Delving into bitcoin can take guts — and not just the type of bravado needed to embrace crypto speculation. Sometimes standing up for bitcoin also means standing up for your homeland and fellow citizens, in search of a better way.
The latter display of bravery is embedded in the recently launched Let’s Talk Bitcoin! podcast #370[1] hosted by Adam B. Levine, Stephanie Murphy and Jonathan Mohan. That’s where LTB correspondent Christian Garcia steps up with a report from a country in crisis, reminding listeners about the world-altering dimensions of bitcoin that are separate from investing.
Panic in Venezuela
Garcia’s story is rooted in his home country of Venezuela, which has been getting plenty of bad PR over the last several years. This nation on South America’s northern coast has become synonymous with the phrase economic crisis, battering the vast majority of its 31,000,000+ citizens with hyperinflation, economic depression, shortages of all kinds, unemployment, poverty, disease, child mortality, malnutrition and crime.
Note the “vast majority” qualifier above, placed there because rampant corruption is helping to fuel all these horrors. For those lucky enough to still be in the middle class or higher, and/or on the take with the oppressive government of President Nicolás Maduro, life can be just fine.
Creative ways of moving illicit money has become a hallmark of Venezuelan rule, a practice whose origins long predate Maduro’s administration, fueled in recent history by the 20th century discovery of oil there. A nauseating cycle of boom-and-bust followed for the Venezuelan people, who were sometimes helped but mostly hurt by the government’s attempts to stabilize the economy.
In the LTB podcast, Garcia provides a riveting, first-hand perspective on the destructive consequences of these policies. Here, he describes a tantalizing opportunity offered to him in
