Everything.
I'm a scientist and I spend a great deal of my professional life seeking the answer to theoretical questions. These come in the form of experiments, so more accurately, I spend most of my time designing experiments. The perfect experiment is unobtainable. The best you usually hope for is "good enough." This has actually been empirically proven. Take quantum mechanic states for example - simply observing them changes their behavior. This is the Universe's way of giving you a speed limit on perfection - there is no such thing.
Particle physics is fascinating in it's own right, but I digress. However, if one were taked with desigining an experiment on how a cryptocurrency could be perfectly and seamlessly adopted into a group that currently ustiizes the technology very little, a perfect, oops, I mean "good" experiment would have the following criteria:
- an entire, relatively homogeneous nation
- currently undergoing massive financial strife (abandoning the current fiat currency in place is desirable)
- they would have basic infrastructure already in place to service a crypto currency payment and storage mechanism (smart phones, cell towers, cellular data (carriers), and at least intermittent access to electricity).
Venezuela matches this criteria. So the people of Venezuela, and their government overlords, really have two choices:
- Go through what every other nation in their current situation has gone through, namely, a bloody revolution that creates a temporary power vacuum (with the resulting new government sometimes better sometimes not), or,
- Go through a bloodless revolution where the people begin using crypto (e.g., Bitcoin) for payments.
The latter has the benefit, aside from saving a lot of death and strife, of immediately producing goods and services that can be used to benefit the greater good of the country. This is arguably the desired outcome of the experiment: to see if a switch to market-capitalism, that is NOT INFLUENCED BY FIAT CURRENCY, produces significant and accelerated real productivity for the society.
Venezuela could become a model of a first-world turnaround in record time. If they have the will to do it.
I've heard it's illegal to have and use currencies outside of what the government allows there. Some even go to jail. What are your thoughts on that concern? I do think a free future requires a free money. I hope things improve.