If Venezuelan money is so worthless, why is it expensive to buy Venezuelan bank notes online?
I wanted to buy a large amount of Venezuelan bank notes as a gag gift for Christmas. 1,000,000 Venezuelan Bolivars is supposed to be less than 1€ but when looking online most sales are 50€+ for that amount.
I watched the youtube video about it and as far as i understand:
Venezuela doesn't allow people to exchange in it's currency from other currencies unless you are a person from president family or friends with him
However there is a weird legal way to do so, but it takes a huge amount of time and paperwork and you still can get rejected
There is shady exchangers in the country, but it is illegal and you might get in troubles even trying to do so with the wrong people and I don't think someone would actually do it online
Ok, that sounds extremely stupid in some ways. I kinda get why they would implement restrictions as a control measure to temporarily limit inflation, but other than some edge cases, it seems pointless at the stage they are at now.
If someone can't exchange money for anything other than goods and services in that country, the currency IS actually useless for anyone else.
It is way, way, more complex than what that person's comment makes it out to be. Oversimplification is actually an understatement. Our currency barely holds up as a proper currency in territory, what hope it holds to be useful overseas? Regardless of exchange controls. Which BTW, all countries do. The US has limits for the dollar as well.
I guess my question really was, why implement those restrictions to begin with? Inflation is a complex thing, no doubt, but it seems like too little, too late.
On the surface, even someone trying to buy currency on EBay is a form of demand. Reducing paper currency in circulation seems like a good step. However, with everything being digital now, that is not quite the case anymore.
Oh boy. I could tell you the whole story. It has tons of twists and turns. But the short version is, we are ruled by a military backed kleptocratic bourgeoisie. It was all part of a decades long ploy to funnel private property and wealth into the pockets of a few generals and politicians. It worked. Now they own everything and are the richest people in the country. Their riches are in dollars now, so they only pay lip service to stopping over the frontier contraband of currency paper that is used in the criminal counterfeit industry.