Venezuela’s Bolivar Sees
454% Inflation in Q1 as Maduro Hawks the Petro, 4/16/18, CNN
Runaway inflation continues to devalue
the Venezuelan Bolivar (VEB), even as the country’s authoritarian government
seeks to divert attention from the floundering economy by hawking its “Petro”
cryptocurrency.
According to Reuters, prices in Venezuela rose by 454 percent during the first
quarter of 2018 and have swelled by 8,900 percent over the past 12 months.
Those numbers are from the
opposition-controlled National Assembly and are largely in line with estimates
from independent economists. Venezuela’s central bank, meanwhile, has not
published official inflation data in more than two years.
This hyperinflation has left Venezuela on
the brink of economic collapse, and residents are fleeing the country at an
estimated rate of 5,000 migrants per day. By the end of the year,
more than five percent of the country’s population — or 1.8 million people —
will have left Venezuela.
But rather than address these problems,
the government of what was once Latin America’s wealthiest country instead
continues to sing the praises of the Petro, its new state-backed cryptocurrency.
President Nicolas Maduro has declared
the Petro to be legal tender, and he has claimed that its initial coin offering
(ICO) has raised more than $5 billion from investors across the globe. It even
received the “Satoshi Nakamoto Prize” from the Russian Cryptocurrency
and Blockchain Association,
an award it received for reasons that are dubious at best.
Notably, though, the legislature has
declared the Petro to be illegal, and many analysts continue to doubt that it actually exists.
But even as Maduro touts the Petro as
the solution for all of Venezuela’s ills, the country’s residents are turning
to another cryptocurrency to secure their wealth amidst the turbulent economic
backdrop: Bitcoin.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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