Venezuelans Flock To Cryptocoins Amid Spiralling Inflation (bloomberg.com) 127
An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg:
Demand for digital coins is soaring in Venezuela amid an escalating political crisis that has protesters demanding that President Nicolas Maduro step down. Inflation has spiraled to the triple digits, debasing the bolivar and depleting savings, while citizens struggle to find everything from food to medicine on store shelves. "If you're going to be in something volatile, you might as well be in something that's volatile and rising than volatile and falling," says Ryan Taylor, chief executive officer of crypto currency Dash Core, the third-largest digital coin by number of transactions... Bitcoin trading volume in Venezuela jumped to $1.3 million this week, about double the amount that changed hands two months ago, according to LocalBitcoins.com...
Venezuela's currency has become nearly worthless in the black market, where it takes more than 6,000 bolivars to buy $1, while bitcoin surged 53 percent in the past month alone. But it's not just about shielding against the falling bolivar, as some Venezuelans are using crypto currencies to buy and sell everyday goods and services, according to Jorge Farias, the CEO of Cryptobuyer.
Venezuela's currency has become nearly worthless in the black market, where it takes more than 6,000 bolivars to buy $1, while bitcoin surged 53 percent in the past month alone. But it's not just about shielding against the falling bolivar, as some Venezuelans are using crypto currencies to buy and sell everyday goods and services, according to Jorge Farias, the CEO of Cryptobuyer.
Dash? (Score:1, Troll)
Let's go guys, buy Dogecoins too!
Re: Communism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Communism (Score:5, Insightful)
Except authoritarians ruling capitalist countries tend to do far better economically than authoritarians ruling communist countries. Examples: Pinochet's Chile, Nazi Germany, modern day China.
Authoritarianism is bad.
Communism is bad.
But the combination is even worse.
Re: Communism (Score:4, Informative)
Chile collapsed so quick that Friedman had to cry that he meant to do that.
Bullcrap. Pinochet ruled Chile for 17 years, while the economy prospered, and then peacefully transitioned Chile to democracy. He was a brutal but competent dictator.
Germany and China had the benefit of being strong, economically robust states
More bullcrap. Germany was a basket case when Hitler took over. He immediately launched a massive Keynesian expansion that pulled not just Germany, but much of Europe out of the Great Depression.
Under communism, China was one of the world's poorest countries, and experienced the worst famine in all of history. Then in 1979, they switched to capitalism while keeping the authoritarianism in place. Since then, their economy has expanded ten-fold.
Look at the graph on this page: Historical GDP of China [wikipedia.org]. Under communism, China's economy was flat for decades. Then in 1979 it was like turning on a light switch from "poverty" to "prosperity". There is a clear inflection point.
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The techniques failed, not the political philosophy.
This is Leftism in a nutshell. It is never the fault of the ideology when 30 million people starve to death, and a billion are impoverished. It is only because someone failed to tweak the "purity" knob on the policy dashboard. Whatever.
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The second biggest issue of our time is probably the recent world recession. Bush inherited a balanced budget (surplus even - from Clinton's sm
Re: Communism (Score:1)
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"You're buying into the myth that it was an economic wreck"
And you are buying to a bunch of BS. They bankrupted themselves fighting WW1 and any German assets the allies could get their hands on was seized. The poor state of Germany's economy was the catalyst Hitler used on his way to power. He constantly blamed Germany's poor economy on the WW1 European Allies and built up the hate to the point where German citizens supported Hitler's military adventures.
And China is the US's most successful regime change i
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Germany came out of WWI in pretty good shape, actually, although the whole reparations mess obscured that. Hitler blamed Germany's woes on a whole lot of things, mostly Jews and international bankers and such people. Hitler lied a lot.
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Under communism, China was one of the world's poorest countries, and experienced the worst famine in all of history.
That is a pretty missleading statement.
First of all China was poor before Mao, too. Secondly China was occupied by foreign nations before Mao. Thirdly the famine from 1958 - 1962 has nothing to do with communism. I suggest to at least read the relevant wikipedia articles.
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Germany had a very strong industrial sector when Hitler took it over, and while it was hard hit by the Depression it wasn't a basket case. Nazi Germany policies kicked off a massive expansion based on borrowing from other countries. This wasn't going to last forever, which is why it was necessary to grab Austria
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Venezeula isn't shitty because they have universal healthcare, they are shitty because they have a dictator
Is Maduro a dictator? IIRC he was regularly elected. Now he refuses to step down from presidency after opposition won majority in parliament, but the consitution allows that: his opponents will have to win the presidential election to kick him out.
Re: Communism (Score:4, Insightful)
Is Maduro a dictator?
Yes. He is ruling by decree. He ignores the legislature, and has packed the judiciary with his cronies.
IIRC he was regularly elected.
Being elected doesn't make you a non-dictator. Hitler was elected. Maduro became president when Chavez died, and was re-elected soon after by a razor thin majority that is widely viewed as fraudulent.
his opponents will have to win the presidential election to kick him out.
Since Maduro controls the army, the judiciary, and the election infrastructure, that may prove difficult.
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[Maduro is a dictator] He is ruling by decree. He ignores the legislature, and has packed the judiciary with his cronies.
The relevant question is: is that allowed by the constitution?
Being elected doesn't make you a non-dictator. Hitler was elected. Maduro became president when Chavez died, and was re-elected soon after by a razor thin majority that is widely viewed as fraudulent.
You should double check that Hitler became chancelor because of an election. And for the razor thin majority, did you called G.W. Bush a dictator?
Since Maduro controls the army, the judiciary, and the election infrastructure, [kicking him out of presidency through elections] may prove difficult.
Indeed it is always difficult to kick out a leader abusing its powers, but that has not happened yet. Given how polarized the venezuelian political landscape is, I agree with you the risk is there, but please wait for the fault before naming a culprit.
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The relevant question is: is that allowed by the constitution?
Constitutionality is decided by the judiciary. Maduro owns the judges. So the constitution means whatever he says it means.
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Hitler was not elected. /. myth ...
That is a american or
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An economic model is not supposed to be popular, if it is a popular one it means it is one that gives government power, removes power from individuals and all of this is done either for 'the good of the public' or for 'the good of the nation' (socialism/communism vs fascism/nazism), pick your hemlock.
An economic model is supposed to follow sound ideas of money being created by productive work, of people having to exchange the fruits of their labour in a free market where the prices are not dictated but disc
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That's fine, but what about corporations, limited liability and government granted intellectual property monopolies?. I take it you are against those as well?
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An economic model is not supposed to be popular, if it is a popular one it means it is one that gives government power, removes power from individuals and all of this is done either for 'the good of the public' or for 'the good of the nation' (socialism/communism vs fascism/nazism), pick your hemlock.
An economic model is supposed to follow sound ideas of money being created by productive work
Is it?
Or is the economic model supposed to provide for the people the best quality of life? Who cares about the top end of town, it is how well the bottom end of town lives that determines if a model is good or bad.
Re: Communism (Score:2, Insightful)
Socialism is necessarily totalitarian and dictatorial. You simply cannot have a society that is both free and socialist. Socialists acknowledge that by calling it a "dictatorship of the proletariat."
The route to freedom under socialism is the elimination of everybody who doesn't behave according to soci
Re: Communism (Score:5, Insightful)
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All examples you gave have nothing to do with socialism or communism etc.
They are classic examples of a governments responsibility.
Not having them does not mean you are 'capitalist' ( which is a market system and not a political system), it means you are in an anarchy.
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Re: Communism (Score:2)
You said:
That's correct. You can have universal healthcare without being as shitty as Venezuela. Just look at Switzerland. See, contrary to what you believe, universal healthcare can be provided in many ways other than through government programs or socialism.
Venezuela is your typical socialist shi
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2) The level of abstraction from violence is important in assessing whether or not something is authoritarian, or how authoritarian something is. Yes, anything enforced by the state is eventually tied back to the state's monopoly on violence, but there's an enormous gap between having to pay modest taxes, not doing so having a possibility of eventually resulting in prison time after exhausting a number of legal proce
Re: Communism (Score:2)
"but there's an enormous gap between having to pay modest taxes"
But Venezuela isn't failing because people pay modest taxes, it's failing because it is actually socialist, with all the secret police, violence, oppression, poverty, corruption and economic failure that go along with socialism.
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Re: Communism (Score:2)
Scandinavian style government means massive tax raises on the middle class, and a massive loss of individual liberties, both of which American voters are unlikely to support. It means giving up sovereignty and attaching yourself to big neighbors that take care of your defense and foreign policy, not an option for the US. It means a massive exodus of entrepreneurs and the wealthy. There is also lots of reason to believe that it is just not sustainable, bring largely based on intergenerational transfers.
Scand
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YOU...voted for this. No fucking complaining, OK?
Pre-Chavez Venezuela was one of the most unequal societies in the world. The dispossessed people that voted for him had little to lose (or so they thought). If nothing else, Chavez's legacy will be that the corrupt old order has been swept away.
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Never change, snowflake.
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Communism will work! The only reason it hasn't happened so far is because reeducation hasn't ever gone far enough. You need to stop greedy citizens from trying to hold on to their possessions. All a person needs is a small portion of food, clothing, and shelter, and nothing else. If we could just properly teach them to give up all else, then all wars would end!
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>Communism will work! The only reason it hasn't happened so far is because
we keep running out of Other People's Money, for some reason.
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No, the reason is simple. We just haven't found the right intelligent species. Once we find that, Communism will work great!
Of course, we still have to exterminate those pesky humans or find a system that kinda works for them.
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You merely reiterate the earlier point about projection. No-one can get the left to shut up, therefore you claim that the right do the same.
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Re: Communism (Score:1)
It's the United STATES of America, not the United Large Liberal Cities of America.
Re: BS (Score:1)
I am a Venezuelan and I do use it, and know others using it. It depends on what your circle of friends is like.
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I am not a Venezuelan, and neither is my wife!
Venuzuela is a model economy (Score:1)
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the Internet changed everything (Score:2)
Venezuela is Heading for Civil War (Score:4, Interesting)
It's only a matter of time now. Maduro has armed tens of thousands of militia gang members. The criminals are also armed and looting and killing at will. People are starving to death and will eventually face a choice between a slow lingering death or going down fighting. It will happen quick once it gets started. Mobs will break into the arsenals and loot the weapons. Military units will face a choice of whose side to join, as they did in Syria. Maduro has made many enemies who will take the opportunity to settle scores and lots of hungry young men with nothing to do and no prospects will relish the chance to bleed the elites. All that's needed now is a spark and Maduro is sure to bungle into one sooner or later.
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Thanks for that. I needed cheering up.
I watched ''Threads'' and ''The Day After'' and listened to all four of Marillion's albums, twice, and none of them worked.
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> It's only a matter of time now.
I'm not sure you're giving a warning or just implying this will bring some kind of closure.
If it's the latter, it won't work. War never works.
Maduro is getting cornered and can't see a way out; the bloodbath solution will bring a heavy toll, don't doubt that for a second. Right now, IMHO, the best solution is for Maduro and his gang to seek some kind of asylum to live safely in a neutral place -- and leave Venezuela to be reconstructed, because it's already half destroyed
They need more helicopters! (Score:1)
If only Pinochet could help them...
This is a good use of Cryptocurrency (Score:5, Interesting)
Currency exchanges take too long to verify (half an hour or more), cost too much to do so (minor transactions can cost more to verify than exchanged hands), and the whole system sucks up a lot of power. While cryptocurrency as a valid backstop against incompetent governments is a great idea, a more technically proficient cryptocurrency, better designed for everyday transactions, would be a huge boon.
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If you go half a century back maybe.
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The need for faster transactions might help explain the rising popularity of Ethereum. From themerkle.com [themerkle.com]: "the average block time sitting at the 14 second mark ever since April of 2016."
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I don't understand why anyone would willingly use a currency like that. The majority of it is just being horded or held for speculation.
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I don't understand why anyone would willingly use a currency like that.
Because the alternative is worse, maybe ?
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Gold is not practical as an everyday means of exchange either - there are a lot of ways to commit fraud with it. Alloys, plating, shaving coins. It's also very vulnerable to theft, and can only be used with a direct physical transaction - no good for buying things online. It was 'good enough' for a long time, but there's a reason the banking industry grew. First as a way to make managing gold more practical by keeping track of who owned the gold rather than actually moving the gold around, and eventually ju
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An entire ocean separating them from Europe either, so they can't just go to Europe and call themselves climate refugees like the Africans either.
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...for a country as big as Venezuela, the 3rd largest oil producer in the world?
Their oil production has been dropping since the government takeover of the oil fields, and now they are #11 behind Brazil [wikipedia.org].
Venezuela is basically an example of how to run a country hard into the ground. "Dios es Venezolano" but he's face-palming right now.
Dont forget the porn (Score:2, Funny)
There are always crazy Venezuelan gang bangs on chaturbate. They must be really desperate.
Inflation plague (Score:1)
In the USA the central bankers are now arguing that their so called '2% inflation target' should be raised to a higher number because in their NSHO the country 'has been suffering from a low interest rate for a while', so they are saying it is OK to have a higher inflation targe for a while to 'even things out'.
A bunch of modern voodoo black magic mambo jambo is being pushed from government propaganda channels, government has no idea what it's doing but of-course we cannot admit this, admitting this would f
Re: Inflation plague (Score:2)
Most savings are in the form of investments and real property and are simply not affected directly by inflation. They are only affected indirectly when government requires fiat currency as a means of exchange and inflation becomes large enough to make that difficult. It also becomes a problem when contracts are written using the assumption of a fixed rate of inflation or when institutions like banks get to set interest rates unilaterally and have near monopolies.
Overall, inflation is not a big deal per se.
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Inflation, like credit, is the double-edged sword of economics. You need it - a little inflation is vital for an economy to function, not least because it makes that credit available. If it isn't carefully controlled though, it can grow out of hand and destroy everything.
Re: Inflation plague (Score:2)
Inflation could run at 50% a year without any problems, as long as it was a guaranteed and steady 50% a year; people would simply do the math to translate monetary amounts over time and write contracts accordingly.
The absolute level of inflation doesn't matter to the economy; what matters is unpredictable changes in the rate of inflation, either up or down.
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It couldn't, because such a high rate would make saving money impossible. No investments could possibly return a rate so high, so no bank could pay interest. As a result credit would be entirely unavailable, and anyone (business or individual) intending to maintain long-term wealth would do it by buying assets of consistent value. The retirement fund would return to being a stash of gold bars under the floorboards.
Re: Inflation plague (Score:2)
"The retirement fund would return to being a stash of gold bars under the floorboards."
Why would it have to be under the floorboards? The bank could pay you interest on your gold, in gold. Put in 1 ounce now, get back 1.07 ounces a year from now. Now you effectively have gold backed currency.
Of course, when you convert that gold, you temporarily have to use money. So let's say your one ounce is worth b$1000 at the beginning of the year and inflation is 50%. At the end of the year it's worth b$1605. So the 7
everything that rises must converge (Score:2)
"If you're going to be in something volatile, you might as well be in something that's volatile and rising than volatile and falling," says Ryan Taylor, chief executive officer of crypto currency Dash Core..
Indeed. Just ask anyone from Zimbabwe, or Albania. (Disco Stu voice) "And if this trend continues... Eyyyyy!"
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Huh? (Score:2)
The article talks about massive inflation related to bitcoin as if it is a recent thing. The graphs in the article show interest started over a year ago, yet the traded value of the currency is on par with what it was this time last year after a brief 10% dip 60 months ago.
What gives?
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The official exchange rate is fairly stable, but meaningless. The black market exchange rate is collapsing:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
Local currency (Score:1)