Reminds me of the old adage about technical solutions to social problems. Cryptocurrency isn't going to un-fail these states, all it does is enable the wealthy to evade currency controls and reinforce the downward spiral. If someone lives in an oppressive regime it's governmental change they need, not worldwide abandonment of financial regulation just so the lucky few can escape.
The majority of the Venezuelan economy exists outside its borders, because that's the only place where it can exist.
Currency controls are actually preventing the recovery of the country. They are a short term fix for a short term problem but they create long term problems in the process and those long term problems are definitively the worse poison.
The wealthy can already evade currency controls; that's what it means to be wealthy, at least in a place that has them. Bitcoin and similar systems enable the poor to evade currency controls, as well as frankly confiscatory regulation like the bank-deposit-conversion episode I mentioned, precisely because it's accessible to everyone, not just the lucky few.
I've already addressed your point about governmental change.
In Argentina? Some of them use LocalBitcoins, while others walk into a storefront that advertises Bitcoin or remittances to Venezuela, and hand over their pesos to the guy behind the counter. There are also groups on WhatsApp and Facebook to find counterparties. That's the reality: Venezuelan refugees, who I guess are "criminals" to Maduro's regime and people like you, and illegal aliens like me, who I guess are "wealthy".
In reality what's probably happening is the person in Argentina is taking Pesos and transferring the money in some manner to a US account that supports Zelle, which has become the payment method of choice in Venezuela. The remittance is then sent to someone's friend's account using Zelle, and then used for payments. Bitcoin transaction fees have just been too high to make it viable for remittances.
Maybe in some cases, and maybe sometimes the settlement method changes behind the scenes without the customers being aware of it, but keep in mind that opening US accounts is pretty difficult for Venezuelans in either Venezuela or Argentina. And Bitcoin transaction fees have never been so high as to make them unusable or even uncompetitive for weekly or monthly B2B settlement, and, as I pointed out above, today Bitcoin transaction fees were around US$0.25, which is low enough to be viable even for a pack of cigarettes, though I think US$10 is more normal.
Over the counter? People still trade and meet in person, you know? The reality is the US petrodollar is the preferred currency of choice for criminals.
The poor can’t afford btc. If it were to become the normal method of transacting, people would get on average one transaction each per decade or so. That means that transaction fees will be obviously way too high for the global poor to possibly use.
