







According to Coin.Dance, BTC trading activity in Venezuela has dipped over the last couple of months. Since a momentous peak in February of this year, the weekly LocalBitcoins volume in Venezuela seems to have started crashing back to Earth.





At its high point, an estimated 2,487 BTC was traded through LocalBitcoins in Venezuela during the week of February 9, 2019. In comparison, during the week of April 27, just 1,228 BTC was traded. That’s a drop of around 51%. Bitcoin’s price has risen from USD$3,660.03 USD to $5,234.09 over that same period, but after adjusting for the price change, the volume drop still exceeds 45%.





José Rafael Peña, a Caracas-based crypto analyst, believes that some of this decrease may be due to electricity blackouts in some parts of the country, which could affect both Bitcoin mining and individual Internet connections.





A Venezuela-focused crypto-tracking tool known as Yadio.io shows a similar, but less severe, drop in Venezuela's LocalBitcoins volume. According to Yadio, daily LocalBitcoins volume in Venezuela was reportedly $907,665 on February 9, 2019, and it had dropped to roughly $620,093 by April 27, 2019. That’s a drop of around 32%.





However, daily LocalBitcoins volume in the region is quite sporadic. As Yadio’s chart shows, Bitcoin activity in Venezuela fluctuates drastically on a day-to-day basis.









Looking at the weekly findings (via Coin.Dance) shows that LocalBitcoins volume in Venezuela has decreased nearly every week since February 9, 2019. Last week was an exception to this recent trend, as the local volume jumped around 8% during the week of April 27.





Zooming out, the country’s weekly LocalBitcoins volume has still risen significantly since this time last year. According to Coin.Dance, just 480 BTC was traded on the week of April 28, 2018. At that time, however, the price of Bitcoin was around $9,342.



