Early last year, he started doing graphic design and translations online. But most websites pay for freelance work through PayPal and the like, which we can’t use because exchange controls here allow Venezuelan banks to use only local currency. (For the outside world, even those of us who have bank accounts here are effectively unbanked.) So Juan had to turn to cryptocurrencies to get paid.

Thanks to those earnings, he started thinking about leaving Venezuela. He was able to buy what he needed for the trip to Colombia: clothes, a backpack, a smartphone. He put some money aside. He even gained a little weight, an anomaly around here these days.

Cryptocurrencies also helped him during the four-day trip itself. Venezuelan military personnel at the borders have a reputation for seizing the money of people who want to leave, but Juan’s, being in Bitcoin, was accessible only with a password he had memorized. “Borderless money” is more than a buzzword for those of us who live in a collapsing economy and a collapsing dictatorship.

The plan was for him to send money home — through cryptocurrencies — after he earned enough. Western Union converts remittances into bolívars at the official government rate, which often is about half of the rate on the black market. Some intermediaries do convert at the black market rate, and many of my Venezuelan friends living abroad use those. But if you don’t have a trusted trader, you can easily get scammed. And the government has been trying to shut down go-betweens like those for years. Using Bitcoin is cheaper, faster and safer.

We had it all figured out. But then Juan couldn’t find a decent job in Colombia. After three months he ran out of money, and I had to send him Bitcoins so that he could come back to Venezuela.

And even cryptocurrencies can go only so far.

On Tuesday, after changing my Bitcoins into bolívars — about $5 worth — I went out for milk. I went to every one of the stores within walking distance of my house that hasn’t shut down over the past year. Not one of the 20 had milk.

But I had to buy something, anything, before my bolívars lost value. So I bought cheese, from a store that had only cheese. Well, it also had transparent green plastic bags with no labels and what the seller said was corn flour. But I didn’t dare to buy that.

Carlos Hernández is an economist and a contributor to Caracas Chronicles.

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