Venezuelan Bitcoin Trading Volume Post Record Highs as Hyperinflated Bolivars Run Rampant

Due to Venezuela’s struggles with hyperinflation, political strife, and limited food supplies, consumers in Venezuela. Data from monitoring resource Coin Dance, which tracks volumes on P2P Bitcoin exchanges Localbitcoins, Paxful and Bisq, confirmed South America, in particular, saw huge amounts of fiat currency change hands recently.

This phenomenon isn’t new. It has been constantly increasing since the start of the economic crisis in the country. One can see the increase in the rising trade by the following graph.

For the week ending April 27, 2019, users on the peer-to-peer crypto trading platform LocalBitcoins exchanged a record-breaking 35.9 billion Venezuelan bolivar for BTC, up from 29 billion during the previous week.

Eduardo Gómez, the CEO of Purse.io and a Venezuelan citizen has said that Localbitcoins is one of the few companies which have

“saved his life on multiple occasions”.

Mainstream media outlets from the country are now openly talking about Bitcoin and many of them have faith in this new borderless coin and believe that it can be the better alternative than the nation’s fiat currency or the Petro, the state-backed cryptocurrency created by the executive government last year.

The worldwide volume of Bitcoin also surged. Not only counties being affected by the inflation are using the tokens. Even in countries with stable fiat, BTC can be a good idea when it’s going up and it was going up fast. Other countries in the American continent which saw a big spike in volume were Argentina and Colombia, both in economic crisis. Peru, Mexico, and Chile also saw smaller but important volume spikes.

Earlier this week, BitcoinExchangeGuide had reported Maduro urging his citizens to choose Petro instead of Bitcoin. Maduro noted two things, first, the entry of new money is needed, especially from foreigners, and second, citizens of Venezuela are urged to invest in Petro. He discussed that when both are satisfied, the Venezuelan economy can potentially be relieved.