Don’t hold your breath for Venezuela’s bitcoin

Recent speculation suggests that the Venezuelan regime could hold a secret stash of bitcoin, potentially valued at upwards of $60 billion. But the claim appears to be rooted in conjecture and secondhand reporting, lacking credible onchain evidence tying those funds to state-controlled wallets. As a born and raised Venezuelan who mined bitcoin in the country for years, I don’t believe the Venezuelan regime holds a massive secret stash of bitcoin, and I’ll explain why.

First, let’s break down the allegations. The claims from several articles suggest that the sources for the regime’s bitcoin stash were:

1) A large gold sale, swapped for bitcoin in 2018;

2) Oil revenue priced in bitcoin; and

3) Stolen/seized mining equipment.

I do believe, and it has also been reported, that Venezuela received payment for some oil sales in crypto. And I know for a fact that it stole mining equipment — some of it was my family’s. I haven’t seen credible evidence that the 2018 gold sale was converted into bitcoin, and given what we know about the key players, it’s unlikely.

Why is it unlikely that the alleged $2.7 billion gold sale back in 2018 was converted to bitcoin?

The operation’s alleged mastermind, Alex Saab, the current minister of industry and national production, was in U.S. custody from 2020 to 2023. Former President Joe Biden’s administration released him back to Venezuela in December 2023 as part of a prisoner exchange. At the time of his release, according to swirling speculation, the amount of BTC he controlled would have been worth an estimated $10-$20 billion.

For context, the Venezuelan Central Bank’s listed reserves at the time of his release were ~$9.9 billion, and those official reserves did not include any publicly identified BTC disclosures. If Saab truly controlled ~2X the Venezuelan Central Bank reported reserves before he was released, it certainly doesn’t align with the public record. Moreover, Saab spent years in U.S. custody, with limited ability to direct complex financial operations, not to mention the absence of any credible onchain attribution linking wallets of that scale to him or the Venezuelan state.

Why are proceeds of crypto sales unlikely to show up in Venezuela’s official reserves?

Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro’s regimes have a long and well-documented history of extreme corruption. Venezuela’s extreme corruption would not have allowed any meaningful value to accrue to the regime’s treasury. There are too many corruption examples to list, but let’s focus specifically on SUNACRIP, the supposed crypto regulator set up by the regime. Back in March 2023, there was a scandal involving high-ranking corrupt officials embezzling billions of dollars personally, through irregular oil sales to the state oil company, PDVSA. From 2020-2023, these officials stole an estimated $17.6 billion. In other words, any “profits” above and beyond what PDVSA needs to barely exist have most likely been siphoned into the pockets of corrupt members of the regime.

What about proceeds from operating stolen mining equipment?

The regime has a long track record of mismanaging complex operations — even strategic ones like PDVSA. In addition to the thousands of private businesses it expropriated and bankrupted since 1999, it decimated the crown jewel — the state-owned oil company, PDVSA. Between 1999 and today, the regime took PDVSA from a world-class oil production company producing 3.5 million barrels per day, to an anemic operation with a capacity of just 800,000 barrels per day. The regime can’t operate effectively, even when it steals or inherits state-of-the-art equipment.

Another reason is the chronic energy shortages ravaging the country. Although Venezuela is rich in oil reserves, the country’s electrical infrastructure is in such bad shape that citizens all over the country suffer from programmed blackouts for over four hours each day, sometimes multiple times a day. The country’s electrical grid remains fragile due to chronic underinvestment, poor maintenance of infrastructure (especially the Guri Dam hydroelectric complex, which supplies ~70–80% of Venezuela’s power), loss of skilled workers from emigration, and reliance on aging systems. This leads to both unplanned outages and deliberate rationing to prevent total collapses.

Unpredictable and unreliable energy sources present challenges when setting up large-scale mining operations in less-than-ideal conditions (remember, these are not pristine data centres we’re talking about here — wear and tear on these machines is tough, I’ve seen it first hand).

In short, I do think there’s Bitcoin in Venezuela. It’s just not in the hands of the regime.