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The big news that broke yesterday: Maduro, the President of Venezuela, was detained. From airstrikes to a head of state being expelled from his own country, the entire process took just a few hours.
We won't delve into the political grudges and disputes, but for the crypto community, this incident brought out an old acquaintance—Venezuela—and its tangled stories with Bitcoin. Let's look at some data: officially, Venezuela holds 240 Bitcoins, which, at current market prices, is roughly $21.6 million.
The question is, who ultimately has this money? No one can say for sure. But one thing is certain: if it flows to the US, it means adding a small sum to their treasury. For ordinary Venezuelans, the real pain is in the local currency's daily devaluation and the sharp decline in purchasing power.
Venezuela has stumbled on the path of digital assets before. In 2018, they launched a Petro coin project, which was quite high-profile at the time, claiming to be pegged to oil value. But what happened? The coin's price plummeted to zero, and the project was abandoned.
Even more surreal, the military was involved in mining Bitcoin directly. A nation's armed forces resorting to Bitcoin mining to sustain cash flow highlights the extent of economic hardship behind the scenes.
This situation reminds one of a classic work, "The Blood Vessels of Latin America Are Cut," which contains a profound line: the US economy's demand for Latin American minerals is like lungs needing air. While using sanctions as a weapon, the US also manipulates complex financial tactics to suppress oil prices—playing a blatant game of modern financial colonialism. Venezuela's oil reserves, once the country's greatest wealth, have also become its greatest curse.