By the shibinformer.com team
It is no secret that Venezuela is not in the best economic situation today. The Bolivar (the national currency) depreciated considerably, and it no longer has the buying power it needs to support many citizens in everyday life.
People from Venezuela started looking at an alternative to exercise buying power. And crypto has arrived as a life saver for many. A PETRO tied to the price of oil didn’t work as expected, and people started exploring with alternative currencies. Other tokens have previously found use in Venezuela, but that is not all. In order to maintain a level of normality, Venezuelans have questioned what could be the alternative to their current financial framework outside of the typical banking environment. They are finding that the adoption of cryptocurrency could be that lifesaving answer.
The #ShibArmy is a decentralized, international entity that emerges from a common interest. The $SHIB community in Venezuela wanted to make a meaningful change and be a part of the crypto revolution of their own economy. From the first reports of businesses accepting $SHIB, from advanced tech companies, clinics, or gold exchanges, small businesses on this Latin american nation started to think about $SHIB as a mean of an exchange.
The Venezuelan experience
We had a conversation with a Venezuelan community member, who explained to us why and how they manage to make this work.
The business owners that started with this are also $SHIB holders, so they contacted the venezuelan SHIB community to find a way to make this work.
There, they have to make this work using Binance, that allows them to buy $USDT and then convert to other tokens. They then move their $SHIB internally through the Binance network. Other persons use other platforms, like Hotbit, Uphold or Airtm, but mainly Binance, for the possibility to pay with local currency.
Although the ideal situation would be a decentralized one, with this possibility, regular businesses get interested in offering this as a way to pay. So far, at the moment of this article being released, at least 15 places are accepting $SHIB. Among those stores they sell fast food, liquor, hardware, electronics, office supplies, services and more.
Alejandro Yañez, from the Choripan Food Truck, the first business owner to accept $SHIB in Venezuela, said:
We don’t fear the new, we fear what is static, and life challenges you every day. You move forward or wait your whole life to decide, so we chose to support $SHIB and its ecosystem. We see it as a community project for the community. On June 4 we did the first transaction, of many we hope to have in our country.
Today’s sale was an easy sale, but still we were very excited, doing something new for us for the first time, and we are convinced that this was a good step. It was not just “a sale”. It was for us a way to show that we believe that there is something for us waiting at the moon.
They even recorded and edited a short video of the first sale with SHIB. A number of “choripanes“, some sodas, and other snacks were sold and delivered.
Another business owner, Pierre White, from Sumin Guayana, told us
I learned about Shiba Inu in Youtube, and start looking into the project. I joined because of its popularity and the huge worldwide community. This gave me the trust to invest in $SHIB and be one more for the 500,000 holders.
We sell electrical supplies: control panels, lighting, and hardware for crypto mining, and we decided it to add $SHIB to our list of payment methods.
Venezuela is not a society unfamiliar with Crypto. The need to be able to perform transactions has made some crypto exchanges as known as the traditional Banco de Venezuela. And they do this on centralized exchanges because it offers simplicity and low fees.
Decentralization, and the challenges in front of us.
To achieve the ideal situation of full decentralization, some technical targets have to be reached first for $SHIB, which an Ethereum-centric token. One is fees.
Can ETH 2.0 solve this problem? It is possible, although the goal there is not the fees, but scalability. The effects on transaction prices remains to be seen. In our side, we have the implementation of Shibarium. In Ryoshi’s vision, this blockchain (or L2 sidechain), will allow to have zero or very low transaction fees, and will allow the trade of small and cheap items in the blockchain. And of course, we also require the continuous development of the $SHIB ecosystem tools, to allow people to perform these transactions in the easiest way possible.
Of course, some political issues also remain for full crypto adoption, but these will be explored in the future.
Venezuela is an exemplary case for Crypto. We should look closely how this use case becomes more and more popular there, and how their experience starts spreading around the globe.
Easy access for the poorest members of the society is vital to allow them to participate in crypto. This has many technical challenges, but also has more to do with the society in general. Trust and customs can only be learned in a community.
Revolutions in society might start with an nice idea, but convenient implementations are what wins the game when it is about people and the way they do things. We can have both -the idea and the implementation-, and change the world and the economy for the better in the process.
We would like to thank to the $SHIB community in Venezuela and Xanders, administrator in https://t.me/Shiba_Inu_venezuela
$SHIB INFORMER 
Dears, If you would give a timeline of the Shibaswap release, which number: 0) never 1) months, 2) weeks, 3) days, 4) hours, 5) It was released but nobody seen it😱… Just drop a number guys… From your Shiba Army Troop 🥰😍🤩
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