Unchained - How Venezuela Shows Why Bitcoin, Crypto and Stablecoins Help Everyday People

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

Thank you to our sponsors, Uniswap and Figure Markets! Amid several years of economic challenges, Venezuela boasts a long and intriguing relationship with crypto. Following the capture of President Nicolas Maduro by the U.S. government, these crypto ties have again been brought into focus. In this Unchained podcast episode, Ledn cofounder Mauricio Di Bartolomeo and Economic Inclusion Group President Jorge Jraissati join Laura Shin to unpack this history, including the plausibility of the Latin American country sitting on a $60 billion Bitcoin stash. Mauricio details how the hums of Bitcoin mining rigs became the sound of freedom for Venezuelans. Jorge says post-Maduro Venezuela will “demand” a crypto powered economy. Will the crypto industry shape the future of Venezuela? And what does such a future look like? Hosts: Laura Shin Guests: Mauricio Di Bartolomeo, Cofounder and CSO of Ledn Jorge Jraissati, President of Economic Inclusion Group Links: Bitcoin Rallies to $93,000 After U.S. Attack on Venezuela How Maduro’s Capture and a ‘Pre-War World’ Affects Bitcoin: Bits + Bips Brian Kelly on Token-Curated Registries, Robinhood Crypto Trading and the Petro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Venezuela, there are two exchange rates right now. If you believe the government, the government today, I'm looking at the screen, the government right now says $1 is worth $321. In the free market, i.e. peer-to-peer markets, a dollar is trading for $780 boliorez. That is a delta of 143% in value. So you tell me how you're going to choose to send money to your loved ones. We're extremely pro-Bitcoin. We're extremely pro-stable coin. And I think that's the huge opportunity that we have, because it's a combination of an elite that really believes on these things and the population who are using these things every single day.

So I think that's why Venezuela everybody has to be extremely optimistic about it. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Unchained. You're no hype resource for all things, crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. Thanks for joining this live stream. Before we get started, a quick reminder, nothing you hear on Unchained is investment advice. This show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. My guess tonight they hold assets discussed on the show. For more disclosures, visit unchainedcrypta.com. Are you a builder who needs to add on-chain trading to your product? The Uniswap trading API from Uniswap Labs offers plug-and-play access to some of the deepest liquidity in...

The scorebed app here with trusted stats in real-time sports news. Yeah, hey, who should I take in the Boston game? Well, statistically speaking. Nah, no more statistically speaking. I want hot takes. I want knee-jerk reactions. That's not really what I do. Is that because you don't have any knees? Or?

The score bet. Trusted sports content, seamless sports betting. Download today. 19 plus, Ontario only. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to conicsonterio.ca. Crypto. It's on-chain execution at an enterprise level.

More liquidity, less complexity. Visit hub.uniswap.org to learn more. Looking to unlock your crypto's liquidity? Figure offers crypto-backed loans with an industry low 8.91% fixed rate. They're the only major provider with a centralized MPC custody and new liquidation protection. Take out a loan at figuremarkets.com slash unchained. Today's topic is Venice Ruel and Bitcoin. Here to discuss our Maricio de Bartolomeo, co-founder in CSO Fladen, and Jorge Gerasati,

president of Economic Inclusion Group. Welcome, Maricio and Jorge. Oh, Lerlona. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. We have so much to discuss.

So ever since the U.S. captured former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, there's been a number of rumors swirling about whether or not the regime has tens of billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin. Whether or not is true,

I know there's some dispute about that. There's also this whole history of Bitcoin and Crypto and Sablecoins in Venezuela we can dive into. And there's a lot of avenues around how all of this news impacts Bitcoin and crypto generally and also going the other direction, how Bitcoin and crypto affect kind of, you know, all this geopolitical tension. So let's start with these rumors about Venezuela's supposed $60 billion worth of Bitcoin. Maricio, I know you're a skeptical of these claims.

So why don't you, you know, go into. to why you don't believe that they have such a stash? Yes, so happy to go through that. I wrote a piece on this just because I feel pretty passionately. And I'll give you my thesis as well as my supporting facts or evidence. So the claims are rumors alleged that Venezuela has amassed a $60 billion hoard of Bitcoin, and it lists three main sources for that Bitcoin. Number one is a gold swap allegedly conducted in 20,

by Mr. Alex Saab, which is who has been a very important figure within the Maduro and Chavez regime. This swap was allegedly done in 2018, and it was to the tune of $2.7 billion. And Mr. Saab apparently was coordinating this transaction. The funny thing is Mr. Saab has actually been, was in U.S. custody. He was jailed in the U.S. the U.S. from 2020 to 2023. And if you follow the calculations, the rulers say he swapped $2.7 billion at anywhere between $3,000 and $10,000 towards Bitcoin. By December 2020, Zab was released back to the

regime by the Biden administration through a prisoner swap. And at the time of his release, the alleged Bitcoin he controlled, depending on the price you've put at the conversion, would have been anywhere between $10 billion to $20 billion. So we are expected to believe that a person who controlled $20 billion approximately of assets was given back to an unfriendly regime through a prisoner swap. And at the time he was released, the Venezuelan Central Bank claimed to hold $9.9 billion in reserves. So this person allegedly controlled an equal or double amount of what the Central Bank would have control. and we are expected to believe that he was released to the regime holding to $20 billion

that would go right back into their hands. I don't think that alliance with the public record. And also, most importantly, there is no on-chain evidence for this transaction. So I will say that for that reason, I don't believe the swap was real. The second allegation is Venezuela sold oil for crypto. And then Venezuela did sell oil for crypto. I'm not disputing whether Venezuela sold oil for crypto. What I find very hard to believe is that any of the crypto that was paid for that oil

was rightfully returned back to Pedersa and then and furthermore sent back to the Venezuelan reserves for the Venezuelan people. Is the national oil something something? Correct. Pedeveses Petrolios de Venezuela, Venezuelan oil company basically. And so it is the state-owned oil company. And to highlight why I don't believe any of these funds went back to the reserves, I would like to highlight one case of extreme corruption out of many, out of many.

But there's one particular case of extreme corruption linking the state-owned oil company, BEDESA, and the crypto regulator, Sunacri. And this scandal exploded on March 2023, and it revealed that corrupt officials in Venezuela had embezzled 17.6 billion, dollars through fraudulent sales of oil to the state-owned oil company. And this led to the closure of this regulator and the prosecution of those involved. And though those funds were related to oil sales between 2020 and 2023. So $17.6 billion were siphoned to the pockets of corrupt people in three years alone.

And that was only one corruption scandal. There is Tareka-Lexabli's corruption scandal, which actually was a higher amount than that, also related to oil. So all I'm trying to say is I don't believe any meaningful proceeds from those oil sales were given back to PEDA and PEDABESA, they're furthermore, PEDA did not have sent any additional profits to the Venezuelan Reserve. So I don't believe there's any meaningful Bitcoin from that source. And the third allegation is that the Venezuelan regime stole and operated mining equipment.

I know they did so for a fact because some of that equipment. was my families. They stole our equipment. And I also know they operated our equipment because of the condition the equipment was in when they gave it back to us five years later. They gave us basically the aluminum casings. That was pretty much it. Now, that said, the operation of that equipment was not done to the benefit of the Venezuelan government. It was done to the benefit of Maludo's private debt squads. And the reason for that is the way Maduro would compensate his death squads off the books was that he would give them carte blanche to go steal, steeze, or take assets from other people. And so this is why I believe that there is also no meaningful Bitcoin in the name of the government or regime as a product of Bitcoin mining or using stolen Bitcoin mining.

Yeah, I mean, all of those are really compelling arguments that you make there. So I would love to hear Jorge's opinion if he, you know, why do you think that this rumor then kind of has spread everywhere? I don't know if you saw like CNBC has been making a lot of it. They wrote kind of a long article. It quoted, you know, a number of different people who are involved in Bitcoin and crypto in Venezuela. I'm just going to quote some of them. So somebody named Gwee Gomez, founder and CEO of Latin American Base. Bitcoin firm Orange BTC said, quote,

it's very fair to assume Venezuela had meaningful exposure to Bitcoin. Given that they were excluded from the global financial system, probably they had gold, Bitcoin, and some dollars under their mattress. Andrew Fehrman, head of national security intelligence at chain analysis, also said that allies of Maduro had flown to foreign locales to exchange assets for more liquid funds. And he then was quoted saying, if they're willing to send a guy on a private jet with a ton of gold on board, it would make

a lot of sense that they would also seek to utilize crypto assets for both store of wealth and also for cross-border trade. So I understand the way they're framing it. It's speculative. But do you just feel like even the way they're framing this is implausible? I mean, in general, I think for everybody, everybody's imagination can become wild when they think about the potential of $60 billion Bitcoin and actually try to focus on the real tangible things that the Bitcoin community and the investors

in general can get from Venezuela, which is way higher than any kind of confiscated amount of Bitcoin that they may be in Venezuela. Venezuela will become a huge opportunity for everybody who is involved in the crypto asset sector. The Venezuela financial system is totally destroyed in its total rebuilding. And what better than to rebuild the Venezuelan economy through the power of crypto assets, Bitcoin, stable coins. And I think that's where the real opportunity is when it comes to Bitcoin mining, something that I really believe is the same way that all the confiscated and expropriated assets of regular Venezuela or oil companies have to be returned to their owners.

They also have to be compensation to all the big Bitcoin miners that lost everything in these years of socialism. So I really think that that's the real opportunity that people have. Venezuela, it's an energy hub. There is so many opportunities to do Bitcoin mining. We can be a hydro power in the revision beyond oil and any other of the energy. incredible opportunities that we got have in Venezuela. Okay, Mattar, E.C. What do you think?

Yeah, so I actually know Gheeve very well. Hi, Guy, the guy who made the comment. And so, listen, I think the reason this is getting people to, you know, getting some people to kind of run with it is because there's an element of plausibility around the claim, right? We're talking about a country that manages a lot of oil flows. historically has had a deep involvement with Bitcoin. We were among the first countries in that time to adopt it. So there's always this, when you mentioned anything related to Venezuela and Bitcoin, immediately you think there's an element of possibility.

Like there's a chance that this is real because of the ingredients that you're throwing into the mix, right? You're throwing a sanctioned government with a lot of oil and resources, with a lot of shady slash speculative transactions. And then you're saying, well, why wouldn't it make sense for them to hold dick? at crypto. And again, I am not standing here and telling you that Venezuela has zero Bitcoin, zero crypto, has never used it, has never touched it. They certainly have. What I'm saying is that the regime has a record of extreme corruption and incompetence that would not have allowed any meaningful value around those transactions to accrue to the reserves of the people. Let's remember

that this is the same country that has hospitals in shambles, that has no power. throughout all the country. There's program blackouts around most of the country for four plus hours. The state-owned oil company went from 3.5 million barrels production a day in 99 to 800,000 today. These people cannot operate. They have expropriated thousands of private businesses and bankrupted every single one of them. So you're telling, I'm expected to believe that they ran the most sophisticated Bitcoin Treasury operation on planet Earth for the benefit of their people. people. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Okay. Yeah. I, so there was one other, I don't know if you saw this super viral post on X. So whoever wrote this did not like necessarily say other sources. They said things like intelligence reports indicate things like that. But I did see also like

another analysis of the actual charges or indictment and crypto is not mentioned at all in there. And maybe it's just they didn't need to or that it wasn't involved in, you know, whatever those charges were. But like, yeah. So anyway, point is that this person tweeted that basically they were selling some of the oil for Tether. And then because Tether has the ability to lease funds converting that to Bitcoin. I don't know if you saw that and what your thoughts were about that. Again, I'm not suggesting that these types of transactions didn't happen. What I'm suggesting is that they most likely, that Bitcoin was most likely siphoned the way by Jose Lerlerigges and the corrupt members of Sunacrit, who have been prosecuted in charge with stealing billions of dollars from the state-owned oil company. So again, these transactions likely exist.

What does not exist is the accrual of that value to the Venezuelan Central Bank, because what, corruption does is that if you start out with a million and you want to get it to the people and you have 10 hops, you start with a million and you get a dollar. Right. And that's likely what happened in this case. You sold a billion dollars worth of oil and $10 went to the Venezuelanian reserves. And so this, this again, is why I again, I'm not disputing that there were Bitcoin transactions. I'm not disputing that they used Bitcoin and crypto. I am disputing that they did it for the benefit on the people and not themselves. Okay. And the same way that they used. a traditional banking system to do all the...

Oh, I think we're having tech issues with... Yeah, we'll solve the issues with Jorge's video and audio. So one other thing that I saw was Bitcoin Treasuries.net, which is that website where everybody tracks all the debts and everything. It says that Venezuela has 240 Bitcoin, making it the ninth largest Bitcoin holdings by a government entity. it's list December 31st, 2021,

is the acquisition date. I'm not sure where they're getting their info. Me neither. I'm still waiting for data from the Venezuelan Central Bank. So I would love to hear when they got this. And I think God bless people

that trust the information coming out of the Venezuelan Central Bank. I mean, that takes a lot of courage, I would say. And so I would just not take that for it's you know i would put a 10 pounds of salt on that number and um and i would say again is it plausible that there is some bitcoin in the reserves yes is it 60 dip is it 60 billion dollars what i'm saying it isn't like could there be 10 million dollars 20 million dollars

for the bitcoin somewhere that they forgot to steal sure sure then they accumulate 60 billion to the benefit of the people, absolutely not. Okay. So now, Marisa, I know that this goes to your personal story. But Bitcoin mining also has like a pretty interesting history in Venezuela.

You know, I think it started with brass roots interest and then there's this whole confiscation by the government. So tell us about, you know, how it was that Bitcoin mining initially got taken up by everyday people in Venezuela. Definitely. So I'll tell you, you know, the story of my family, which closely tracks the story of others around how we got to it. So the way we got into Bitcoin mining was, as many people know, the real wave of despair and hyperinflation in Venezuela were triggered by the 2013 election, which was the first time the Chavista regime through Maduro basically openly stole the elections in the sense that.

Nobody believed the results. They denied to do a recount. We went out to protest to demand a recound. They shot at us. I was in the protest. I saw people die. It was incredibly traumatic, and it was basically a clear signal to the Venezuelan people and the opposition that there would be no democracy.

And that is what led to the despair, and the despair and the migration was, in fact, what led to the hyperinflation because everybody was fire selling their assets to get out of the country in 2014. So this starts in 2014, continues into 2016. My family, at this point, who was already encouraging all of us to leave, my parents, my parents who were still there, were encouraging all of us to leave. But my youngest brother had just graduated university and he didn't want to leave. And he wanted to start a business in Venezuela. My father adamantly did not want him to do so. But he was rebellious. He had values. He wanted to stay. And he pitched my dad on this idea with very serious tone and said, I'm going to do this whether you like it or not.

I'm leaving the house, I guess an ultimatum. And the idea was buying Bitcoin mining equipment. My brother found out that he could mine Bitcoin to a friend of his Venezuelan guy who was going to university in Houston. And his friends in college in Houston were mining Bitcoin, but he couldn't mind Bitcoin because the cost of energy was too high. But because he was Venezuelan and he knew energy was subsidized, he called my brother and said, Mario, let's buy some McDonald's.

miners together, help me run them and we're going to make a lot of money. And that's how my brother finds out. And so my brother then gets this idea to buy the Bitcoin mining. But at the end, actually funny enough that the Houston guy at the end didn't actually go through with the equipment. They ended up being just my brother buying the equipment. But my brother buys the equipment and starts mining. And it was a huge risk to do so because there were so many unknowns. None of us had ever heard of Bitmain or Bitcoin or A6 or wallets. This was all very new. But the miner gave you a sense of tangible physical good.

And it made you, it sort of created this, it was like a stepping stone to actually owning something digital. Right. Like many people, like my father, my father was very comfortable with buying a computer because he was very used to hardware and electrical upgrades and he could feel it and touch it. and he felt like it was less risky to buy this physical thing than this digital thing. And so Bitcoin mining starts, and my brother starts mining in 2015, starts doing very well and making very good money at a time where no one else was making money, at a time when everybody was fire selling their assets and leaving. And so naturally, when my brother is going around asking people,

hey, are you leaving? Are you going to vacate any industrial? real space, I'm looking to rent. My brother was the only guy renting. So of course, everybody wanted to know what he was up to. And my brother would say, I'm mining Bitcoin. And we were, we were so happy that we had found Bitcoin. We were secretive. If you came to us and you said, why are you so happened? We found Bitcoin. Let me show you. Like here, come to the facility. Like, look at this. It's freedom. Like, look at freedom. You want to feel it? You want to touch it? It sounds like this. Like that, that sound, that's freedom. Right? And people, their eyes lit up.

and they would come and they would be like, how do I buy it? How do I set up? How fast can they come? And so now this is A6. A6 are loud. They take a lot of power. But the sort of silent helper or the silent lesson was GPU mining. Because GPUs, you could connect any legacy device. You can connect them to nice hash,

nice hash for tournament to Bitcoin for you. And so many people started seeing an opportunity to boot up old computers. you know, fix rigs, take the graphics cards out of three, five old computers, put together the rig and basically start making money. Why this was so profitable Venezuela is because energy and electricity was heavily subsidized. And so people were making money hand over fist. Freedom money nonetheless. Money that they couldn't seize, money that you could take anywhere with you. This, it was revolutionary.

And so this was, I call it the golden age of Venezuela and independent money. This went from 2015 to 2017, but it all came to an end in December 2017 because that moment was when Bitcoin rallied to 20K and the world now that the eyes of the world were on Bitcoin. And it just so happened to coincide with a very tough time for Maduro because he was sanctioned. He was having a hard time with oil sales. He couldn't raise money through bonds. and he was desperately trying to raise some external money because everything he was printing got blown back into his face through hyperinflation.

So he decides that he's going to try to get his hands on other people's Bitcoin's abroad and he wants to take the possession and steal the miners that are in the country. But anyway, that leads to the Petro and the eventual witch hunt that occurred from the Middle regime, which we were victims of. But I'll pause

and, you know, see where you want to pick it. Yeah. So hopefully now Jorge's video and microphone are working. So we will go back to some of the questions that he was in the middle of responding. I think the first one maybe was the one about the comments on CNBC. Is that the one where you were originally talking about, you know, where people were speculating that they probably had exposure to Bitcoin, you know, because they, they have been sanctioned and things like that. Is that where we work?

Can you hear me correctly now, by the way? Yes, we can. Yeah. Okay, good, good. Yes. Okay, yes. Coming back to my original comment is that first, the Mauricio is right about everything he said about this sizable,

gigantic Bitcoin that Venezuela could have. And I think your question was why people are caught up with this story. is, of course, people's imagination blows off when they think about the possibility of having all this Bitcoin out there. But what I told the people that were writing this story, Elizabeth, who was writing this story at CNBC, is that the real possibility in Venezuela

is that Venezuela will become an economy based, to a large extent, on the power of crypto assets. It will just naturally happen. The financial system in Venezuela is, totally destroyed. People don't have financial inclusion instruments. People right now are using stable coins in everyday transactions to save money, to get money, to send money anywhere, to buy stuff. So naturally, people, we can build our entire financial system on top of new layers

of technology on what is actually working more efficiently and faster. So that's the first opportunity that I believe the crypto assets community need to be thinking about. It's not about this maybe lost 60 billion Bitcoin or whatever, but about this gigantic opportunity of rebuilding a nation on talk of your technology. So that's point number one. Point number two. And by the way, it's not only because I want it. It's because people will demand it.

Mauricio was just talking about freedom and money. This is something that right now is in the veins of all Venezuel. with us. We want freedom. And we really understand that you need to have something that nobody can take away from you, that no government can take away from you. Doesn't matter if it's the socialist back in the day or right now, or if it's an eventual government. And I think it's very healthy to have a society in which people have a healthy skepticism for power. And I think that right now, these instruments like Bitcoin give people the ability to protect themselves from bad politicians. So point number one, point number two, I really believe that Venezuela can become again a hope for Bitcoin mining.

It can become once again a country with plenty of energy. It will not be subsidized energy like before, but it will anyways be way more very competitive energy cost compared to other countries. And Venezuela is very abundant when it comes to many sources of energy. So I really think that that's what the crypto community have to be enthusiastic about and that we have an entire society that the only positive thing that we have is that we can rebuild it as we lease

and I think that we can build it on top of the crypto assets, etc. And when you talk about the energy portion, Sima Rizio was just talking about how, you know, electricity was subsidized for people. Is there some kind of natural source like hydroelectric energy or something like that, that makes energy production in Venezuela extremely inexpensive?

Yes, exactly. I'm sure Mauritius was speaking to. We have huge amount of hydro in Venezuela, and we have basically a lot of sources of energy. Venezuela can really become an energy hope for many ways. I also think that it's very important that we are also responsible in the sense that all the people that lost their mining capacity and their mining facility, and all the people that were expropriated in Venezuela,

in mining, but also in oil, in regular businesses, in land, in their farms, all these assets have to be given again to them. And there has to be some sort of reparation, because these people really are the ones who can then take these assets and rebuild their country again. So what people will find in Venezuela is an environment in which what we want as Venezuela, as Mauricio, myself,

is bring your investment, bring your business, Of course, we need a political transition to make that happen, but I really think that that's why it is such a big opportunity. Okay, so, and then we, so we kind of jumped back to some of the earlier questions that we move forward to, it's sort of the story of everyday people mining Bitcoin. And I think that takes us to about 2018, which is when the regime confiscated Bitcoin mining equipment. and surprise, surprise, that happened to be the same time when they introduced the Petro, which was their failed cryptocurrency. So maybe just talk a little bit about what happened in that year of 2018, like on both sides.

Like, you know, what do you think, like Maricio seemed to be hinting that because he, Maduro was facing financial pressure that he suddenly realized, oh, this, this is a potential way for us to, you know, evade these financial challenges. But yeah, talk a little bit about those two things in 2018. Yes. Yes. I will let Mauricio speak about the specifics of Bitcoin mining and what happened during that year. And I want to give a context to the audience about where Maduro was that year. Venezuela was entering into a hyperinflation period that year. That means that the inflation rate was over 1,000 percent.

That was the hyperinflation means. In 2017, Venezuela started facing sanctions. It was in 2016, even before the same. sanctions, Venezuela's access to the financial system to international markets was basically caught because the interest rates were extremely high with 30, 40% interest rates. And Venezuela was declining economically since 2013. So 2018 can be seen as a country, as a stay desperate for resources. Baricio, why don't you pick up?

Sure. No, so I think Horn had been a good job sort of setting the stage for what was happening in 2018 and the corner that the regime was put in or was in. And, you know, I have, based on my experience, and, you know, again, I have a thesis. It's a bit of a spicy thesis, but it is, I believe, I will show you the evidence and you can make your decision. So, in Christmas 2017, rolls around. And this is right around the time where Maduro is back against the wall. And Christmas is always a tough time because.

because Maduro and Chavez had accustomed people to get free things in Christmas. Like they would come in with these crazy gifts every Christmas, right? And I don't know exactly when. I think that the castle was one of these big Christmas piñata events, which I think was 2016 or 2017. But basically there were these events around Christmas where Maduro would raid the private inventory of a business, like Baghdaka, an electronic store,

or I forget the name of the shoe company. Hartford, if you remember the shoe company that they raided, the other Christmas the name slips me but every Christmas people were used to you know sometimes they would bring

pork legs and you know they were the most random special food box for Christmas like the most random gifts right but people expected gifts

and Maudo had nothing for when Christmas 2017 rolled around and right around that time he was starred for cash and he was seeing these crypto assets flying

and everyone minting these coins set of thin air and making millions of dollars. So he gets, I presume he gets briefed and he's told Mr. Maluno, there's a lot of mining equipment in the country because we have the import records to see them coming in. And also, this whole wave of ICO crypto crypto crap tokens that are being minted, you guys, we can mint our own. And we can link it to this idea that it's linked to our oil reserves.

and we'll put some BS thing on the paper and people, you know, look and look, they're buying all these other stuff. And so he comes up with these two great ideas around Christmas 2017. He creates a minor registry through Suna Krip, where minors were invited kindly to register. And Asuna Krip is the crypto regulator in Venezuela? Correct. And then he says, you know, alongside, we're going to make Venezuela the crypto country. So we're going to have this regular leader, we're going to have this minor registry, and we're going to have our own cryptocurrency, the petro. And to celebrate this, I'm going to do an educational tour around the country to teach everybody about crypto.

And these road shows start in December. And they have stops in different major cities. And it was supposed to be about the petro. But if you go back and look at the videos, I would watch the press conferences. If you watch the press conferences in the videos, these shows were actually. exhibitions, exhibition halls for Bitcoin miners, so for mining hardware. So you would go into these education sessions and they would tell you, this is a Bitcoin ASIC.

This is what it sounds like. This is how much money it makes. This is how you could find them through their heat print. This is how you could find them when you listen to them. This is how you can identify them by looking at electricity loads. And most importantly, that's how much money they can make you. And by the way, if you find these anywhere, you can connect your wallet and you live money.

And so this was a playbook for his cronies, death squads, if you want to call them that. Basically, he was saying, hey, death squads, I'm going to teach you where these things are, how to find them, and I'm going to give you carp launch to run them, steal them, go steal them and run them. And that's how you get paid.

That's your Christmas dog. And so not surprisingly, January 2018, our family, another minor, start reporting these strange visitors, dressed up as municipality reps. At the beginning, it was just questions about electricity usage. Why has every other factory here closed down? But you guys are expanding?

What are you making? Yeah, why everyone else on the block sold the house and left? All these houses are vacant. Why is your house drawing so much electricity? How many people you got living here? And then, obviously, once they found out, because obviously through the answers on the electricity load, that literally weeks after

they were knocks on the door they were busting down your door with long guns and threatening you with throwing you in jail asking you for Bitcoin ransom and demanding your equipment for our family's example they raided our facility they demanded $25,000 in cash

and the machines to not throw my brother in jail first over some made-up charges and they continue to extort us They stole our equipment. They continued to extort our friends and family for years on end. And so that was my example. So that was the witch hunt.

And that witch hunt, you know, took, claimed quite a few other people. So that's my experience. Wow. That's just absolutely terrible. And I'm so sorry that happened to your family. So we're going to talk a little bit more about the lives of everyday Venezuelans under Maduro and, you know, how crypto also was, you know, a part of the solution for them or what they turned to. But first, we're going to take a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. Hey, founders and developers.

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as Mauricio just explained, you know, every day of Venice villains, they're mining Bitcoin. I did also read during that time that people began turning to stable coins as well. So, yeah, can you just talk a little bit about, and either one of you, about, other ways in which people were using everyday people were using crypto in Venezuela? Yes, I mean, right now Venezuelans people use stable coins every day for transactions.

Like Venezuelans right now, because you cannot use bolivars, right? So you can use bolivars, you cannot use your financial system rely on stable coins. This has been the way to survive after many years of hyperinflation. We have had in Venezuela the highest inflation rate since 2013 of the world.

Every single year. In 2017, it became hyperinflation. People did not know how to survive, how to receive remittances. 8 million people have left Venezuela. This is roughly a quarter, more than a population. So because of these,

people start looking for a solution and they saw that the stable coin is the best solution for them. them. So in Venezuela, that price is a lot of Mauricio's story is very emblematic

about the age. They cannot allow even an ounce of somebody doing well or being prosperous or making money

because they go and they try to steal it. It's in their bones. That's the why my country is like this. It is the reason that Venezuela is the only

oil that destroy its own oil industry, is that they cannot see anything that is profitable because they want to go there and steal as much as they can as fast as they can. So Maurizu's story is really emblematic of the way my country is. And even lately, the regime has seen how people are doing everyday transactions on stable coins. So right now they are trying to push people and force vendors to actually not sell their stuff on stable. coins, but to sell it through bolivars by doing manipulation

of the currency and exchange rates. So, for example, a year ago, people were able to just mark their prices on dollars. And it was working very well because it was a way to send the right signals to the market. But the regime, not even that, can allow.

So they start making the manipulation of the currency that makes people almost impossible to mark their prices in dollars. So that's just the way Venezuela is, honestly. And that's why people have to leave, because if you are a bit successful, then they try to cut your head. Yeah, and I'll add to that. So I think, Laura, one of the things has been fascinating over, so to go back to the, to the sort of journey of Venezuela in history,

recent history, right? We said Maduro of sold the elections of 2014. This triggered a wave of mass migration and hyperinflation by 2018. I can, I don't know the exact number of people that I've been out, but I would estimate it would be $4 million plus, right? And that number just kept cranking higher to the current $9 million. Venezuela is a country of 30 million people today. It was a country of 30 million people when Chavez took office. Actually, it was $30 million when Chavez took office. It's $28.5 today. So net loss of $1.5 million in 1.5 million people in 26 years. The net winners of this, sorry, the net winners of that was the world who received 9 million immigrants, right?

Venezuela historically, the economy, the remittance slice of gross domestic product in Venezuela was like very, very low single digits. There were no remittances. Venezuela was a net exporter of capital to the world. We didn't have people sending money in. There was no diaspora. None of us ever wanted to leave up until that point. But what happened in 2014 is that many, many Venezuelans, some of the most productive Venezuela, as I might add, started leaving. And this. started creating the remittance slice of the pie and the importance of remittances into the Venezuelan economy kept growing and growing and growing. Until today, I'm not sure what the number is. Hornebitt is like a non-imaterial amount of the Venezuelan gross domestic product is remittances. Keep in mind, it's very hard to put a number on this

because most remittances are not done through official rails for a good reason. So let me explain the dynamics as to why stable coins are such an important rail for remittances. and once they are in, people don't want to get out of them. And it has to do the currency exchange manipulation that the regime is undertaking at the moment. In Venezuela, there are two exchange rates right now. If you believe the government, the government today, I'm looking at the screen,

the government right now says $1 is worth $321.21 billion. In the free market, i.e. peer-to-peer markets, a dollar is trading for $780 billion. That is a delta of $1,000. 43% in value. So here's what happens. If you, Laura, want to send $1 to your friend in Venezuela and you do so through your banks or regulated rails, your friend will get 321 bolivres deposited in their bank account, a regime-controlled bank account. If you send them a stable coin, that person has a spending power of 780 boliores, more than twice. So you tell me how you're going to choose to send money to your loved ones.

And you tell me if anyone else in that environment would feel comfortable dealing in dollars in regime-controlled banks at those exchange rates. There is no trust in the Venezuelan banking system because the banking system is the regime. Do you see what I mean? Like the only way to actually not have, by the way, which is not only a sovereignty issue, it's a huge privacy issue. you are supposed to tell the group of people that has hated and prosecuted wealth and prosperity for 26 years, you're going to tell them how much money you're making? Are you out of your mind?

And so this is why it's so prevalent and it's only going to get bigger. You know, the anecdotally, when I speak to my friends, right now in my town, Berke Cimeto, three out of ten businesses except stable coins. And a lot of, there were, it used to be hired, But to the Hohra has point, they've really pushed back now with this exchange rate enforcement.

And so, but it used to be higher. And so I think if you liberate the Venezuelan economy, and I think part of this whole rebuilding, we have to fix the currency. Like, you know, I would almost just want to get rid of it, frankly. But we have to, before anything can prosper, we have to fix, obviously we have to fix rule of law. We have to fix the desquots. We have to fix the democratic institutions. And part of that we have to fix the money. Yeah.

I mean, I experienced what you're talking about on a much smaller scale when I went to Buenos Aires for Deaf Connect. Yeah, because there's two exchange rates. And, you know, even though this is like in my family history, not my personal history, you know, I have ancestors from North Korea and living relatives. So, you know, I understand this concept of like. there can be moments in your life where all of a sudden the government is your adversary and you cannot trust the government and everything you have to do is like secret and you know you need to escape otherwise they're you know going to do something that is not in your interest so um yeah these are these are concepts that i at least understand on a certain level despite my kind of you know american financial privilege um i did actually then just want to go back to this bit about the because we didn't kind of go into it in depth. You know, he launched that in 2018. It was sunsetted in 2024.

So explain the trajectory of what happened there. So the petro, I still remember when the petrol was announced. And sadly, there were some voices who lacked the context of Venezuela in the cryptosphere who applauded the efforts. And they were, I remember seeing headlines as, oh, my God, crypto adoption, Venezuela is leading the charge. what an example. They're studying for the world,

and I was pulling my hair, just screaming to the void. And I was like, guys, because the sad part is most people didn't read, because the Venezuelan Petro was done by the government, there was a publication, there was like a law,

there was like a document that explained how the petrol would work and the mechanics or the reserves and how do you redeem and mint and burn. And I'm pretty sure nobody else read it, but I read it. And I read it, and I read it, and I wrote,

wrote a piece on medium back in the day, that's called, the piece is titled, The Petro is a scam, here's why. And the Petro actually, it's a very simple read. All you have to do is read what the petro is backed by. There's a small section, and I can show you the screenshot. But if you read what the Petro is backed by, it said something like a barrel of oil, whatever grounds of gold, ounces of Bousita, Bauxita, I don't know what the name in English is, Bocita's another mineral. And then at the bottom, the catch-all, which was, or anything else, the Venezuelan government deems worthy. And that's all you got to read. Like that last one, that's all you need to know, right?

And so clearly you have a centralized currency supposedly built on trust because it's centralized, right? Like, it's completely not decentralized. launched by a group that has absolutely no credibility or legitimacy. And you're expected to send them your hard-earned money, get this piece of paper, and they have decimated a country of 30 million people, but they're going to be nice to you? They're going to be responsible operating you? And so the petrol, and they tried really, really hard to make it to sort of a force, force-feeded into the Venezuelan economy.

So for a while, they were paying salaries in petros and bonuses in petros and food stamps in petros. And they tried to make the government supermarkets accept petros. It was a complete failure. Because everybody that got their petros, even the Venezuelans didn't trust the petrol. Like you got it immediately you went out of it. You're like, hell no, I'm not saving on this thing. Right?

Everything you got from the government, you turn into dollars. Like you get rid of it. Just assume it's just as bad as the Boliv. just get rid of it. And so the petrol lacked adoption. It was ridiculed and mocked by many people in the industry. It was ridiculed by the old Venezuelans, right? Like, what are you holding petrol?

Like, it was like a joke. And so it got so embarrassing that they had to sunset it, not to mention the crypto-regular, the Venezuelan cryptoregular, the guys that were supposed to be protecting us and fostering the growth of the industry, were caught in 2023 stealing $20 billion. from the state-owned oil company. So you think they stole $20,000 in PEDA and they're going to take care of your petro reserves? That's cute.

Right? So no, so they had no choice but to sunset it. Jorge, do you want to add anything? No, I mean, like Mauricio has a very visual way of explaining it because it's totally true, you know. For Venezuela, that we have been leaving this story once again and once again and once again, in which the government, they just do everything,

they can just take anything that they can take. Petro is like a huge scam. People still, by the way, to this day, people ask me about it. But it's a total scam. It was, and at some point, I believe also the officials thought that they could do sign conservation through Petter. That was one of the faces they had. I'm sure they later realized that they can do that

through the traditional banking system and they really don't need any Petro or anything else, especially by most oil that Venezuela produces goes to China. 80% of oil that Venezuela is exporting. That is not going to the U.S. through the Chevron deal before. It was going to make those transactions. You can make it through other regular banking architecture. Okay.

That's actually a good segue because I did want to ask about the fact that, you know, part of the reason I think that the Trump administration did, you know, execute this operation to capture Maduro is because there are countries that are considered adversaries of the U.S., such as China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba that were cozy or are cozy with the Maduro regime. As we all know, China is very, how should we put it, you know, blockchain forward. They have their digital yuan. they're doing a whole bunch of different kind of state-sponsored blockchain projects. This digital yuan is actually going to start bearing interest next year, which is in contrast to the U.S.

where the banking lobby wants to prevent U.S. stable coins from offering interest. And I wonder, you know, kind of when you see like everything that you know about what's happening in crypto, but you also understand these geopolitical moves involving these different countries that are also trying to use crypto to further their interests, how do you think crypto will kind of play a role or how do you think it could affect the balance of the geopolitical power across the globe? I mean, all institutions are trying to enforce the way they should be enforced.

And for these countries, I think about parallel ways, alternative ways in which they can develop their own financial architecture. You know, I think, you know, just your question is around how will crypto technology or crypto rails sort of shift or impact, like geopolitical balances?

Yeah, or just like these efforts by these different countries, because it could go either way, you know, what they're doing could impact crypto and, you know, what they're trying to do with crypto could affect the power of balance in the world. Yeah, I think, you know, my view around the sort of meta impact that crypto assets, digital assets broadly are having on just geopolitics, I'm actually looking at it not necessarily through the lens

of this particular conflict. I'm looking at it from things like these golden visa programs or investor programs that you're seeing pop up at different parts of the world. The U.S. is now pretty aggressively trying to lure successful entrepreneurs with these types of investor visas.

These same things occur like there's a golden visa in Dubai and there's a golden visa in Portugal. There's golden visa programs that are starting to pop up here and there. And what I'm taking away from this is that the government are starting to understand that productive individuals have mobility now, especially with digital assets. Digital assets give you way more mobility than physical assets. And the younger generation is over-indexing more and more and more into digital assets.

I've spoken to countless Bitcoinists who will tell you, what are your assets? I owe my home and I own my Bitcoin. Like, that's it. And a person like that is a person that is very mobile. And so if you propose a better package, that person might decide to uproot and leave. And governments are understanding that not everything is what they charge you on income. Not everything is what they can, what power in a flesh they can get from you on capital gains. Sometimes the government benefits from having people enroll their children in schools and buy cars.

and buy food at restaurants and add to the gross domestic product and economic activity of the country. And you're starting to see issues like, for example, in the UK. You introduce a new wealth tax. Oh, did you get more tax revenue? Whoops. I guess they left. Right? And the same thing started to happen in other places.

And so countries are starting to realize people are mobile. If we push them too hard, they might go away. And again, going back to this example, many of us who left Venezuela are young, successful, and have digital assets. That makes us quite mobile. And so if things get fixed and if the right package to return our pitch to this cohort of successful digital entrepreneurs, there's a non-zero chance. it adds back a giant boost to the Venezuelan gross domestic product. So that may be not necessarily head on the type of answer that you were looking for, but that was sort of my take on the meta view.

Okay. Well, you guys, this has been such a fascinating discussion. I've really enjoyed chatting with you. Is there anything just because I know that I'm not an expert in these types of matters? Is there anything that I didn't ask you that you feel people would be interested to know that is at this intersection of kind of what's happening in Venezuela and the coin, crypto, stable coins, anything related? I would say don't dismiss the real chance digital asset companies have to play a role in the rebuilding of Venezuela. As Jorge said, one of the biggest layers of infrastructure that has been gutted is financial services.

And you're looking at an economy that is pretty, open to digital assets. They've been using them out of necessity. They know the tech. They're not afraid. And they're going to be desperately needing services they can trust because the ones they have, they can't. And so I would say there's a real opportunity to help rebuild the financial infrastructure in that country.

Imagine a world in which Venezuela becomes democratic and there's a transition to a a normal pro-market government. There will be a serious consideration whether how to use a stable coin. In Venezuela, like in another country, has been used. My Moritz just said, we need to fix our money. So how does stable coin place a role into that? Considering that the Bolivar cannot be the only currency that we hold

because everybody is doing everything on dollars in USDT. So the reconstruction needs to call. also from that side. So I really think that that's something that we really need to look into that because in all other countries, stable coins, for example, are a company.

But in Venezuela, they really can become the central element that's everything else surround all the financial architecture surrounds that. So Venezuela has the opportunity. Also something that is very important for people to know is that because

all of us experience hyperinflation and all these issues. All the people that want to come back to rebuild Venezuela, which not only is people that want to do politics, but people that want to be in the private sector. We are all extremely pro-cryptal assets. So there is a mentality there in the leadership of the country. Because you know the people that build businesses, the people that want to do politics,

then eventually become the intellectual elite of a country. So they decide, they think, how to rebuild. things. And in our case, all of us, we're extremely pro-Bitcoin. We're extremely pro-stable coin. And I think that's the huge opportunity that we have because it's a combination of an elite that really believes on these things and the population who are using these things every single day. So I think that's why Venezuela, everybody has to be extremely optimistic about it. Okay, great. Well, thank you both so much for sharing all your thoughts. And we'll have to see. how all of this continues to play out because it definitely feels like this is going to be in the news

for a while. So yeah, so thank you so much.