Cryptocurrency conspiracy

Venezuela’s government media has been explaining how the Petro, the new “crypto currency” announced by president Maduro, will help the country fight the “economic war” being waged against the Bolivarian Revolution and its accomplishments.

The Centro de Investigaciones en Procesos Económicos Entrópicos (CIPEE), has published an article in Aporrea showing what it claims is a correlation between the black market price of the Bolivar Fuerte, as reported by the web portal DolarToday, and Bitcoin.

The CIPEE does not have a webpage, put a Google search leads to a previous article published in the pro-government website Ensartaos. “Profoundly worried by our nation’s destiny,” says the CIPEE, “we have decided to issue a preliminary study about the disturbed and threatened state of the Venezuelan economy. In this brief analysis we will show the interference with the Venezuelan economy by (web)portals which list the illegal Dollar, such as DolarToday and BolivarCucuta. Our aim is to scientifically proof (…) that the macroeconomic variables of our country have no relationship with the invention created by wise (sesudos) formal economists.”

This brief analysis announced by the CIPEE includes a “Psychological factor” called by the authors “the stupidity gene”, a metaphor for the fact that “the Cuarta República (the governments before Chávez), imbedded our people with a ‘gene’ of inferiority and of lack of human and moral value (minusvalía) vis-à-vis the rest of the world, this made us one of the most insecure humans in the planet,” and therefore made us think that our currency is worth less that other’s.

The second part of CIPEE’s analysis seems to be the article published by Aporrea, showing the correlation between the black market Dollar and Bitcoin. This correlation forces the authors to ask important (not yet answered) questions, such as: “Has the artificially inflated value of the Dollar in Venezuela influenced in a significant way the behavior of Bitcoin? (…) Is Bitcoin the Trojan horse by which DolarToday aspires to make the Venezuelan economy implode as soon the speculative bubble bursts? Is the Petro the answer by president Maduro to make the effect of bitcoin (…) disappear...?

“We will have to continue our investigations…” is the final line of the article. That’s great news for this Blog.