Hard currency is so scarce, dollars trade on the street for many times the official exchange rate. Meanwhile, the country's runaway inflation reached an annual rate of 63.4 percent last month.
This has driven an increasing number of Venezuelans to the freedom offered by bitcoin, a virtual currency outside of the control of any state or government. It is based on the properties of mathematics rather than relying on physical properties, like gold and silver, or trust in central authorities. Bitcoins can be earned as payment for goods or services, purchased at an online bitcoin exchange, or accumulated by "miners" who process transactions and secure the currency's network using special hardware and software in exchange for bitcoins.
Venezuelan access to bitcoins has been liberated with the launch of the first-ever Venezuelan bitcoin exchange marketplace: SurBitcoin, which opened at 12am on Tuesday, founder Kevin Charles told VICE News.
