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Venezuela sets new bitcoin trading record by surpassing 500 million bolivars

Venezuela | Bitcoin | Petro | Bolivar | Bitcoin trading record

Coin Dance, a platform that tracks volumes on P2P platform Localbitcoins, reveals that BTC/VES achieved a never before seen volume of 500 million bolivars in the last seven days ending on August 25. For the week, Localbitcoins processed 506.3 million VES, beating the previous all-time high of 175.8 million which was seen the week before. In Bitcoin terms, the figure was also the highest ever, at 1143 BTC.

Notably, the results come out in the week Venezuela revalued the bolivar to create new Sovereign Bolivar, lowering the currency’s value by 96 percent in the process. Just recently, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro introduced sovereign bolivar, a new currency pegged with the national cryptocurrency Petro. The response to the same is not very welcoming, the government has received a lot of backlashes and in fact, VES is being described as a  “scam on top of another scam,” according to a source that Bitcoinist quoted.

The New Currency

Venezuela has been in a state of hyperinflation which recently cracked 100,000%. It’s the government’s hope that the Sovereign Bolivar and the petro will help bring things down to a more manageable level. The calm that this new strategy claim is nowhere to be seen as of yet, meanwhile the purchasing power of ordinary Venezuelans is on the decline as confusions and uncertainty around it sustains. To ease out the conversions, the Maduro government released a dedicated app to help citizens calculate how much money they actually own.

In line with the deteriorating economic situation, Bitcoin has been gaining popularity and the latest decisions by authorities seem to have fueled the interest and the uptake. Eduardo Gomez, head of support of Purse.io, who is a Venezuelan national, noted on his Twitter account that citizens traveling abroad will now have to notify banks of their intention to leave the country. This, according to documents, is a result of the government forcing them to reveal the IP addresses of those who access their banking setup from abroad. Gomez added:

“Many Venezuelans who live outside the country use their national bank accounts to send money to family members and to purchase local currency from traders by selling USD. Bitcoin users will be directly affected by this. Many (Localbitcoins) traders live outside the country.”

Read more: Maduro Government Orders Venezuela’s Banks to Adopt Petro Cryptocurrency

 

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