Intro to Bitcoin: A Novel Idea for Venezuelans
5 am
The alarm goes off at its normal time. Its shrillness is usually tempered by the smell of my wife brewing coffee and preparing her amazing scrambled eggs. But not this morning. Today the alarm is just the disturbance that forces me upright to start my day.
I reach over to my wife’s side of the bed where the lamp is. The silk sheets while smooth are cold to the touch–a daily reminder of her absence. I pull the lamp’s cord illuminating the room in the soft glow of lamplight and flop back over to my side of the bed my eyes rest on the wooden crib at the foot of my the bed.
It’s common knowledge, childbirth is stressful (and our first child did not disappoint in that regard). But what I didn’t realize was that being unable to be there for the birth far more stressful. I hoped they were ok.
5:05 am
*Sigh* I’ve got to get up I think to myself.
I jump out of bed (careful not to trip over the crib), throw on some clothes and rush out the door. Although I’m usually up this early, things are a little more dire today since the banks ran out of cash yesterday before I was able to get any and my son didn’t get dinner last night since I couldn’t buy groceries.
Outside, the darkness weighed thick this morning. The path down the hill was always a little iry this early but it was even more so today since Javier, the last of my neighbors, had moved out.
It still felt surreal. Javier and I had known each other for as long as I could remember. We lived in the same neighborhood, went to the same schools, and even dated some of the same girls.
He had tried to hold out as long as he could, but it didn’t make sense for his family to suffer in Venezuela when he had relatives in Spain he could go to.
It was about two weeks ago when Javier broke the news to me. We were sitting out on the wooden porch in front of my house, our bodies sunk back into reclining chairs and our stomachs filled to the brim with my wife’s cooking.
“Cigar?” Javier asked, pulling out a set of 2 cigars.
“Sure,” I said. “Gracias.”
The cigar paper was smooth to the touch and carried with it a deep oak smell that made me think it had been freshly wrapped. The chocolate taste of the smoke it produced once lit confirmed my hunch.
“What’s the special occasion?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t call it a special occasion.” He sighed and there was a long pause.
I turned to face him and his usual jovial demeanor was now one shrouded in worry. Although the light was dimming with the setting sun, I could tell the lines in his face from normal aging were sunk in deeper than usual.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’m leaving to Spain in two weeks,” he said quietly.
I turned back to the setting sun, letting out a sigh of cigar smoke. This had always been a possibility. Javier and I had joked about leaving Venezuela for years now, ever since things got bad. But I didn’t think he would actually do it. Leave behind the only life he’s ever known and start over again. But that’s exactly what he did and his leaving left the whole row of houses abandoned.
This isn’t the Venezuela I remember. I didn’t really know how good things were before oil prices fell. However, when they did, it became very obvious. Now, life seemed to be one long line, either for cash or for groceries. You see no oil (and a government that paid “no attention to diversifying the economy or investing in anything outside of oil”) meant no money to import. No money to import meant shortages and drastically higher prices on what items were left. All the while, the government tried to print their way out of the problem which made prices rise even further. The rate of inflation is now so high the bolivar in your pocket seems to simply lose value as you wait in line at the store to spend it.
I let out a long sigh while shaking my head and trying to repress a toothless smirk.
My wife always says I need to be more positive. Because while things were certainly bad, they could be worse. As my mother used to say you have to force yourself to see the good in life otherwise life won’t be worth living. Which reminds me I still need to grab a gift for my niece’s birthday.
I smile to myself. Mamá. She always had the best advice.
As I passed by Javier’s house (its bright yellow still showing distinctly in the dim light of the early morning), I made a mental note to check in on things on my way back since he’d left me a key.
When I arrived at the bank it was still pitch dark but there was already a line halfway down the block. It looked like some of the people had slept there overnight.
I took a deep sigh and proceeded to the end of the line where a blond-haired woman with a baby strapped to her chest stood.
“¿Cómo estás?” I said quietly so as to not wake the baby with my greeting.
“I’m well,” she said. “And you?”
“Could be better,” my voice trailed off. “But I don’t want to want to talk too much and wake your son.”
“Oh don’t worry about him. He’s used to this and can sleep through pretty much anything at this point. ¿Que pasó?
Although it felt weird to be opening up to a random stranger. This crisis, despite all its hardship, did seem to have the silver lining of bringing people closer. Between that and the fact that we had at least another 3 hours till the bank opened, I figured why not.
“Well, my wife left last week to Columbia to deliver our next child with the hospitals being what they are. And my son didn’t eat last night…things just seem to be falling apart.”
“Sí,” she replied. Sometimes I wonder what type of life I’m giving my son and whether it makes sense to stay here or try to move.
I nodded as the same thoughts had crossed my mind many a time. But I couldn’t imagine leaving. How could I leave everything behind? Where would I go?
Not wanting to bog down the conversation with my sea of emotions, I simply responded, “Sí, the last of my neighbors just left.”
The baby begins to yawn. She turns to him and starts rocking him back to sleep. Just quickly as he woke, he’s back out, his head resting delicately on his mother’s shoulder.
She turns back to me and asks, “are you from here originally?”
I look at her inquisitively, “Sí, how did you know?”
She chuckled, still rocking, “your accent gives you away.”
We went back and forth sharing stories about the Venezuela of our youths and how we hoped things would stabilize soon so we could provide the same life for our children. The engrossing conversation made the time pass by quickly. Even so, it was still a 30-minute wait to get inside after the bank opened.
Upon finishing my withdrawal, I stepped out the bank pocketing the bolivars I’d worked so hard to obtain. The line to the bank now stretched around the block out of site. Although relieved I’d gotten to the bank in time to avoid the queue, I knew a similar line was in store at the grocery store.
At least that’s how things were…before bitcoin.
Javier started sending me a few every other week for looking after his house. I told him he didn’t have to but he insisted.
He initially tried sending USD but that took weeks to get here and was significantly cut in half by bank fees and transfer fees.
Then Javier started experimenting with sending over bitcoin. I was nervous at first since one of my friends who had gotten into bitcoin early had been harassed by the police. I remember the week after he’d finished setting it up, he’d invited me over to stare at his technological feat.
“Isn’t it a thing of beauty?” he said, grinning from ear to ear.
I looked at him incredulously not really sure if he was joking or not. His “set-up” looked like any other computer. Except instead of looking clean and organized, it had a bunch of wires sticking out like the work of some shoddy craftsman. Moreover, computers are supposed to be quiet but this thing was rather loud. Its fans seemed to be on a constant overdrive. And the fans were needed because upon approach you could feel the heat emanating off the machine. Miguel even had external fans in place to aid the cooling of the computer’s internal ones. All in all this “set-up” didn’t look right.
“Umm…” He cut me off.
“I’m not talking about the aesthetics of it. I’m talking about the functionality. This thing is literally printing money!”
My eyes widened. “Really?” I said still in disbelief, but my interest had been sufficiently piqued.
“Are you not familiar with how Bitcoin mining works?”
I shook my head.
He shook his head and let out an exasperated sigh.
“Dios mío,” he said under his breath. “Where have you been. This computer is synched up to the larger bitcoin network where it runs computer calculations to verify bitcoin transactions and is paid in bitcoin for every transaction that is verified. So as long as the computer is on and running, it’s earning money.”
I don’t quite remember the rest of the conversation past that point. As soon as he connected the dots it was like a light went on in my head. No more lines at the bank. No more worrying over grocery prices. No more hoping in a currency that would more than likely not come back…at least not anytime soon. All I needed to do is get one of these things set up in my house.
I came home that evening with a shopping list of all the things Miguel said I’d need to put the rig together. When I told my wife about it she seemed a little skeptical. Not wanting to waste our savings on a shot in the dark, she advised that I at least wait until the morning to sleep on it.
The next morning while eating breakfast, the news announced, “Venezuelan Bitcoin Miners Arrested for ‘Electricity Theft’.”
My wife dropped the plates she had been previously holding into the sink. As they crashed against each other, hitting the metal sink basin, she stared at me worryingly. Meanwhile, I sat in disbelief as Miguel’s image flashed across the screen.
It seems Miguel’s capitalizing on Venezuela’s low energy cost to mine bitcoin and the resulting skyrocketing of his energy bills seemed to set off a red flag for government officials–officials whose radar I’d prefer to not be on.
After that, I had been sufficiently scared off and had decided to ignore the bitcoin buzz, but when Javier insisted, I couldn’t resist his generosity. And now, I’m glad I didn’t.
Bitcoin while not a cureall to Venezuela’s problems has made life a lot easier. Javier sending the money to me means that I don’t have to worry about raising any red flags of higher than usual energy consumption. And since bitcoin was designed to be relatively anonymous, I don’t have to worry about being tracked down via my transaction logs. So instead of wasting half a day at banks facing arbitrary withdrawal limits on cash that may or may not be there, I can trade in my bitcoin for Bolivar. Sites like LocalBitcoins.com allow me to trade my bitcoins with other individuals. Almost like a peer to peer bank.
Bitcoin has also been a godsend because it’s more stable than the Bolivar, at least relatively speaking.
That being said the Venezuela of today is definitely still not what I’d hoped for but bitcoin has at least made things stable while my family and I wait for better days to come.
Bitcoin and the many cryptocurrencies that have spun out of its introduction of blockchain technology (the technology that bitcoin runs on) to the world have been touted for the numerous solutions they can provide to the world. Some say these solutions will be as game-changing as the introduction of the internet in the 90s. This short story is meant to elaborate on one of those proposed use cases–helping countries weather through economic tumult.
A Note from the Author
This article, while a work of fiction, is centered around factual events and news articles detailing the economic crisis in Venezuela. By removing the technological clutter that usually serves as an impasse in articles that attempt to explain Bitcoin’s use cases and instead, painting a more vivid picture of the world and situations in which the technology would be used, my hope is to create a better understanding of the applications of Bitcoin for myself and my readers.
At the same time, as the events in Venezuela are still ongoing I don’t want to embellish what for many is a real life struggle but raise awareness to what I think might be a possible solution.
Additional Resources
Learn more about the Venezuelan Economic Crisis
Learn more about Bitcoin & the Blockchain
Originally published at freddooley.com on December 4, 2018.
