5 activities with cryptocurrencies used in my country Venezuela, to survive the economic crisis

The crisis in Venezuela changed the paradigm of many compatriots who decided to stay within their borders. In the face of rampant hyperinflation and the deterioration of quality of life due to the decline of purchasing power in the national currency, it is known that many Venezuelans use the ingenuity to resort to additional activities to ensure their livelihood Daily.

With the advent of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, a window was opened to many people who remain inside Venezuelan soil and who have at least one data connection or smartphone at best to generate revenue with the digital assets.

Perhaps for many of those outside the South American country who are not Venezuelans, certain 'common' methods that these citizens have played to survive the crisis are incomprehensible. However, there are at least five main activities that are used to survive the crisis that are related to cryptocurrencies.

1.- Trading P2P

The peak in the volumes of the P2P exchange in Localbitcoins by Venezuela is not a coincidence. Venezuelans have historically had to resort to 'trading' at their most archaic essence: buying and selling dollars to protect theright from inflation.

This has now been extrapolated to the most popular P2P exchanges of cryptocurrencies, under the same principle basically as they do with the dollar: protecting themselves from inflation while making a profit from the exchange, often playing speculation, with the prices in local currencies.

This coincides with the high traffic from Venezuela of the popular P2P exchange site in the last three months from the oil country, surpassing even more populous countries such as India or the United States.

That is why now on social networks there is a lot of local information on the subject, with courses, academies, and even platforms that offer the opportunity to trade with these assets, even promoted from the same government. Add to this the diploma offers on Trading and Cryptocurrencies taught by a local public university (Uneti).

In cryptocurrency trading given its volatility, short-term gains can be so lucrative if you strive to learn enough, to earn the basic salary of an average One-year Venezuelan, in just one successful move.

However, it is worth noting that despite no official numbers on the actual number of Venezuelan users registered in the main cryptocurrency exchanges globally, a look at the traffic metrics of the main P2P exchanges that it is handled in the nation, suggest the high use that Venezuelans employ for the conversion of local fiat currency to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

This is how we can see that in addition to Localbitcoins, platforms such as Uphold, Airtm, Localcryptos and the Hodl Hodl cryptocurrency exchange, they are dominated by Venezuela in terms of traffic generated from the South American country in the last three months.

And the reason why these particular sites dominate the local scene is mainly due to the ability to exchange local fiat money for popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum or Dash, on most of the aforementioned sites.

2.- Mining

While it would be contradictory for many in a country full of power outages and Internet access, the activity is still profitable and possible despite blackouts. Logically depending on investment capacity, for many mining is a passive income that serves to complement daily spending and not to generate wealth as most hope to focus.

The resale of old generation equipment both ASIC and GPU are common in forums and direct chats between people, in addition to the leading e-commerce page in the country Free Market.

With a pro-mining regulation, but at the same time a general distrust of the authorities in charge of SUNACRIP, many Venezuelans venture to use this activity either with ASICs or GPUs in order to obtain an additional benefit in cryptocurrencies, which is then used to convert P2P platforms to local currency.

3.- Gaming

One of the main activities used by Venezuelans to generate additional revenue. Many have been engaged in gaming in a professional and recent way for e-sports.

Just look at the ranking on the popular RGC Ladder site to see the progress of Venezuelans in this sector.

Now with the advent of the decentralized application boom (dApps), monetization of this activity for many Venezuelans is moving to the level of cryptocurrencies. Although it is at an early stage of adoption due to the ignorance about the use and configuration of wallets necessary for the use of blockchain platform games, it is seeing among themselves and strangers the use of this increasingly popular option among Venezuelans.

And this is known initiatives such as PixeEOS, which supported in the last semester, events focused on the use and development of digital art in Venezuelan territory to exploit the approach of this sector, demonstrating the potential that there is in the Caribbean country.

PixEOS is a company that focuses on the digital art gallery for Blockchain Gaming, under the Blockchain of EOS. In the words of the team, they are close to reactivating their game center for all those who want to join their ecosystem.

4.- e-commerce

Despite being a country in crisis, as in any socialist country, access to imported goods is an uphill task due to the absence of offers from established companies to dedicate products, especially American manufacturing.

In this sense, there is a market still exploitable in the midst of the crisis that is beneficial to cryptocurrency connoisseurs. And is that the particular needs of some to obtain from state-of-the-art smartphones to clothing and footwear from recognized brands go through the use of payment gateways such as BitRefill to make a gift card that allows online purchase on e-commerce like Amazon, ebay or Alibaba.

Due to the change control since 2002 imposed in Venezuela, the average population does not have access to foreign currencies in both physical and virtual. If this adds to the impossibility of having offshore accounts for the vast majority, the use of third parties to purchase products outside the country has become a daily activity that many are willing to offer using cryptocurrencies in exchange for a small recharge percentage at the final price.

The above can be verified on platforms such as Localbitcoins, where local ads abound offering any number of gift cards for different virtual stores globally, as well as the telephone top-up service of the country's main operators in exchange for Bitcoins.

5.-  Freelance

It is increasingly common to observe in the main news outlets of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, Venezuelan people who work as freelance in exchange for payment in Bitcoin usually for their services.

In addition to regular news media writers, specialized blogs and cryptocurrency trading companies, it is common to note that a portion of graphic designers, programmers and even digital marketing specialists of Venezuelan origin are left many of the companies focused on decentralized technology.

Lately, Venezuelans have found a way to monetize their experience in the ecosystem either by providing advice, taking specialized courses and even working part-time for some of the companies in the sector.

The flexible conditions of working remotely, with the only requirement of owning a computer with a data connection, has allowed a large part of this select group to be able to practice freelance activities in order to survive the economic crisis of the country.