@DavidHay is doing a wonderful thing for the public image of crypto and the Venezuelan and Columbian people.
Source: Wikipedia
Having the largest oil reserves in the world, Venezuela has had its economy based around the export of this profitable resource. In 1980, there became significantly reduced demand for oil causing the oil glut that occurred in the 1980s. This pulled the price of oil down for 6 years, and brought disastrous economic inflation.
With the poverty rates at 66% in 1995, the Venezuelan people experienced, first hand, the problems associated with government controlled capitol. Without the ability to save, trade, or work, goods become increasingly scarce. After a strong recovery of the price of oil, poverty levels dropped and economic equality improved. The entire economy was completely reliant on oil, with it making up about 95% of its total exports. Government corruption, price controls, large spending on social welfare plans, and the oil price falling from ~$100 to ~$30 led to extreme hyperinflation, poverty, and starvation.
Citizens had their entire savings reduced to pennies, and have no means of making money or ability to store wealth. This crisis has lead to a mass exodus, with people fleeing to Chili, Columbia, Peru, and Brazil in horribly unsustainable quantities (See: The Crisis Next Door -Washington Post).
The terrible situation needs serious attending to from outside. What better mechanism to combat governmental hyperinflation than with crypto? Who are the most likely to see the value in a deflationary, unregulated, distributed means of transacting and storing value? Isnt this the heart of Bitcoin's original mission: To bank the un-banked, to give the power to the people, and to connect the world financially. @DavidHay spoke at the NAC3 conference in New York last week about his plan to provide two weeks salary (at only $1.94 a week, he stated) to upwords of 300,000 refugees in Cúcuta (a town with a population of only 650,000) in cryptocurrency.
Out of this crisis, crypto can demonstrate its ability to help solve financial disasters. This is not only a picture perfect use case to test mass adoption for a coin, it is a sign of potential for wide spread adoption of blockchain technologies in the near future. @DavidHay is doing a wonderful thing for the public image of crypto, the Venezuelan and Columbian people, and likely the price of whatever cryptocurrence is smart enough to contribute a mere 2 Million Dollors worth of currency. See his recent Steemit post on this plan here.
Thank you for reading.
I know this is quite different from my usual science writing, but it is very timely and audience relevant. Please consider helping to spread the word about David's offer, as I have done in this tweet to Charles Hoskinson:
They need all the help and support they can get... this is amazing
Thank you for referring me to this post @ngans and thanks for worrying about our situation. As a Venezuelan, I thank you for any help you can offer us from abroad.
Of course, thanks for reading. I hope that this effort will bring more attention to the issue.
I'm not sure crypto can amend the current situation because the situation is the result of international pressure.
But I honestly wish it could help at least some view of poor Venezuelan.
Surely crypto cannot save the world from all of its problems, but there is a clearly applicable use in this case. The people are without a basic economic system to work within. Giving a secure means of trade and value storage would do wonders for them. It is worth trying in my opinion, with very limited downside if executed properly. It seems like a perfect opportunity to put crypto to the test, and see if micro transactions can be as effectively implemented in a new region as crypto enthusiasts claim.
Lovely post
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
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