Is it an option to 'simply' use Steem or SBD to trade food or other things?
Between people who have crypto...
Producers of those goods don't use crypto as far as I know. And if they do, they're more likely to be on the imported-goods side and that's very, very expensive. It's like the cost of buying it at a supermarket in the US + importing fees + taxes + personal interests because of unavailability (supply and demand; if there's no supply and everyone wants it, you can sell it at any price and get all the profits you want, yay government regulations that block national production).
Now this is not without risk. and to some degree experimental. But, to what degree could it be used?
If it could be implemented, it would be wonderful. I'd love it and use it, but... the government has other plans for us. They're promoting Petro, and anyone using cryptocurrencies officially (or any other currency, including dollars, pesos, etc.) will get bullied, kidnapped, robbed, incarcerated, fined, etc., if it's not with their authorisation. There have been plenty of bitcoin miners and traders incarcerated already.
If your neighbour needs help, sick child, whatever.. could i help with a few steem so that you can tun that into medicine somehow?
We have exchanges, so yeah. There are plenty of foundations, orphanages, etc., and it's very easy to trade Steem and SBD into bolivars (our national currency). So if you find someone you trust and who has the means to provide donations for those institutions, you could potentially send them Steem and SBD and have them make those donations in your behalf.
Just trying to figure out what hurdles are in the way to turn steem into REAL aid.
It's simple as long as you find someone you trust and find institutions that are transparent and doing real humanitarian work and not faking it for profit.
IF steem is used to trade food and holds a stable value, then we could then trade food against medicine in this scenario.
We are already very deep on our way to dollarisation. Did you know that the biggest population of Latin Americans here is probably Venezuelans? Everyone here has heard of dollars, cryptocurrencies and the great overall good this could bring into our nation. I think that Venezuela has one of the most interested populations in this market, so I don't doubt that people will move toward that.
We could likely help to accomplish that by holding conferences and such about Steem, cryptocurrencies and ways to empower people through the use of international and decentralised blockchain technologies. I have talked with friends about hosting these but we have come to no solid conclusions. If you would like to talk more about this topic and perhaps helping us plan or fund these, I'm willing to talk it over.
First of all,
Thanks for the detailed feedback, it looks like we can make this work.
We need to carefully think this trough.
A few options i see:
We first need to generate enough funds to work with, i would prefer to help a number of people or projects with small amount. so that the word goes around a bit and that things work both ways.
Dollarisation seems to be a risk as well. It would be weird to become dependent on a currency of a nation that is 21trillion in debt itself. I annoyed myself that steem 'value' is depicted in Dollars. If the US economy goes in panic mode then my steem looses value due to the US market. Even Euro seems silly. Best would be to see the value of the currency in something different. Anyway it is what it is, we now need to work with whatever becomes standard
When our currency (Dutch Guilder) was replaced by the Euro everything got twice as expensive, and after that the inflation went up fast. The bankers really know how play with money for their own gain. Thanks for mentioning dollarisation as this is something we should keep in mind
I think we can find a few people we can trust. The risk is always there, and there are many greedy people out there, we need to build up relationships and that takes time. But that's what we do right now, this will slowly take shape.
Most important is safety and security for the people who are involved.
I indeed didn't know that Venezuela had such a large population I thought Brazil had the largest number of citizens.
I would like to make this project as decentralized as possible (If that is even possible) Still thinking how this could be done. More on this later... For now i just need to see what comes next ,as i never done such project before. I'm glad to see people putting in brainpower.
Thanks to all of them!