Venezuela

Venezuela’s worsening economic collapse has created something of a social experiment in the use of a digital currency as a de facto currency - a phenomenon that’s also playing out in troubled Zimbabwe.

According to TheNational.ae, bitcoin adoption in Zimbabwe is seemingly skyrocketing as the country’s economic situation looks bleak. So much so, that one bitcoin is trading at nearly $10,000 on the Golix.io exchange, while the global average is, at press time, of $5,642.00.

 

Authored by Rafael Acevedo & Luis B. Cirocco via The Mises Institute,

In order to understand the disaster that is unfolding in Venezuela, we need to journey through the most recent century of our history and look at how our institutions have changed over time.

What we will find is that Venezuela once enjoyed relatively high levels of economic freedom, although this occurred under dictatorial regimes.

Back in January 2016, we showed what the collapse of Venezuela looks like, when in addition to charting Venezuela's imploding currency (which back then was trading at a positive expensive 941 bolivars to the dollar), we presented what at the time was the IMF's latest Venezuela inflation forecast, which stunned us as it surged from 275% in the just concluded 2015 to a whopping 720% at the end of 2016.

Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

As seen in my previous article, US military power is on the decline, and the effects are palpable. In a world full of conflicts brought on by Washington, the economic and financial shifts that are occurring are for many countries a long-awaited and welcome development.

If we were to identify what uniquely fuels American imperialism and its aspirations for global hegemony, the role of the US dollar would figure prominently.

Three weeks after the US imposed financial sanctions on Venezuela in an effort to cripple its economy and choke the Maduro regime, which in turn prompted Caracas to announce it would no longer receive or send payments in dollars, and that those who wished to trade Venezuelan crude would have to do so in Chinese Yuan, today during an energy summit held in Moscow, Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro proposed to expand his own personal blockade of the US, by proposing that all oil producing countries discuss creating a currency basket for trading crude and refined products.