Venezuela: Bolivar exchange rate collapses against Bitcoin

Over the last few days, Venezuela has seen the exchange rate of the national currency, the bolivar, drop against Bitcoin, a deadweight loss of 30% in a week that goes to confirm the complicated situation of the South American state.
The data is derived from the amount of transactions that took place on LocalBitcoins, which even reached the record amount of 114 billion. A performance that has literally swept away the one achieved in the previous week, when the operations had settled at 77 billion.

The collapse of the exchange rate

To surprise the external observers, however, was the collapse recorded by the exchange rate between bolivars and BTC. If 166 million bolivars were enough to have a Bitcoin in the previous week, now it even takes 215 million. A collapse, that of the Venezuelan currency, which moreover cannot be charged for an increase in value of the cryptocurrency attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto, which in the same period has indeed recorded a decline from 10mila to 9.500 dollars.
The drop in the exchange rate is even more dramatic if you think that at the beginning of the year 4 million bolivars were enough to have a Bitcoin. And it follows that in just eight months the Venezuelan national currency has lost more than 5.000% to BTC, while in the same period the correspondent in US dollars of the cryptocurrency went from 4 thousand to 9500.

Not even Petro manages to reverse the trend

Venezuela's difficulties, in particular the hyperinflationary spiral in which the country has screwed, is largely a consequence of theUS embargo, commissioned by Donald Trump. To try to remedy the situation, President Maduro has focused on a virtual national currency, the Petro, guaranteed by the reserves of oil and precious minerals that abound in the country. A move which, however, has so far given little results, as Venezuelans clearly continue to prefer the security represented by Bitcoin, despite a volatility that continues to be significant.

The popularity of cryptocurrencies in South America

Despite the significant rise in the exchange rate, in Venezuela the Bitcoin race does not stop, so much so that the country is in second place in the BTC exchange volumes ranking on LocalBitcoins, preceded in this ranking only by Russia. So much so that it can be said that for Venezuelans BTC is now in effect a real refuge. In fourth place in this ranking it is then possible to find the Colombia, another country which is experiencing a fairly complicated social situation, with a constant coming and going of people on the border with Venezuela, such as to create difficulties of no small importance.
Considering what is happening in Argentina and Brazil, where digital uniforms are at the center of a series of projects that are making them a store of value in countries where inflation continues to travel at a fast pace, it can be said that precisely Latin America is proving extremely open in the face of the innovation profiles that characterize digital assets.