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.
Because they’re being sold into the foreigners’ gag-gift market where demand, and thus price, is higher.
I guess the transaction and exchange fees don’t scale with the inflation of the currency. The exchange server may also have a minimum starting fee.
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.
