When I met Demi, a fearless buidler and the CEO of Zeppelin, we were both exchange students in Northern Europe with big dreams to improve our developing countries by building technology. Both of us have learned a great deal since then, and we’ve become fascinated by the potential of blockchain technologies in society. Today, I’m thrilled to join Demi’s crew and the worldwide Ethereum community at ETHBuenosAires.

As a Venezuelan millennial, I share many of the concerns of our Argentine brothers and sisters. While their parents were enduring the infamous “corralito” that froze virtually all bank accounts, we were going through a fake “Bolivarian” revolution that chipped away at our freedoms.

Our then-president asked for a “little billion” from our central bank, and it was granted. He went back to ask for more — the bank obliged, all in the name of social programs that were rife with corruption and run wastefully. The government’s powers grew as it took over the oil industry, forbade currency exchange, advanced towards a single-party system, and made it impossible to get passports.

Now, with our people poorer and hungrier than ever, the government refuses to let humanitarian aid in, because that would expose the full extent of the catastrophe they themselves created.

Pressured into exile, many Venezuelan buidlers now live scattered around the world. Some are working to upgrade democracy for the digital age, some are exploring the boundaries of art and technology.

All of us miss our country dearly, but we’re unfazed by the inability to assemble in Caracas — we’re a distributed network of passionate people that can move Latin America and the world forward.

We know first-hand that blockchains offer a lot of potential to societies where trust has been eroded. Today, despite forex controls, we can send money to our families using an unstoppable currency and an exchange service powered by smart contracts. We can prove the existence of legal documents. We can speak our minds even if a government tries to censor us. And this is just the beginning.

Did you know Africans never had to install telephone landlines — they upgraded directly to the more convenient and affordable cell phones? In Latin America, our institutions have never been able to match those of Europe and North America. We’ve never achieved their stability and lower levels of corruption. Marvels that the first world takes for granted, like central bank independence, just never caught on in our part of the world.

Now that cryptocurrencies are taking the world by storm, we have a chance to leapfrog legacy ways to organize human activity and become the pioneers of more decentralized (and hopefully more just) societies.

¿Te interesa? Skip the fake Bolivarianism that destroys countries, and come join the #buidl revolution. Sign up for ETHBuenosAires.