Why you might buy a burger with bitcoin in Venezuela, but not Europe

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Why you might buy a burger with bitcoin in Venezuela, but not Europe

Cryptocurrencies have a specific use-case in countries where local currencies are in crisis, but elsewhere they remain a volatile speculative investment and will struggle to take off as a means of payment.

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If you live in a country plagued by hyperinflation, which renders the local currency close to worthless, how would you go about buying anything?

In Venezuela, where the bolívar continues to decline against the dollar – on Monday, $1 could buy you just shy of VEF250,000 – cryptocurrencies offer one possible solution.

Bitcoin and Dash, an altcoin based on bitcoin technology, have become popular in Venezuela.

In January, fast-food chain Burger King announced it would allow customers to use Bitcoin and Dash as well as Ether, Litecoin, Binance Coin and Tether (a stablecoin, backed by hard-currency reserve assets) to buy meals in a number of their stores across the country, joining other international food retailers, including KFC, which started accepting cryptocurrencies in 2018.



We built a technology stack that allows multiple economies to function under a single platform - Ramón Ferraz, 2gether


Cryptocurrencies can thrive in broken economies where they may be considered safer stores of value than the local tender – and given cryptocurrency volatility in recent years, that’s some bar – and possibly progress to a widely accepted medium of exchange.






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