Four years ago, Alberto’s career prospects were bleak. The 23-year-old Venezuelan had just graduated from college with a degree in computer science, but his nation’s economy was already shredded by 13 years of socialism.
“There were job opportunities, but they paid like $20 a month, and we were used to traveling and buying things from abroad so we couldn’t settle for that,” his friend Luis recalls. Alberto and Luis—whose names have been changed for their own safety—teamed up to start a clothing business, but the venture floundered.
Then Alberto discovered bitcoin mining…
Alberto, meanwhile, based on his own account, is earning more than $1,200 a day mining bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies…
But the main factor driving Venezuelans to take up bitcoin mining is a price control put in place by the socialist government: Electricity is virtually free.
Bitcoin mining requires a lot of computer processing power, which in turn requires a lot of electricity. In most of the world, utility bills eat into the cost of mining. In places where energy prices are high, it can even be a losing proposition. But in Venezuela, the government has turned bitcoin mining into something akin to owning a home mint.
Price controls, of course, invariably lead to shortages, and the country’s frequent electricity outages create constant headaches for bitcoin miners. But they’ve also come up with workarounds, such as locating their operations in industrial zones, where electricity service is generally uninterrupted.
It portrays an interesting world, where operators have to play the intel game to avoid state security services that hunt them, ostensibly to stop the wasting of electricity, but mainly to extort them and seize their equipment, so they can repurpose it to mine bitcoins that will go to the state security actors who seized it.
The really interesting part was a description of what the roads are like at night:
Crime has been a major problem in Caracas for Luis’ entire life, but around the time that President Nicolás Maduro took over from Hugo Chavez, who died of cancer in 2013, the violence increased to the point of crippling city life. Nobody goes out anymore after dark. Five years ago, the streets would have been filled with cars, but on this night, Luis’ was the only vehicle in sight.
Lost in conversation with his girlfriend seated on the passenger side, Luis suddenly noticed a car in his rearview mirror that was racing toward him. He moved to the left. The car zoomed past, pulled into the same lane, and then slammed on the brakes, causing Luis’ car to smash into its rear.
Seven men jumped out holding guns that they pointed at Luis’ windshield. One was carrying a grenade. They ordered the couple out of the car. Luis grabbed his girlfriend’s hand and told her to remain calm.
They would spend the next five hours in the back seat of the kidnappers’ vehicle with guns pointed at their heads as the men negotiated for ransom. In the middle of the night, Luis’ father, who also happens to be a bitcoin miner, met them with a bag containing $6,000 in dollars and euros that he had frantically gathered from friends and neighbors. The kidnappers also demanded glasses, perfumes, watches, and jewelry.
Luis was the victim of what’s known in Venezuela as an “express kidnapping,” a common occurrence in a city that resembles a war zone after dusk. He was seemingly a random target, with the assailants unaware that he was a bitcoin miner. Over the next few days, Luis paid back his ransom debt by selling some bitcoins for U.S. dollars.
Counterintelligence, surveillance awareness, situational awareness, and the ability to apply lethal force. All will be equally important once the economy comes down, though skills in the first three may help you avoid any need for the last one.
The solution to this is a dissolution of the larger government. If Caracas were vaporized, these communities would very quickly sort their own affairs, deal with the criminal element decisively, and jump start their own economies, which would then fuel a societal resurgence. Sadly, destroying a federal government requires a lot of amygdala, and thus far, they just are not there.
[…] A Window Into Apocalypse – Bitcoin Miner’s Nighttime Cannonball Run In Venezuela […]