Last month, Venezuelan twitter user @KalebPrime sent a tweet that helps put Venezuela's ongoing economic crisis in terms gamers can understand. The value of the Bolivar, the national currency, has fallen below that of gold in World of Warcraft. At the time of the July 14 tweet, the price of WoW gold stood at 8385 per US Dollar. The market exchange rate of the Bolivar stood at 8494 per US Dollar!

It happened again, WoW gold is worth more than the Venezuelan Bolivar. Black Market: Bs.F 8493.97 per USD WoW Token: ~8385g per USD. pic.twitter.com/Il7TVqYNsH — Kaleb (@KalebPrime) July 14, 2017

The WoW gold value was calculated using the $20 game time token that players can freely trade for gold via the in-game auction house. What's especially striking about these figures is how quickly things went south for the Bolivar. Just this May, $1 would only cost you 279 Bolivars.

Since KalebPrime's initial tweet, things have only gotten worse in Venezuela. It now takes ~11,185 Bolivar to buy just $1. You can follow the plight of the Bolivar at dolartoday.com, a Spanish language site that tracks black the market exchange rate.

The real lesson to draw from this story is the value of hard money. In times of crisis, don't count on government controlled paper money. Only WoW gold can save you from the next Socialist Revolution!

Update 05/01/2018: 1 US Dollar = 621,498 Bolivars, 10,000 gold = $1 USD. 1 Gold in World of Warcraft = 62 Bolivars. Minimum wage in Venezuela is now 1 million bolivars per month, or 16,130 gold in World of Warcraft. Remarkable how much weaker Venezuela's currency has gotten.

Further Reading: The Blaze Article