In a country with the largest oil reserves in the world, its people are unable to buy food. The national currency, the Bolivar, devalued by 95 percent this week wiping out people’s savings. And millions of Venezuelans have fled their country overwhelming the borders with Colombia and Brazil. There are even stories of Venezuelans who have walked to Argentina – a journey of thousands of miles.
Amidst such a distressing panorama, Eugenia Alcalá Sucre, founder of Dash Caracas and Dash Venezuela tells CoinCentral what it’s really like living in Venezuela on a day-to-day basis. And why she believes that cryptocurrency–specifically, Dash–can provide a solution to the growing humanitarian crisis.
“Like many Venezuelans,” she says, “my husband and I left in 2015.” Thanks to rising food shortages, inflation, crime, a crumbling economy and political uncertainty, “we felt that our country didn’t have opportunities for us anymore”. They moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, risking everything to go there and leaving all that they owned behind. Yet due to illness, she was forced to return to her country.
A Country in Ruins
“When I came back, I had a different perspective, like moving to another country is not always the only solution,” she says. “But when I returned [in 2016] I was really shocked by the deterioration. My country was devastated. We started to see things like entire families eating out of the garbage on the street and people not being able to buy food or their basic necessities, even though they were professionals with jobs”.
She continues, “In 2017, we had a difficult time in Venezuela, with many uprisings and protests.” Massive anti-government demonstrations, widespread violence, and a death toll in the hundreds unfolded after several months of unrest. Eugenia says that’s when she “realized that it was not only an economic crisis anymore but a social crisis as well”.
Beyond the demonstrations and the political oppression, we’re not just talking about homeless people without jobs who can’t afford to buy food. Eugenia explains that there are multiple barriers preventing everyday people from accessing their money. Not only is there rampant hyperinflation the likes of which has rarely been seen in modern times, but on top of that, Venezuelans have no way of shielding their wealth from devaluation as they are forbidden from purchasing foreign currency freely.
“We’ve had exchange controls for many years now,” she says, “we cannot freely buy dollars with bolivars. We need a special permission from the government and that has become harder and harder to obtain, which drives people to other measures.”
The Black Market
A black market for buying dollars and other foreign currency has existed in Venezuela for many years but has become especially necessary since high inflation became hyperinflation. “We buy tomatoes today for one price and tomorrow it might be the double of that price,” Eugenia explains, “We don’t know how much it’s going up but we do know it’s going up. Our income is buying less and less every day”.
Venezuelans have to use the black market
So regular people, even working professionals, simply cannot put food on their tables. “When you see all these barriers,” she says, “sometimes people have turned to the black market, but that is dangerous because it is illegal. There have been cases of people put in jail for using the black market”.
