Bitcoin Has Saved My Family
“Borderless money” is more than a buzzword when you live in a collapsing economy and a collapsing dictatorship.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/opinion/sunday/venezuela-bitcoin-inflation-cryptocurrencies.html

Cryptocurrencies also helped him during the four-day trip itself. Venezuelan military personnel at the borders have a reputation for seizing the money of people who want to leave, but Juan’s, being in Bitcoin, was accessible only with a password he had memorized. “Borderless money” is more than a buzzword for those of us who live in a collapsing economy and a collapsing dictatorship.

The plan was for him to send money home — through cryptocurrencies — after he earned enough. Western Union converts remittances into bolívars at the official government rate, which often is about half of the rate on the black market. Some intermediaries do convert at the black market rate, and many of my Venezuelan friends living abroad use those. But if you don’t have a trusted trader, you can easily get scammed. And the government has been trying to shut down go-betweens like those for years. Using Bitcoin is cheaper, faster and safer.