Use of bitcoin in an authoritarian regime (Venezuela)

Hello, as you know Venezuelan here (living here), crypto enthusiast.

Sadly, the situation has been crazy last days, Maduro stole the election where he lost 70-30 and even with proof he won’t accept it.

As always in this kind of situations is where Bitcoin is useful, they cannot control them. People abroad have been sending money this way to help in the inside “fight”.

Sadly, in the last mile, people usually use a P2P service where you need KYC and that is how they can now.

But as always, there are ways, for example paying directly with crypto (I did it before and posted it here, paid my groceries with BTC), sadly as this was a bit supermarket chain here in Venezuela, they need your ID number to generate the receipt/invoice so no way of staying anonymous.

There is a lot of USD cash flowing in the streets here, that has been the safest way. People want to buy crypto with cash and that cash is used to buy things. They cannot not know where does it come from.

LN is good because it is pretty anonymous.

I am glad you don’t have to pass this kind of things to understand the importance of crypto.

Some people say it is a scam or non-useful, easy to say when you live in a stable democracy.

Any question, let me know.

Best regards!