Things have changed a lot and in a strange way, after the maximum shortage that occurred in the period 2016 to 2018 where the basic products to exist were not available, neither personal hygiene products nor medicines, in approximately 2019 there was a "change" In the country, the shortage of food and medicine "decreased", the topics of conversation with acquaintances and family are: "now if you can get food, go back to Venezuela"; The official minimum wage is still a paltry 3 USD, although private companies (the few that remain) pay "bonuses" of between 50 USD to 200 USD that are obviously not part of the contract or the payroll; The people there created a fictitious dollarization, no one transacts with the local currency anymore, people accept any currency as payment, crypto, euros, dollars and Colombian pesos. For about 5 years, bitcoin has become popular as a payment method, given the hyperinflation of its local currency, from time to time they make a monetary counterclaim, change the name of the currency and remove the excess zeros and restart their dirty game, it is quite complicated to want to buy bread with a wad of 100 bills and the amount is 3,563,877 Bs a bag of bread, now imagine wanting to say the price of a house, the local currency in the last 14 years has gone from being called "Bolivar" to "Bolívar Fuerte" and now today, I am finding out that it is called "Bolívar Soberano" which is its official name since 2020. I don't even get the devaluation graphs for the last 20 years.
https://www.tradingview.com/x/V72Oz2wG/
In the last 14 years, Venezuela has removed 14 zeros from its currency. In 2007 three were eliminated and the bolivar Fuerte was born. Eleven years later, five zeros were eliminated and the sovereign bolivar emerged.
Bitcoin has been the refuge of many in Venezuela, it is not "legalized" like in El Salvador, but in the same way they use it to buy houses, cars, food, there are even super markets that accept cryptocurrencies, small entrepreneurs also accept, whether for buy clothes, shoes or appliances. The shortage of gasoline and gas still continues and is declining in an oil country. Ironically, with respect to water and electricity, I have acquaintances who still live there and their way of combating the lack of these two very important elements is by installing solar panels and having a tank for water and paying for tanker trucks to supply it, it is quite expensive to live there, just to be able to survive in a semi-decent way because I'm not even talking about having luxuries. Health sector, well, don't count on public hospitals, because they don't even have cotton, private clinics are old, with old machinery, and are expensive for the average citizen.