Venezuela mining excavation

“Someone went to Venezuela to mine?” The words of the group friends broke the tranquility of the mine exchange group.

"My friend just came back from there and strongly advised not to go. The machine was robbed, and the little life was almost unprotected."

"The local electricity is free, and the life is charged."

"It's better to steal electricity in the country, and go to jail at most. It won't kill you."

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……

Some group friends responded by saying the excitement of mining in Venezuela. In fact, it was reported earlier in the year that when the miners in Venezuela lived for years, they were blackmailed and kidnapped, and the mining machine was confiscated. It was almost an inescapable fate. .

So what is the situation in Venezuela today? The story begins with the past.

01

From rich to "negative"

 

In the 1950s, many Venezuelans could not help but feel that this place is a paradise on earth. People don't eat or wear, and life is rich and secure.

At that time, the end of the Second World War, most of the world's countries were struggling to recover slowly in the ruins, and Venezuela's per capita GDP ranked fourth in the world. At that time, Venezuela was 13 times richer than China.

Until the early 1980s, Venezuela remained the richest country in Latin America, with wages the highest in Latin America. At that time, he had his own social welfare system including medical care, education, food subsidies and so on.

As the country with the richest oil reserves in the world, Venezuela can do a good job by selling oil. However, Venezuela's economy is too singular. Because it has been heavily dependent on domestic crude oil exports and has not achieved diversified development, its economy will always be greatly affected when international oil prices fall.

In the mid-1980s, the supply of crude oil was excessive and oil prices plummeted, causing the economy of Venezuela to collapse.

In 1998, Chavez won the presidential election. He slogan "improving the standard of living of the people", but still relies on Venezuela's rich oil reserves, and has not changed Venezuela's single development model. Fortunately, catching up with the oil price recovery, Venezuela escaped.

After the death of Chavez, the international oil price fell again in 2014. This time, Venezuela’s economy suffered a devastating blow and it has never recovered.

When the successor President Maduro came to power, he fell into a quagmire of economic collapse and even began to face a political crisis. According to data released by the Venezuelan opposition parliament in 18 years, the country’s consumer price index in June 18 surged 4,6305% year-on-year. The growth rate of inflation also accelerated to 128.4%, of which food prices soared by 183%.

In this way, Venezuela has become the most inflationary place from a country with the richest oil reserves, from a paradise on earth to hell.

02

Controversial "coin coin"

In order to withstand inflationary pressures, some areas of Venezuela have even used Bitcoin to replace the payment and transfer functions of French currency.

At the end of 2017, Venezuela made a bold attempt. On December 8, President Maduro proposed the idea of ​​issuing the national legal digital currency Petro (the oil coin). At the end of January 18, the government issued the "White Paper on Petroleum Coins."

According to Maduro, the issue of "coin coins" will help Venezuela break the US financial blockade, maintain its monetary sovereignty, and promote its macroeconomic stability. The market value of "coin coins" will also exceed Bitcoin, becoming the largest cryptocurrency. .

As the world's first country to issue legal cryptocurrencies, Venezuela has drawn global attention, but oil coins have been controversial because their symbolic meaning is greater than the actual meaning. It can also be said that Venezuela's blockchain process is carried out around petroleum coins, and other applications are few and do not solve any practical problems.

According to the chain tower think tank data, due to the currency depreciation of more than 90%, the domestic people in Venezuela chose to trade in bitcoin. From March to April 2018, Venezuela's local currency Bolivar-denominated bitcoin transaction volume surged by 138%, from April to May, with a 39% increase. In the first week of June, bitcoin transactions increased by 40%.

In the context of using Bitcoin to solve the most basic problems in life, Venezuela's blockchain application is far from reach.

However, the Venezuelan government has “make a big deal” for the implementation of oil coins. It has developed a youth digital work plan to encourage young nationals, including college students, the unemployed, single mothers and homeless people, to build cryptocurrency farms to dig oil coins. At the same time, measures to combat national digging of bitcoin have been implemented.

Since June 2018, the Venezuelan government has banned the import of any new mining hardware, including certain types of graphics cards and computers and ASIC mining machines, to combat domestic mining operations, strengthen local currency, and prevent nationals from completely abandoning the country’s legal currency. Lival.

Venezuela is the country with the lowest cost of mining in the world. According to the data, the cost of dug out a bitcoin is only over 500 US dollars, but mining in Venezuela is not feasible. In addition to the policy reasons for prohibiting the exploitation of bitcoin in Venezuela, the reason for the infeasibility lies in the fact that on the one hand, it is a problem of electricity, on the other hand, it is an unstable political factor.

 

03

Large-scale power outages occurred in succession

 

Although Venezuela has low electricity prices, there is a shortage of electricity, and there is a possibility of power outages at any time. It is not suitable for mining.

In the evening of March 7 this year (local time), most of Venezuela's domestic capital, including Caracas, had a blackout of more than 24 hours. Of the 23 states in Venezuela, 20 states had a total blackout.

The power outage caused the Caracas subway to be inoperable, causing large-scale traffic congestion, and schools, hospitals, factories, airports, etc. were seriously affected, and mobile phones and networks could not be used normally.

In the early morning of the 8th, some areas of Caracas began to restore power supply, and then the power supply in other areas gradually recovered. However, the power outage at noon and 10th on the 9th brought great panic to people.

Long-term and large-scale power failures caused serious losses to Venezuela, including suspension of work for several consecutive days, some websites were inaccessible, and even some areas had serious cases of looting supermarkets.

The blackout is the longest and most affected blackout in Venezuela since 2012. However, when people have not completely eased from the panic of power outages, the blackout in Venezuela has happened again.

According to the BBC report on March 25, Venezuela had another large-scale power outage on Monday, which led to the loss of communication in many regions. This caused widespread concern among the local people about the situation.

The power outage occurred after 1 pm local time, and the large-scale power outage lasting only a few hours again brought the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, into darkness and affected 16 of the 23 states of Venezuela.

It is not known when the next blackout will occur, but it is not necessary to say that there is a large-scale blackout in Venezuela.

Mining power selection is mainly in three major standards: legal electricity, stable electricity, and cheap electricity. Venezuela's electricity is cheap, but it is neither stable nor legal. Although mining is looking for cheap electricity, legality and stability must also be taken into account.

04

Unstable political factors

 

In addition, unstable political factors also determine that Venezuela does not have an environment for mining.

Since the Venezuelan president does not want to be controlled by the United States, he has always held the banner of "anti-American". The United States naturally also sees Venezuela as a sting, a stab in the flesh, and maintains sanctions against it.

According to public information, the United States has recently increased its economic sanctions against Venezuela, including prohibiting US financial institutions from participating in the new debt and equity transactions of the Venezuelan government and state-owned Venezuelan oil companies, and prohibiting US institutions from participating in the now-released part of the public sector in Venezuela. Bond trading, etc.

For the oil coin, the US Treasury spokesman warned investors that if the oil currency is subscribed, there will be a risk of penalties for violations of the US sanctions against the Venezuelan government.

According to reports, on March 13, an official press release issued by the US Treasury Department also stated that the US Treasury Department listed Moscow's Evrofinance Mosnarbank in the sanctions list, saying it is the main international financial institution that funds Venezuela's oil coins.

In the press release, the U.S. Treasury Department accused Evrofinance of providing substantial assistance in launching the coin, saying it was a "failed" project. It is reported that Evrofinance is jointly owned by Russian and Venezuelan state-owned enterprises.

Some media reports said that the US government has been imposing severe sanctions on the oil industry in Venezuela, trying to push Maduro down, and called on the Venezuelan military leader to give up. Maduro condemned the sanctions as US interventionism and won Russian diplomatic support.

Recently, Maduro said that Russia will deliver medicines to Venezuela, but did not explain how it will arrive, adding that Russia has sent about 300 tons of humanitarian aid in February.

It is also reported that two Russian Air Force planes landed at the Venezuelan National Airport last Saturday, carrying Russian defense officials and nearly 100 soldiers.

05

Life is gone, what is the use of money?

 

Maslow's theory divides demand from low to high into five categories: physiological needs, security needs, social needs, respectful needs and self-fulfilling needs.

When the most basic needs of people are not yet met, other needs are all empty talk. Nowadays, Venezuelan residents live in dire straits, eat garbage, eat small animals… and personally interpret all kinds of inflationary spectacle.

The ordinary people are barely alive, how can the mining machine and bitcoin be the high-priced products they can afford. When working as a miner in Venezuela, he did not dare to be scared. He always worried that the "vampire" came to blackmail and eventually threatened personal safety.

In Venezuela, mining is only a privilege for a few people.

"External people will go to Venezuela with wealth, and they will return empty-handed. It is very lucky that they have not been buried. The people are alive, what is it for? The life is gone, what is the use of money?" A man who just returned from Venezuela Mr. Li, a miner, said with a lingering heart.

Mr. Li also said: "Because the local government cracked down on private mining and dig a mine like a thief. One day, my mine with friends opened a lot of police, friends were taken by the police and asked me to pay for it." Fine ', it’s hard to get the money together and redeem the friend, but only for a short time.”

"A few days later, a lot of policemen came again. This time, the mines were all confiscated without saying anything. One Taiwanese mining machine was all taken away and nothing was left. Friends tried to block and were pushed to the side, if not I stopped, we are likely to have a conflict, the guarantee of loss is us, look at the momentum, we are likely to come back. This is very helpless, had to break the teeth and swallow the stomach. This group of vampires It’s just plain. ” He continued.

According to industry insiders, there are too many unstable factors in mining in Venezuela. It is totally unsuitable for mining. Don't eat big losses because of cheap electricity.

As Hunting Finance’s previous article “ Refused to Qinghai, Iran and Sichuan, he said “I am in the next big game” , Venezuela is not a place to “fall”.

Source: Hunting Cloud Finance

Author: Dream month

Original title: "Venezuela's horror continues, "vampire" is still flooding"

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