Hi guys, I'm fine still haven't recovered smell and taste. Venezuelan living here, crypto enthusiast for these that don't know me.
As I always do, these are the last week numbers, if you compare them to some other countries (using the same source, COINDANCE):
- Argentina - 9 BTC
- Brazil - 12 BTC
- Canada - 7 BTC
- Chile - 10 BTC
- Colombia - 46 BTC
- Mexico - 9 BTC
- Peru - 12 BTC
- USA - 38 BTC
These countries have economies WAY bigger than Venezuela, I think Venezuela is world leader when it comes to LocalBitcoin. And anyway the volume has been dropping (measured in BTC) I think it is because the high BTC price (the USD amount remains almost constant) and other exchanges have started accepting Bs. like Binance. There is also Reserve and AirTM. Sadly we don't have stats of them.
People use it to:
- Send remittances from aborad to relatives still in Venezuela.
- Saving/Store of value (purchasing BTC with worthless Bolivares)
- Sending money OUTSIDE Venezuela (if you are a store owner you MUST accept Bolivares, that can lose the value 10% daily, so you need to get rid of them ASAP, purchasing BTC is an option) after you have them in BTC you can exchange them back to USD and maybe send them if you have an abroad account.
- Miners selling BTC to purchase things (Electricity is free but unreliable), high risk because goverment chases miners and REQUIRES them to be registered and report, you they find out you are mining clandestine you will get robbed and seized. My dream is to have a GPU mining, that would be under the radar and would let me generate a nice source of income.
- The own goverment to avoid sanctions (they, even the military have minning farms).
Yes, monthly minimum wage is less than 1 USD, it's not a typo and I know it's hard to believe. It's currently 1,800,000 Bs. and 1 USD = 2,400,000 Bs. (offical price admited by the Venezuelan Central Bank).
A NGO called "Venezuelan Finance Observatory" released a report of the average was (that is a question always asked), yes, they are WAY higher than the minimum but still really low.
- Average wage public sector: 4.7 USD monthly (5 times minimum wage)
- Average wage private sector: 70.1 USD monthly (80 times minimum wage)
Here is the translated report: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.descifrado.com/2021/04/13/ovf-el-460-de-las-remuneraciones-del-sector-privado-se-pagan-en-dolares/
Anyway, another NGO (CENDA is the name) a 5 members family needs around 300-350 USD monthly to "live", so do your math.
If you earn around 5 USD monthly (working at the public sector), you CANNOT live with that you probably:
- Left the country time ago (even walking)
- You have another job or do something else (sell something at home, you are handymen, do something using internet, etc) and you depend from some box of food sold by the goverment for less than 1 USD, totally unreliable.
- You have a relative in the country that somehow helps you (that is my case with my parents, old retired professionals with pension of less than 5 USD monthly).
Main problem here, is wages are low and your expenses are almost the same than any other latin american country, there are a few subsidized things like services (electricity, tap water and so on) that bring down the monthly amount of money you need, but anyway.
Years ago USD were a lot of money, 10 USD would get you a nice purchase in the supermarket, so even having low wages people would "survive" because things were cheap.
My income was around 80 USD monthly years ago, I could live "ok" (just ok) and I could help my parents (help means almost purchasing everything for them), now that amount would put me in extreme poverty and it has been rought.
Reddit has helped me and I have no words to thanks this community I have done a lot of work and request from redditors (translations, interviews, even special request like take a picture of a beach, with the help from a Germany redditor we helped a lot of people months ago), years ago with a help of a friend in the States I was able of shipping some Venezuelan banknotes to some redditos like Lord_Saren
Sources (PLEASE check them!!!):
Drew Brinsky just posted a video about this when he came weeks ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ7A8J9O-3Y
https://www.usefultulips.org/combined_VES_Page.html
https://www.caracaschronicles.com/
https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins/VES/BTC
https://localbitcoins.com/buy-bitcoins-online/ves/
Any other question AMA!
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