voluntarily organized socialist endeavors have rarely worked for long. The kibbutz in Israel are probably the best working example in the world - outside of monastic orders.

[mayo2u]

Totalitarist government, expect totalitarist laws.

Let's hope that Venezuela rises again!

Living in Argentina, Venezuelans are a blessing for us! They come with engineering degrees and start to work inmediately. You have a home here friends!

jes, welcome them as cheap money earning cattle to strengthen the real

Not really. They are getting the jobs that argentinian's say do not exist, proving that big part of our population is actually lazy.
Many of them come and when everything finishes will leave back towards Venezuela.
But many others are adding value to our country, and will stay. Argentina needs good people to come right now. For many years we let many criminals in! We were going the same road as Venezuela, thankfully, we changed!

In what way has Argentina changed? Is it more open to free markets? The rule of law? Limited government interference? Do you consider it to be a long-term cultural change or a short-term reaction to the foolishness of centralized control?