This post is also available in: Deutsch

The United States government is considering the option to put sanctions on Visa, Mastercard, and other financial institutions to curtail the power of the Maduro regime.

The intended goal of the potential policy is “to deprive the illegitimate Maduro regime of access to funds and deny their ability to continue stealing from the Venezuelan people”. This would add to the previous sanctions on state-owned oil company PDVS that were instituted after the U.S. and other countries recognized the opposition leader, Juan Guaido, as the country’s interim president.

The sanctions would “block state-owned financial institutions’ access to the international financial system, including credit card providers as well as SWIFT, the Belgium-based financial messaging service”. However, the policy is also intended to minimize harm to Venezuelans buying food, medicine, and everyday items by exempting them from the blockade. It was not specified exactly how this would be accomplished.

Need for financial independence

This is just the latest desire by U.S. officials to curtail other individuals’ actions by leveraging the financial system oligopoly. The most famous previous example was when the U.S. government cutout WIkileaks from the financial system by sending a letter, which some considered blackmail, to different payment processors that made it a “straightforward” decision. This action ultimately led Wikileaks to use cryptocurrencies. These financial blockades usually end up hurting average individuals since wealthy individuals usually have the means to evade the common financial transaction methods, such as physically delivering payments. Even though the U.S. wants to spare the average Venezuelan, they will mostly feel the affects as many state-owned and connected businesses that still provide a minor amount of liquidity would now be disconnected from the world. Thus, average Venezuelans have a high probability of being hurt the most as they will have an even harder time purchasing vital goods and services.

Cryptocurrencies provide an alternative for these individuals escaping the intentional and unintentional effects of governments no matter how good the policies’ initial intentions. Cryptocurrencies help individuals decide their own monetary and financial policies by giving a plethora of options to chose from that each offer their own advantageous and disadvantages to suit different consumers. Additionally, the competition helps ensure that each project stays on top of their game to provide the best possible service to consumers.

Dash strives to make cryptocurrency use possible in everyday life

Dash has been working hard to get significant direct merchant adoption to empower individuals by no longer needing to rely on the banking system that can be controlled by foreign powers with alternative interests. Dash adoption also enables charities and non-profits to continue operations even when the government does not like their causes. Currently, Venezuelans are able to visit around 2,500 merchants to pay for items with Dash and are even able to pay via a SMS text, which greatly helps the nearly 60% of Venezuelans that do not own smartphones.

Dash offers incredibly cheap transactions (less than $0.0005), super fast transactions (less than 2 seconds with automatic InstantSend), and great security (about to become even better with ChainLocks), which has resulted in it being massively appealing to individuals at risk of government censorship, such as Venezuelans. While the concept of cryptocurrencies provides a lot of freedom, its ultimate success or failure depends on how much consumers can use it to make everyday, peer-to-peer purchases, which Dash is striving to maximize.