 Hey everyone, my name is Eduardo Gomez. I'm here with Alejandro Machado We are Venezuelans currently working to improve the Crypto ecosystem and we wanted to talk today about a very important topic Which is money is the first step crypto adoption in Venezuela Living in Venezuela. So we In Venezuela, there's a private Bitcoin community cryptocurrency community We all been using cryptocurrencies since the start to survive Incredibly hardships like hyperinflation Infrastructure in Venezuela has worsened the country is in the middle of the worst economic crisis in the history in its history and Essentially everyone in the country is living on past glories like We are now experiencing inflation rates of up to a million percent and There's no public expenditure on infrastructure in the country. We're seeing things like All the abandoned towers buildings are being used by poor people to live in this picture right here You can see is a tower of David. It's a unfinished building a skycraper that was invaded by by people to live in This is a state of Venezuela right now And that's what we wanted to address here and raise awareness of Poor team Venezuela in five years has Tripled doubled and essentially now up to 90% of the population is living in poverty The monthly minimum wage in Venezuela right now is about five dollars per month of work This of course as means that the whole population depends on the government the government has made itself Basically The bank the bank for the population the population depends on the government to give them handouts to survive because the wages are so low Yeah, they wanted that way. Yeah Legality does not equal morality in Venezuela. There are laws and procedures that were put in place by the government that The National Assembly the Congress approved of them that Seems like like good things, but they're not In Venezuela, there is a state sponsored violence the country since the government cannot repress people I mean they repress people but they cannot do so with the military or the police because it looks bad What they have done is that they have a sponsor their whole paramilitary gorilla The way they do this is that they have basically put people from a political party and They have funded them. They have given their arms weapons resources and these guys show up at any Dissident or any protest so it is citizens repressing citizens that are these citizens the case They're sponsored by the government. This is exact thing that we're seeing right now in Nicaragua with Daniel Ortega The paramilitaries are running the are running the country there We have been living this since 2000 approximately since 2012 or something 15 years of exchange control Venezuela is one of the few places in the world where we can exactly pinpoint where everything went to hell in this case It was in 2003 when former president Hugo Chavez in a public speaking he Express his frustration in the fact that he can no longer fund public programs because the government had ran out of money the budget Right, so since he enjoyed tremendous popular support The parliament there approved a law that could essentially allow the president to ask as much money as he wanted these of course put Tremendous inflationary pressure into the economy because the government the government was printing money like crazy and other part of this is that The government imposed the year after a currency control mechanism This currency control mechanism means that regular citizens Venezuela Venezuelans cannot buy dollars euros or any other currencies Essentially the people the population have to resolve to a black market to get dollars if they need Venice regular Venezuelans cannot access these these hard currencies a sense and so the The control of of of the access to dollars The government has it One of the one of the worst aspects of this is that the government has Infiltrated all public institutions even private sector because they're the ones who decides who gets the dollar if you're a Businessman in Venezuela and you want to invest in the country and you want to purchase dollars to import some goods you have to go through the government and You need connections with the government so these currency control mechanism mechanism has been used by the government since 2003 to seize power and to basically exerted influence all over the economy Venezuelans In in in this as an area they have to resort to the black market to get their dollars In my case crypto. This is the story of how crypto made me thrive In 2015 I was basically seeking for ways to generate income online get some work done Because minimum wage at the time was about $30 per month Everyone I was hearing stories of people playing games like World Warcraft to mine gold and they they were selling that gold in In India on the internet and they were making more money that engineers programmers Normal employees inside the country So after hearing all these stories, I decided what the hell let's do some work on the internet and I joined these platforms things like Upwork Freelancer fiber to do some work things like translation content creation Etc. The problem with this is that these services they rely on centralized payment system like papal pioneer and other gatekeepers of the International in this case in turn internet money world and These platforms also take their cut So I was getting 70% of of the money by using Upwork Freelancer and then in Venezuela I had to purchase a papal account because the currency control mechanism does not let me Cash out those dollars into my currency So I have to I had to buy a verified papal account and then I had to I was using a dealer To sell these dollars. I was earning papal for significantly less to put things into perspective and make it simple I was Making like 40% less of my work what I deserve just by using decentralized service systems So I have done in this cryptocurrency space everything's in solving captures writing articles and a bunch of other stuff in at the end of 2015 I Join I Stumb up on Bitcoin talk forum and I saw there there was some guy who was paying people For solving captures and he was paying with Bitcoin. He was paying 0.0015 Bitcoin per 1,000 captures which equals to 150 Satoshi's per capture They was at the time was 1.65 dollars per thousand captures and I was making like 5,000 captures per month per per day Yeah, and you huddled yeah, so these These was a nice experience. I felt like it was throwing my life away But it was a nice experience because I was earning Bitcoin and Bitcoin was easily tradable in Venezuela We had served Bitcoin exchange It was the main Bitcoin exchange in the country which had instant fiat withdrawals something that neither of you guys have even in the US So and there was also local Bitcoin which was gaining popularity back then So then this happened I Got wrecked by the sacred police. So in Venezuela There's the subpoena which is basically the CIA and NSA combined in the country They use the sacred police not to protect their country against espionage or something they use it as a political tool they imprison political dissents and Basically anyone who is against the government. This is a 2018 head gest apple or stasi or something so They detain me because I was doing some things in the internet And I stumbled upon in an open FTP server of these guys with sensitive information pictures of Agents they were doing some internal stuff and they left an open FTP server This is the level of incompetence that we see down there Yeah, and some of you may believe that this was a honeypot. No, this was this this wasn't a honeypot This was unintentionally left open. So other amount of there are some of that server I got detained by them. They raided my house and they took not only me inside the police station But my mining rigs that I have for ethereum So this was a very bad experience as you might imagine. I Luckily I got out two weeks after that I spent 15 days in jail And but they stole my money equipment and they never returned it They're probably mining still mining ethereum by now or see cash or whatever. Yeah So luckily About one month ago and this was all in 2016 at the end of it I finally at the at the end of the year. I finally got a real job in the cryptocurrency scene I now work for purse.io as a customer support agent. I finally be Was finally able to leave the country last month and since then since then I've been pretty much living cash Bankless in Venezuela and in Argentina. I'm living. I'm living basically With only Bitcoin. I have no bank account It's relatively easy in these countries to exchange money the problem with these countries is that gentlemen, there's There we have governments that have decided upon themselves to control Every aspect of life they they control the issuance of money and they have no repairs into diluting or Increasing the monetary base which affects the whole population. So We are now I'm not living Cat pretty much on cash and Bitcoin in Argentina by using local Bitcoin in Venezuela Sadly, sir Bitcoin exchange which was which was the biggest big question. It got shut down by the government So everyone there is now relying on local Bitcoin to make their payments and to trade their Bitcoin Yeah, I know want to leave the stage to Alejandro who's going to talk about more initiatives that he's working on to improve this situation And hopefully we can inspire some of you guys to build tools for the people in Venezuela Yeah, you're going to intervene you can also intervene I can just stay here Yeah, we're very lucky to have you here and like to tell us your story and we're really happy that you were able to make it out So here we are this is DevCon we're super excited about the world computer and decentralized applications We are talking about The things that these dissentless applications could enable money identity Identity governance the real state of things is that money is a beta stage like 0.0? Identity and governance. They're coming, but still very very early So what we're doing at the open money initiative We believe that access to a free and open financial system is a basic human right and we are focusing on Enabling people to get access to free money to open money systems. We believe that these internalized applications will be enabled by the use of money first So what can you do as a Venezuelan that is doesn't have access to to monetary Systems that are open that doesn't have access to exchanging your worthless money into sound money You can earn across borders as Eduardo said you can mine You can mine ether you can mine Zcash. I have friends who are doctors who are earning like five dollars a month If you can mine Zcash or ether if you have like an old rig at your house You can earn 200 and that's a lifeline for many many people We want to empower more people to get access to to to this You can also earn across borders and you know Eduardo talked about this briefly as well. You can have Systems that where you can earn money by trading your labor for cryptocurrencies that then you can exchange for for others Typically the setup is you mine a coin or you earn in a coin and then you cash out to Bitcoin because like Bitcoin is the most liquid cryptocurrency in Venezuela the local bitcoins volume is around a million dollars a day and it's very easy to if you know how to Navigate the local bitcoins interface, which nobody like not not everyone does But if you if you do know how to it's relatively you it's almost like earning and foreign currency and being able to trade back and forth So you you are almost getting access to this open financial system and You can almost say that you are banked You can also store your value Because if you just keep the money in Bolivars you are subject to 98% depreciation in in the year or something like that You can also defeat extortion I have friends of friends who have crossed the border recently and instead of getting harassed at the border and getting seized They could just carry a password in their head and when they cross the border You you don't have bills with you You have you have some bills and then they they can just seize a part of that But they can't seize what you have here or what you have in your phone if you protect it. Well And we can provide unstable humanitarian aid The government has a history of boycotting humanitarian aid because they believe that all aid is CIA agents I want to disrupt their operations and they deny the extent of the humanitarian crisis So if we're able to give people the tools and 45% of Venezuelans own a smartphone We're able to give people the tools to store cryptocurrency and to get cryptocurrency into the hands of people getting people that live outside Venezuela to send cryptocurrency to their families that are earning in Colombian pesos or in solace or in dollars if you can get money that is some money or or real tradeable money into Venezuela and then they're able to use it as money then We can provide a lot of aid for the people that are still there So what are we doing at the open money initiative? We are creating campaigns for awareness and education We have a wiki that's in Spanish and English and we expect this to be the hub for Venezuelans to come and Really learn about Practical uses of cryptocurrency. We're not going to explain how the blockchains work. We're not going to explain You know high-level concepts italics papers are not going to be here probably But what we want is for people to use like just products and services that are relatively simple so we explain how to use Abra how to use some other wallets and How to gain access to this open financial system? We're focusing on usability. So we're developing some wallets and some tools that people can use to send for example die to each other Using things that they were used like what's up? we are experimenting with air drops and onboarding in border cities we have like partners it's a project called crypto concert is where they took this picture in cuckoo and They are experimenting with different ways that people can get paper wallets and I can pay with them and get used to the idea of cryptocurrencies And how can you help? So please First of all live out your values if you really believe in decentralization You have to be aware that there's enemies to these decentralizations. There's people and states that don't really care much for freedom and Just try to try to be coherent with what you do Designed for those who need crypto today and in this case, we believe that Venezuelans are very much At the forefront of this Argentinians also experience very high inflation in Iran. They also experience high inflation So just look out for those cases where money like the need for money is really really pressing Think about privacy Privacy don't don't put stuff on the blockchain that you may regret putting Think really really hard about privacy Talk to the privacy experts talk to the Zcash community to the Monero community And you put for example is a great Project that really really cares about privacy talk to them And then unlock talent by by paying people in crypto if you if you only are Limited to paying in certain banks or certain countries You're going to deny yourself from like this huge pool of talent that lives in Venezuela and elsewhere that can earn money in crypto directly And then finally a support us we are very lucky to come with the support of these organizations especially shout out to the Zcash company which was supported as does from the beginning and We are pressing forward with our research and our experiments and Please reach out to this here if you are still interested. Thank you Thank you, let's have a couple questions people all over the let's go the closest cuz Hey guys First of all, thanks for you must be very courageous courageous to do what you're doing with the project and to stand here in front of the World and speak about it. Thank you. My question is more along the line So I'm very interested to understand the together picture of what it's like in Venezuela With all the challenges that you guys are facing does that mean that the market adoption are much higher So the the grandmothers the kids do they know things about like how to use private keys How to make sure that they are at world address is it's a private account and you know You don't want to share it so that people can see all of your balances And just I don't just generally a picture of market So adoption has still increased in the country Sadly we're not at the point where people are paying each other with crypto Adoption in Venezuela mostly means that people are using cryptocurrency to store the wealth To put an example what I was doing I was I was getting paid directly in crypto Which I hope and that was a point I would made before I hope that more companies Who paid up their workers in crypto? I see a lot of you here companies like consensus coin base And in a lot of cases these big companies don't pay their workers in crypto They're unlocking themselves away from talent that are living in this camp in these countries They can get paid so adoption in Venezuela looks like this people are using cryptocurrency to restore the wealth to fully transact I used it on a regular basis what I was doing is I was exchanging Each week due to hyperinflation. I was exchanging Bitcoin each week into local currency to spend and Using using local currency Bolivars with the bank account, but like I said, I was exchanging weekly the currency We are far away Very far away from massive adoption what we need in Venezuela is use it to easy to use interfaces apps Exchanges sadly the bottleneck right now is that that we only have one Bitcoin exchange centralized Bitcoin exchange, which is a local Bitcoin and there's the decentralized alternatives are See are still very hard to use Normal people don't want to think about all of that stuff. So That's what we're hoping to see. Yeah It's also it's worth bearing in mind that adoption Venezuela is probably at 1% or certainly less than 5% of population Are using cryptocurrency is to put everything into perspective. This is just very niche activity that we are just very lucky to be a part of Both me and Eduardo we we got into cryptocurrency and that we understand its benefits But the majority population doesn't understand when they think of a good cryptocurrency They probably think of the petro scam that the government was trying to push so we still don't know or we We have a lot of work to do in terms of public perception of cryptocurrency in terms of awareness in terms of Yes, it's a bit of a teaching people how to store private keys Maybe it's about doing that a little bit as well, but also lowering the bar like What's up? I think what's up is my my my go-to example all the time because no one was sending encrypted messages before what's up came around and No one knows how what's up really does it to like actually Encrypts your message and it appears unencrypted on the other side They manage a protocol like people don't care about protocols people care about products So if you design products that normal people can use people will use them So Yeah, we're gonna do just one more question unfortunately, and then we're gonna move on and I made eye contact Oh, it was actually the person to your right Yeah, so so you mentioned a lot of sort of Philosophical challenges and people Thinking more, you know at those fundamental levels But are there any technical challenges that you feel? You know if these are solved that it's gonna take the things to the next level for your kind of situation Well, yeah technical challenges exist first one is that well, Venezuela's relatively is Let's say a small country is 30 million 30 million inhabitants minus like three million that reason to left and So I Guess there's this project called a play This project that has been But developed by the pale blue foundation they want to do this big airdrop to Venezuelans They want to send millions of dollars in Bitcoin to Venezuelans that the technical challenge is to build wallets that are censorship resistance resistant that can run on Very poor hardware. So Venezuelans have old phones. We're talking about Android 4.0 phones So the technical challenges are programming Applications wallets that can't run on these tiny few resources that Venezuelans have and Keeping stuff decentralized enough so that no one can really stop it and creating liquidity. It's not it's more like an economic challenge rather than a Technical like computer science challenge, but as I said, I believe that money is at 0.0 Stage it's it's beta. It's like an experimental Cancer treatment for someone who's like really ill and it's something that we might as well try because there's no alternative Like as some people say, oh, it's too early like people don't have access like crypto crypto is still in very early stage But I really disagree because there's there's really no other choice that the way we there's this is the one shot That we have at trying to solve the problem in a way that is peaceful and that you know It gives people really access to to monetary systems that are open So and and people already put up with a lot of bureaucracy if you want to send money into the country you have to like basically give the birth certificate of your grandmother and a whole bunch of other records liquid requisites to to like be able to retrieve your money and Then the government ends up taking a 56% cut of what you send. So Their bars already so low and it's just what my main point of this talk is that money is so broken in Venezuela that even if we Don't have fully functioning money. It's going to work well enough for most people or better So it's going to empower them