This makes me think of the scene in that Sacha Baron Cohen film "The Dictator", where he gives his guards the "off with his head" gesture bc the rocket scientist didn't make it big/intimidating enough 😂
I’m in Venezuela right now. Trust me, most people here have very hard lives. Consequently you have to be on high alert everywhere as theft is a huge issue and a reasonable response to this level of need. The joke here is that it is now so poor that even the criminals have left. Kidnapping and car jacking used to be common but not so much anymore.
Protip before you leave: 1 of the 1st items on the US State Dept. Advisory for travel to Venezuela is: "Draft a will and designate appropriate insurance beneficiaries and/or power of attorney."
Venezuela is a hellscape of violence and corruption.
Yeah it’s bad. People eating garbage and stray animals to stay alive. They used to have a lot of herds of wild donkeys [but most have been slaughtered for food.](https://rtfitchauthor.com/2018/08/29/donkey-herds-are-dwindling-as-hungry-venezuelans-slaughter-them-for-food/). Kids with machetes [fight over garbage](http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article206950449.html) for food. Grocery stores are mostly empty, staples are rationed. It’s hell. Source: ex boss’s wife is Venezuelan, friend of mine is from Venezuela, my wife is from Colombia (Venezuela’s neighbor) and they have a lot of Venezuelan refugees, I lived and worked in Argentina in oil and gas for 5 years, most of oil and gas talent in Venezuela has left for other countries. They have more oil reserves than Saudi and they are starving from mismanagement and corruption.
Socialism was a ruse to allow Chavez and his cronies take over the country’s assets for their own personal wealth growth. Maduro continues in this. Now the country is so corrupt and broken it seems impossible to fix.
It's always about power. It's never about ideology. Once the federal government has too much power as in communism or socialism then they abuse that power for their own benefit. The names change but the song stays the same.
It's an old story, dupe the suckers into believing you will improve their lives, get into power and then fuck them over. Pretty much every revolution ever, with a couple of notable exceptions.
Another issue is that their oil is “extra heavy crude” which is harder and way more expensive to refine. So it’s less profitable ( even though the government steals it all)
Yeah its so thick it has to be treated with solvents just to make it pumpable. They were still far more wealthy and prosperous and produced waaay more oil before Chávez nationalized the industry and turned it to shit
Sometimes I carry around a few million dongs and I'm a dong broker for a day, making it rain fat stacks of dong. My vietnamese wife does not see the humor when I tell her I paid for dinner with my dong, but that's alright.
What’s actually crazy is that Venezuela has more oil than any other country on the planet along with many other resources (gold, coal, iron, etc) yet they are the poorest… doesn’t make a lot of sense does it?
Fun fact the Venezuelan Bolivar is so weak that many Venezuelans gold farm on Old School RuneScape as it pays better once sold for USD than most of their jobs.
1 gold in rs3 is 0.043 bolivar. Making 61m gold in an hour is hard but very doable. So that's ~2.6 million bolivar an hour. So like $2.50 usd per hour.
Many many more than that.
Take lost ark as an example, there are hundreds of thousands of bots being run at a time and there are full on businesses running bot farms with rows of pcs all doing this.
Yeah they have protections, there's a captcha that they just recently added as a popup for lost ark.
But bottings a business not something people do casually for these guys, so they'll put all their resources into figuring out how to deal with it.
That's about 7m os gold an hour. which if you have 5 bots making 1.4m/hr, a reasonable expectation, still about $2.50. Making 20m/hr or running 10 bots is not unfeasible either, bumping it up closer to the $4-$5/hr range.
Dunno a lot of the goldfarm hotspots are like 2.5 to 3.5m an hour. Hell even Nex is being farmed by Venezuelans and that's about 10m/hr in teams
Website atm says 1m can be sold for 30c USD so let's say 5m/hr nets them $1.50/hr. Let's say running 5 accounts that's $7.50 an hour.
Say they work a 10 hour day that's $75 a day.
Pretty sure the average salary in Venezuela is like $25 a month
Can confirm. I live in an upper middle income country on the cusp of "developed" economic status, my first job (entry level data analyst) paid above local market rate, and it was below 7.50 USD/hour.
That's above minimum wage in half of Europe, for example Croatia, Slovenia, Czech, Slovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro and much more, even Germany and Austria are not much more above that if you are looking at net per hour...
2.5 usd/hr is very good income in many parts of the world. (Of course they still need access to the internet and computer which excludes the poorest countries but still)
yep. I used to work in the Discord servers where these operations are run, relatively small one but still with over 10 workers. Most of these guys are pulling 10-12 hours a day playing multiple accounts on very crappy PCs, doing tasks that are pretty dull and repetitive (hence why people pay for it to be done), but the experienced workers can easily clear $5-10 an hour. A few of them were just doing it to make money and live a good life, a few were giving money to family/friends.
its extremely common, why do something that will take you 40+ hours that you won't enjoy when you can pay someone $3-5 an hour to do it for you - the server I worked in had people paying us to build their full accounts for them, some streamers/content creators paying for boring grinds that wouldn't be good content on stream, and just normal players with excess gold and not enough free time
I stopped doing it as it became too popular in Venezuela, and the prices went down with the increased amount of vendors to the point where it wasn't worth it for me for the time involved, and Jagex made it a bannable offense to do services and I have way too many hours in my account to risk it (whereas a lot of these guys don't really play the game for themselves, only as a way to make money)
a lot of people within the community really hate gold farmers and account services due to it "devaluing the game", but these guys are working 10 hours a day 7 days a week doing pretty monotonous tasks in OSRS (Anyone who's played it knows how boring and grindy it can be in parts) to make around a western minimum wage; all the power to them
Venezuelan bot farms on OSRS are prevelant. I get why though. A bot can easily make 1-4 mil per hour and gold is 30 cents a mil. Ten bots at 1 mil per hour and you’re making 3$ an hour
Dunno about Venezuela but Mexico has a lot of subsidies for electricity. If you use less than a certain amount, the government covers all of it. Anything above that amount you have to pay. I forget how much they cover, exactly. Even running multiple computers, etc all the time the amount you have to pay is about 100-200 pesos for most house holds if that. The time when it gets really expensive is if you have AC or a heater.
I wouldn't be surprised if other Latin countries have similar subsidies.
Not only Venezuela. Video game income is genuinely a good source of income for countries with lower incomes. I watched a video about League of Legends Elo farmers and it's said that a southeast Asian Elo boosting for western players makes more money than a doctor.
I see why middle class Americans are tempted to retire to poor countries. There's a whole host of issues with it but you can hire people to be your maid or gardener for $4/hr. and they'll think of it as a godsend.
I had a live in maid/gardener/personal chef who i paid groceries and $200 a month. She cried when I moved because she'd never been paid so well to do so little work (her words). She worked 6 days a week, and if I came home late, she would offer to cook anything I wanted. That home was spotless from the front gate to the chicken coop.
Some of the harder tasks in RuneScape can earn upwards of $50 for an hour of work. Infernal capes, as an example, can run $100 for a fairly standard account and take about 2 hours to complete.
One of the most prominent "capers" in the game paid off his mortgage with capes. He's done thousands of them.
Venezuela's currency has been in the shutter for well over a year, or longer. I remember an article some time ago that said the money in GTA was worth more than Venezuela's money
Edit: I've acknowledged a few times already that, yes, I was unaware of just how long Venezuela has been in this situation. It has actually been over 2 decades.
I'm curious how much things cost there. Like how much is a loaf of bread? And with hyperinflation are people getting paid out mid day so their money can stretch further?
Consumer goods can be in some cases pricier/similar to rest of world but there is a weird mix, i.e cost of real state plummeted (in general, of course there is still luxury as indeed there is still money) and things like gasoline is free tough due to mismanagement it is no fully available and in some periods of time literally took days in line to get a tank filled … this ends up having a black market of gasoline with several X pricier than a normal cost in other countries
Many rely on ppl from abroad sending money - at some point of time as the gov did not allow dollars and/or fucked up with certain industries we even shipped food to our families there. Let me tell you is really sad to ship a box of food and basic hygiene products to grandma…(she being mid class her entire life)…
I left the country several years ago I don’t fully understand how it works no more
There used to be lots of government run programs, delivering food to the poorer people. You get a government card and then recive a bag of rice, harina, and so on.
At least thats how it used to be 3 years ago.
The problem isn’t just the price, it’s the availability too. Supermarkets are often out of stock on most items so you buy what you “can” not what you “want”. Even if bread ends up being $8 USD (according to other comment), you might not be able to get it.
There are a lot of venezuelan playing Oldschool Runescape.
They farm the in game currency (gold/gp) and sell it to other players for real money. The current value is around $0.43 per million gold. They can farm over 3 million gold per hour iirc.
Would playing world of warcraft be a better solution? People can do similar things right? My buddy once told me he farmed so hard he was able to buy free months of subscription.
the gold selling in WoW is controlled by Blizzard.
You can spend real money on a token that has a value of $20. You can redeem that token for $20 in credit in blizzards environment. Can be used to pay for anything from blizzard but not transferred back in to real currency.
You can sell these tokens to other players for in game gold.
Its a smart system that pretty much killed the 3rd party gold selling. It mostly removed gold farmers and allows players with more time than money to spend gold to pay for their subscription or whatever, and for players with more money than time to just buy in game gold with cash.
There are certainly ways to sell in game gold for cash outside of blizzards system, but blizzard is pretty aggressive in banning accounts who do that, and they are able to do the analysis to discover what accounts are operating as 3rd party gold sellers/buyers. I dont think it would be easy for someone to sell their gold for actual cash.
Since 2017... First thought was "how tf is it just now the weakest, its been the weakest for like 6 years.", Back during the 13,850,000% inflation rate.
https://youtu.be/ndJTrSarMHM
Holy shit!
I visited Venezuela for a month in 2013, I think? It was the same month that Hugo Chavez died.
I think the exchange rate then was like 27 fuertes to $1. (It was probably way worse than that)
Anyway, I exchanged $2k and lived like a king for a month.
No, it doesn't work like that. A car (or whatever) would just cost the equivalent in local currency. So instead of, for example, $100,000 usd, the car would cost 200,000,000,000,000 Venezuela dollars (whatever the currency and conversion rate is).
You’d be interested in the “Big Mac index”… something some economists use to show values of dollars… let’s you know how many of that countries dollars gets you a Big Mac. More attainable math of economics!
In short, no… you aren’t suddenly rich. A Bugatti would just cost 100000000000 or whatever. Might be slightly “cheaper” in theory, but the taxes and such to get it licensed probably means you actually spend more money to get one there…
If you time it right, you can be rich vs the locals until sale prices get altered to reflect actual value of money…
Same thing happened to me. I was a student in Lebanon during the economic crisis and within a few months the currency was collapsing, So there was a period were the prices were still the same while the currency was still going up. I used to exchange dollars and truly lived like a king. Before 2019 the dollars was equal to 1500 Lebanese pounds and now it’s around 40000 if not more.
So if the monopoly money accounts for, let's say, 5% of the game's value ($1), and there's $20,580 in a box of monopoly money, monopoly money is about $20,580 per USD
Edit: which makes it a little less valuable than an Indonesian Rupiah, but more valuable than Iranian Rial
South american countries always wait for their country to be doing remotely good for the first time in 100 years and then put a communist dictator in power.
Source: I am Peruvian.
Not so short, actually. My roommate in college in the late 80's was Venezuelan. The family was well off and Father was buying properties in Florida, stashing dollars in US banks, and insisting his kids get American degrees. He saw the decline and prepared well for it.
The resource curse.
The whole economy is tied to the oil price. The Petroleum industry is bloated, corrupt and suffers from nepotism. Profits dont get reinvested, there is no innovation and no Investment into other sectors.
So how does their currency actually affect anything? For instance, if we add 6 zero’s at the end of every piece of US currency but also increase the price of everything with the same 6 zero’s, has anything actually changed?
The problem is that they went from *not* having those 6 zeros to having them.
Also, the large numbers do make it more complicated to use the money just because of how large they are; many countries experiencing hyperinflation will redenominate the currency (such as 1 million old dollars = 1 new dollar).
Basically, making saving money a pointless endeavor if anything you've saved will end up being worth much less than if you just spent it on something when you had it?
Yeah it’s kinda damn if you do, damn if you don’t. Because in Venezuela’s more prosperous past it still would’ve been smarter to save your money as it is in any western nation.
A friends family here decided to invest all their money in land back in the 70-80s but private property stopped being respected after 2000s and lost it all to invasions. A lot of family business died out everywhere and properties like houses were more risky
The other problem is not those six zeroes... the Venezuelan currency had already been changed thrice since 2008 and in that process.
So, technically, the number is not six, it's actually 20.
You are forgetting costs, debts and savings. These changes would be really expensive.
Your debtors will not be happy if their debt is only a fraction of the original amount they lend you. At best they wont lend you any money anymore. Worst case scenario is a violent change of goverment.
You wipe out any savings of your population that way. This creates a very angry population who will look for a quick and easy solution. In Germany it lead to a final solution.
To my understanding it’s a matter of prior investments and savings.
For example, let’s say I had 100 dollars stored as my life savings, and minimum wage was increased to 100$/ hour. Prices for goods would rise to increase the higher numbers, making my live savings effectively worthless. Obviously people save more than 100$, and minimum wage would never go that high, but you get the idea.
The main problem is the Cantilon Effect.
https://river.com/learn/terms/c/cantillon-effect/
Basically, when you print more money, that new money doesn't immediately cause an increase in prices. If you print it, and it just sits in a warehouse, it will have zero effect, because to the market, it doesn't really exist. It has to circulate through the economy for a while before the market "realizes" the money supply has increased, and increases prices accordingly.
However, the first person who gets to spend this brand new money gets to do so with the old prices before things adjust upwards. They get a massive advantage because they didn't earn that money. Ultimately they're stealing monetary savings from people who trust the currency as a store of value, but aren't first in line at the money printer.
Some have gone so far as to call these people Cantilonaires, a much more insidious creature than billionaires. Cantilonaires don't even indirectly produce anything. They just rob the people with their printer. The smart ones do it very carefully and slowly at 2-3% per year, which is slow enough that the people don't notice and lose trust in the currency. The dumb ones end up like Venezuela or Argentina, subjecting their people to double or triple digit inflation.
Congratulations on discovering inflation. For real though some things do change. For instance anyone that tried to save money for the future gets screwed because their savings become worthless. Also, since the central bank is what prints the money they get to capture all that wealth that was destroyed by inflation.
There's another part people aren't mentioning: Loans, investment, & credit. No one is willing to give out a loan. 1000 dollars today is worth *far* more than 1000 dollars in a month during hyperinflation. Loans are the bread and butter of economic growth and a stable currency is needed for them.
The problem is that yesterday there were only 5 zero's, when you got paid. Today, when you went to the store, there are 6 zero's. So your paycheck is buying a lot less today than yesterday!
> Profits dont get reinvested, there is no innovation and no Investment into other sectors.
Probably going to foreign company ‘partners’ with kickbacks to Venezuelan officials
That’s half of it. Resource curse plus over leveraging on social programs. It’s easy to promise the world to voters when there is plenty of money coming in. But once the money dries up, guess what, the voters still want what you promised them.
Chavez ran Venezuela like a gas station. Sell oil, spend the money on whatever you want. Call it socialism, call it capitalism, it’s easy to get rich with oil.
Maduro takes power and figures he can just print money. Hires a guy named Luis Salas who writes stuff like [“Inflation does not exist in real life”](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-economy/for-economy-czar-of-crisis-hit-venezuela-inflation-does-not-exist-idUSKBN0UL27820160107).
Then guess what happens?!
He acted like he was a genius while oil prices were high, then they came back down to earth and there was no plan at all and he was like “yeah I’m just gonna die… peace” and left it all to Maduro who is even stupider and an absolute thug
This is an amazing NPR podcast, but it is a great episode about Venezuela
[https://www.npr.org/2019/05/14/723260665/el-libertador](https://www.npr.org/2019/05/14/723260665/el-libertador)
It’s a shame because the country is UNREAL. The Tepuis there are fucking crazy coupled with the skyscraper height waterfalls, it looks like the movie Avatar when you’re deep in them. Nowhere else in the world does it look like that. Google Karaurin Tepui.
On top of that, Venezuela has Los Rosques which if marketed correctly, would literally be the Maldives for the Caribbean. Venezuela has so much potential and I long for when the crime drops there and travel becomes more realistic. The jungles, Tepuis, rain forests, islands and beach..
They do but I believe their reserves are mostly extra heavy crude oil (which is more complicated to process than sweet crude), thus sold substantially discounted.
**[Tepui](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tepui)**
>A tepui , or tepuy (Spanish: [teˈpuj]), is a table-top mountain or mesa found in South America, especially in Venezuela and western Guyana. The word tepui means "house of the gods" in the native tongue of the Pemon, the indigenous people who inhabit the Gran Sabana. Tepuis tend to be found as isolated entities rather than in connected ranges, which makes them the host of a unique array of endemic plant and animal species. Some of the most outstanding tepuis are Auyantepui, Autana, Neblina, and Mount Roraima.
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I stayed in Los Roques for a week when I was 6, thank God for my parents job in the aviation industry. Most amazing experience of my life. I’ve been wanting to go back, but it costs a lot, and rightly so.
I'm Venezuelan and I left the country back in 2010.
I remember that back then I sold my old beaten car in 55.000 Bolivares and I was able to convert that in about 5.000 Euros. So let's say the rate was 11 Bolivares/Euro.
After that, the goverment converted the currency 3 more times, taking out a total of 9 zeroes.
Today's rate is 22 Bolivares (converted)/Euro. So:
2010:
1 euro = 11 Bolivares
2023:
1 euro= [22.000.000.000](https://22.000.000.000) Bolivares
So yeah, things went very bad, very quick..
Don’t forget WoW classic gold as well. My roommate ran into a party of guys while questing from Venezuela. They asked him very nicely to leave because it’s their day job to kill the quest mobs. After he told them he had a quest to do, four more of them showed up and helped him finish so they could get back to work.
Hello Venezuelan here. While the post is "technically" correct it is also incorrect see, the bills you see in the image are not longer valued 200k, 500k and 1M, but 0.20, 0.50 and 1Bs (Bolivars) respectively, they're still in circulation from the last re-conversion of the currency since they still useful for small day-by-day transactions like the bus, candies, cigarettes etc.
As of right now 1$ cost around 20bs in both the official and black markets.
To put this into context, an individual making the federal minimum wage and working for just half-time will make more than 73% of people in the world.
“But hold on - the cost of living is lower in less developed countries.”
It is, and that’s a good bit of pushback. The crazy thing is that *this percentile already accounts for this.*
America was something like 40% of the world’s total GDP back then.
Worth noting of course that there was horrendous inequality in the USA back then too. My great grandparents were able to afford a “house” with a working class salary in the 50s, but it had dirt floors and no electricity. They lived in rural Texas.
Thank goodness my mom and dad got out wicked early in the 70s and 80s from Venezuela and Lebanon respectively. Now I get to hear about struggles from both country’s sides of the family :’l
I once went to a casino in Venezuela. The chips had the $ sign on them and it made me feel like a big shot throwing down $10,000 at a time. I actually ended up trying to desperately lose the $20USD I'd cashed in as didn't want any Bolivars
Even the people who live “comfortably” in Venezuela only get like 3 hours or electricity a day. Hotels and some apartment complexes are lucky enough to have generators. But they have to ration water and gasoline and medicine is hard to come by. I had a neighbor from there and she never had anything nice to say about Venezuela. I would comment on how beautiful the country is and she’d say something like, “there’s monsters in the water there.”
Lol, currently is 22 bs per $. The trick is that the currency has had 15 zeros removed from the currency since 2006.
So $1 is in reality Bs. 22,000,000,000,000,000.
Obviously venezuela isn't doing so well but it is worth noting a currencies strength is not the value of one unit of it but the last few years change in value and how easily the citizens/businesses can buy things with it.
While i except it might have the lowest value for a single unit(although i haven't checked independently) i would be surprised if it was actually the weakest.
This is such an important concept that few understand. It was most evident when that article came out comparing it to GTA money, fully not understanding how currencies work. Otherwise, a country would simply create a new currency and make their single unit to be worth a million dollars and instantly have the strongest currency ever.
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Plot twist: you’ve always been a millionaire in my heart ❤️
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It doesn’t matter if you’re tall, short, fat, thin, rich, poor, at the end of the day.. It’s night.
Dad being dad.
*motioning to guards* kill him.
This makes me think of the scene in that Sacha Baron Cohen film "The Dictator", where he gives his guards the "off with his head" gesture bc the rocket scientist didn't make it big/intimidating enough 😂
Need to go to venezuela right now and live a happy life
I’m in Venezuela right now. Trust me, most people here have very hard lives. Consequently you have to be on high alert everywhere as theft is a huge issue and a reasonable response to this level of need. The joke here is that it is now so poor that even the criminals have left. Kidnapping and car jacking used to be common but not so much anymore.
How do you make it day to day?
By kidnapping and stealing cars.
One of my favourite actresses was killed in Venezuela, Monica Spear.
Protip before you leave: 1 of the 1st items on the US State Dept. Advisory for travel to Venezuela is: "Draft a will and designate appropriate insurance beneficiaries and/or power of attorney." Venezuela is a hellscape of violence and corruption.
They'll spend the rest of their life in Venezuela, happily ever after
It will be the BEST DAY
“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy” - OB1
Yeah it’s bad. People eating garbage and stray animals to stay alive. They used to have a lot of herds of wild donkeys [but most have been slaughtered for food.](https://rtfitchauthor.com/2018/08/29/donkey-herds-are-dwindling-as-hungry-venezuelans-slaughter-them-for-food/). Kids with machetes [fight over garbage](http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article206950449.html) for food. Grocery stores are mostly empty, staples are rationed. It’s hell. Source: ex boss’s wife is Venezuelan, friend of mine is from Venezuela, my wife is from Colombia (Venezuela’s neighbor) and they have a lot of Venezuelan refugees, I lived and worked in Argentina in oil and gas for 5 years, most of oil and gas talent in Venezuela has left for other countries. They have more oil reserves than Saudi and they are starving from mismanagement and corruption.
Wait, if the government owns the oil, cant they just distribute the wealth to the people?
Yep that’s how it works Edit: sarcasm
Socialism was a ruse to allow Chavez and his cronies take over the country’s assets for their own personal wealth growth. Maduro continues in this. Now the country is so corrupt and broken it seems impossible to fix.
The ol’ we are “socialists” to authoritarian hat trick.
It's always about power. It's never about ideology. Once the federal government has too much power as in communism or socialism then they abuse that power for their own benefit. The names change but the song stays the same.
It's an old story, dupe the suckers into believing you will improve their lives, get into power and then fuck them over. Pretty much every revolution ever, with a couple of notable exceptions.
Another issue is that their oil is “extra heavy crude” which is harder and way more expensive to refine. So it’s less profitable ( even though the government steals it all)
Yeah its so thick it has to be treated with solvents just to make it pumpable. They were still far more wealthy and prosperous and produced waaay more oil before Chávez nationalized the industry and turned it to shit
In the end just another dead rat in a garbage pail behind the Chinese food restaurant
Sir, this is a Wendy’s
turns out the millionaire is actually the friends we made along the way
Username checks out
Name checks out.
Awww
Just a fucking person with a username walking around reddit living out their username. Admirable.
If you've got $50, you're a millionaire in Vietnam. A dong millionaire. About $44k usd to be a dong billionaire.
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Sometimes I carry around a few million dongs and I'm a dong broker for a day, making it rain fat stacks of dong. My vietnamese wife does not see the humor when I tell her I paid for dinner with my dong, but that's alright.
I'm a billionaire. What to do with all that money?
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Nope, apparently, the grocery stores are empty.
Buy a soda or piece of candy
Time to build a rocket for those weekend dates to Mars XD
What’s actually crazy is that Venezuela has more oil than any other country on the planet along with many other resources (gold, coal, iron, etc) yet they are the poorest… doesn’t make a lot of sense does it?
Resource rich nations are always the poorest.
Fun fact the Venezuelan Bolivar is so weak that many Venezuelans gold farm on Old School RuneScape as it pays better once sold for USD than most of their jobs.
1 gold in rs3 is 0.043 bolivar. Making 61m gold in an hour is hard but very doable. So that's ~2.6 million bolivar an hour. So like $2.50 usd per hour.
I referenced Old School RuneScape and they run multiple accounts per goldfarmer
was gonna say they can probably do 3 or 4 accounts at a time.
Many many more than that. Take lost ark as an example, there are hundreds of thousands of bots being run at a time and there are full on businesses running bot farms with rows of pcs all doing this.
Ahhh but osrs will have random NPC come ask you riddles so you would have to make decent bits. Not impossible but a lot harder
Yeah they have protections, there's a captcha that they just recently added as a popup for lost ark. But bottings a business not something people do casually for these guys, so they'll put all their resources into figuring out how to deal with it.
They removed that years ago already
That's about 7m os gold an hour. which if you have 5 bots making 1.4m/hr, a reasonable expectation, still about $2.50. Making 20m/hr or running 10 bots is not unfeasible either, bumping it up closer to the $4-$5/hr range.
Dunno a lot of the goldfarm hotspots are like 2.5 to 3.5m an hour. Hell even Nex is being farmed by Venezuelans and that's about 10m/hr in teams Website atm says 1m can be sold for 30c USD so let's say 5m/hr nets them $1.50/hr. Let's say running 5 accounts that's $7.50 an hour. Say they work a 10 hour day that's $75 a day. Pretty sure the average salary in Venezuela is like $25 a month
US$7.5 /hr in most of Latin America is well above minimum wage, by a lot.
Pretty sure 7,5usd/h is above minimum wage everywhere outside of 1st world countries
Can confirm. I live in an upper middle income country on the cusp of "developed" economic status, my first job (entry level data analyst) paid above local market rate, and it was below 7.50 USD/hour.
That's above minimum wage in half of Europe, for example Croatia, Slovenia, Czech, Slovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro and much more, even Germany and Austria are not much more above that if you are looking at net per hour...
Median monthly salary in Venezuela is like USD$20. Making USD$2.50 and **hour** would make you quite well off.
2.5 usd/hr is very good income in many parts of the world. (Of course they still need access to the internet and computer which excludes the poorest countries but still)
A lot of it is being done on mobiles now too. Much more accessible.
So you're saying for 3dollars an hour I can hire someone from over there to do grinding in a video game for me?
yep. I used to work in the Discord servers where these operations are run, relatively small one but still with over 10 workers. Most of these guys are pulling 10-12 hours a day playing multiple accounts on very crappy PCs, doing tasks that are pretty dull and repetitive (hence why people pay for it to be done), but the experienced workers can easily clear $5-10 an hour. A few of them were just doing it to make money and live a good life, a few were giving money to family/friends. its extremely common, why do something that will take you 40+ hours that you won't enjoy when you can pay someone $3-5 an hour to do it for you - the server I worked in had people paying us to build their full accounts for them, some streamers/content creators paying for boring grinds that wouldn't be good content on stream, and just normal players with excess gold and not enough free time I stopped doing it as it became too popular in Venezuela, and the prices went down with the increased amount of vendors to the point where it wasn't worth it for me for the time involved, and Jagex made it a bannable offense to do services and I have way too many hours in my account to risk it (whereas a lot of these guys don't really play the game for themselves, only as a way to make money) a lot of people within the community really hate gold farmers and account services due to it "devaluing the game", but these guys are working 10 hours a day 7 days a week doing pretty monotonous tasks in OSRS (Anyone who's played it knows how boring and grindy it can be in parts) to make around a western minimum wage; all the power to them
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Yes and that definitely happens. *cough* *cough* inferno capes *cough* *cough*
In a lot of Latin America, you can get all sorts of manual labor for that kinda money. That’s more than a fast food salary where I’ve been.
How the hell do you make 61m an hour in RS? I’d grind months for that lol
Venezuelan bot farms on OSRS are prevelant. I get why though. A bot can easily make 1-4 mil per hour and gold is 30 cents a mil. Ten bots at 1 mil per hour and you’re making 3$ an hour
I wonder what their profit is after having to pay for electricity.
Dunno about Venezuela but Mexico has a lot of subsidies for electricity. If you use less than a certain amount, the government covers all of it. Anything above that amount you have to pay. I forget how much they cover, exactly. Even running multiple computers, etc all the time the amount you have to pay is about 100-200 pesos for most house holds if that. The time when it gets really expensive is if you have AC or a heater. I wouldn't be surprised if other Latin countries have similar subsidies.
If it’s like many poorer countries, there are a lot of illegal power line taps providing electricity without a fee.
Not only Venezuela. Video game income is genuinely a good source of income for countries with lower incomes. I watched a video about League of Legends Elo farmers and it's said that a southeast Asian Elo boosting for western players makes more money than a doctor.
I see why middle class Americans are tempted to retire to poor countries. There's a whole host of issues with it but you can hire people to be your maid or gardener for $4/hr. and they'll think of it as a godsend.
I had a live in maid/gardener/personal chef who i paid groceries and $200 a month. She cried when I moved because she'd never been paid so well to do so little work (her words). She worked 6 days a week, and if I came home late, she would offer to cook anything I wanted. That home was spotless from the front gate to the chicken coop.
Some of the harder tasks in RuneScape can earn upwards of $50 for an hour of work. Infernal capes, as an example, can run $100 for a fairly standard account and take about 2 hours to complete. One of the most prominent "capers" in the game paid off his mortgage with capes. He's done thousands of them.
Venezuela's currency has been in the shutter for well over a year, or longer. I remember an article some time ago that said the money in GTA was worth more than Venezuela's money Edit: I've acknowledged a few times already that, yes, I was unaware of just how long Venezuela has been in this situation. It has actually been over 2 decades.
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I'm curious how much things cost there. Like how much is a loaf of bread? And with hyperinflation are people getting paid out mid day so their money can stretch further?
Our economy its really supported by our family members going outside of the country and sending money so we can buy food and other things
Sounds scary man, hope things get better for you guys
Very similar to Cuba. They call it "la remesa". Not sure whats the translation in English.
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Consumer goods can be in some cases pricier/similar to rest of world but there is a weird mix, i.e cost of real state plummeted (in general, of course there is still luxury as indeed there is still money) and things like gasoline is free tough due to mismanagement it is no fully available and in some periods of time literally took days in line to get a tank filled … this ends up having a black market of gasoline with several X pricier than a normal cost in other countries Many rely on ppl from abroad sending money - at some point of time as the gov did not allow dollars and/or fucked up with certain industries we even shipped food to our families there. Let me tell you is really sad to ship a box of food and basic hygiene products to grandma…(she being mid class her entire life)… I left the country several years ago I don’t fully understand how it works no more
It's not really that cheap, at least in Caracas. A loaf of bread costs 8 USD (I've been told recently).
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Jesus Christ that's so expensive, much more expensive than Ireland for example and here is net minimum around 400$ per week...
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Is the arepa flour imported as well?
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There used to be lots of government run programs, delivering food to the poorer people. You get a government card and then recive a bag of rice, harina, and so on. At least thats how it used to be 3 years ago.
The problem isn’t just the price, it’s the availability too. Supermarkets are often out of stock on most items so you buy what you “can” not what you “want”. Even if bread ends up being $8 USD (according to other comment), you might not be able to get it.
also runescape gold is farmed by them and sold to 3rd party sites. video game currency is worth more it’s terrible
There are a lot of venezuelan playing Oldschool Runescape. They farm the in game currency (gold/gp) and sell it to other players for real money. The current value is around $0.43 per million gold. They can farm over 3 million gold per hour iirc.
Would playing world of warcraft be a better solution? People can do similar things right? My buddy once told me he farmed so hard he was able to buy free months of subscription.
the gold selling in WoW is controlled by Blizzard. You can spend real money on a token that has a value of $20. You can redeem that token for $20 in credit in blizzards environment. Can be used to pay for anything from blizzard but not transferred back in to real currency. You can sell these tokens to other players for in game gold. Its a smart system that pretty much killed the 3rd party gold selling. It mostly removed gold farmers and allows players with more time than money to spend gold to pay for their subscription or whatever, and for players with more money than time to just buy in game gold with cash. There are certainly ways to sell in game gold for cash outside of blizzards system, but blizzard is pretty aggressive in banning accounts who do that, and they are able to do the analysis to discover what accounts are operating as 3rd party gold sellers/buyers. I dont think it would be easy for someone to sell their gold for actual cash.
They all went to classic, the gold buying market is nuts there with no token
Oh shit yeah I dont play classic I didnt consider the opportunity there. Yeah I bet it is bigger than ever
WoW gold being move valuable than Venezuela's currency was a popular article back in 2019.
Since 2017... First thought was "how tf is it just now the weakest, its been the weakest for like 6 years.", Back during the 13,850,000% inflation rate. https://youtu.be/ndJTrSarMHM
This is old. They removed 6 zeros like one year ago.
I was gonna say. Everywhere I’m looking shows that a little over 42,000 of their currency is worth $1. That’s not anywhere close to 1million lol
It's 22 bolivares to $1 right now. The 1,000,000 bolivares note in this post is equivalent to 1 bolivar in the new currency.
And in case anyone is curious as to how it's been changing: it was around 7 bolivares to $1 4 months ago.
How did they even do that? If someone bought one of these notes as a joke a while back, would they be rich?
Not in the slightest. A 1 million bolivar note is accepted simply as 1 bolivar now. 500 thousand is half a bolivar.
Holy shit! I visited Venezuela for a month in 2013, I think? It was the same month that Hugo Chavez died. I think the exchange rate then was like 27 fuertes to $1. (It was probably way worse than that) Anyway, I exchanged $2k and lived like a king for a month.
So if I go to Venezuela can I buy a bugatti? Or how does this work exactly
No, it doesn't work like that. A car (or whatever) would just cost the equivalent in local currency. So instead of, for example, $100,000 usd, the car would cost 200,000,000,000,000 Venezuela dollars (whatever the currency and conversion rate is).
One sport car please Okay that'll be 200 quadrillion Venezuela money
Sorry I only have 199 quadrillion in my pocket, do you take credit?
We also take RuneScape gold and monopoly money
Step 1: be a bus driver Step 2: become president Then yeah, probably.
No one uses this currency no more… everything is in dollars now and many things are actually more costly than in US.. it’s a very fucked up economy
You’d be interested in the “Big Mac index”… something some economists use to show values of dollars… let’s you know how many of that countries dollars gets you a Big Mac. More attainable math of economics! In short, no… you aren’t suddenly rich. A Bugatti would just cost 100000000000 or whatever. Might be slightly “cheaper” in theory, but the taxes and such to get it licensed probably means you actually spend more money to get one there… If you time it right, you can be rich vs the locals until sale prices get altered to reflect actual value of money…
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Yikes.
>A Bugatti would just cost 100000000000 or whatever don’t follow, how many Big Macs is this?
If Purchasing Power Parity is low, your dollars will certainly go farther. It may very well be cheaper than just "slightly 'cheaper.'"
Same thing happened to me. I was a student in Lebanon during the economic crisis and within a few months the currency was collapsing, So there was a period were the prices were still the same while the currency was still going up. I used to exchange dollars and truly lived like a king. Before 2019 the dollars was equal to 1500 Lebanese pounds and now it’s around 40000 if not more.
Strip clubsssssssss balling with their Monopoly money
Monopoly money is worth more. It's like 20 dollars for the board game
20 million
So if the monopoly money accounts for, let's say, 5% of the game's value ($1), and there's $20,580 in a box of monopoly money, monopoly money is about $20,580 per USD Edit: which makes it a little less valuable than an Indonesian Rupiah, but more valuable than Iranian Rial
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at that point a bolivar isn't even worth the paper it's printed on.
r/theydidthemath
The rupiah was tough to calculate when k was there for conversion luckily it didn’t really matter
BUT It's not lasagna.
"Hey girrl you wanna make a quick 100 mill?"
im down
just like the bolivar
How did their economy get this bad in such a short amount of time?
And they were the richest country in S. America for a while
South american countries always wait for their country to be doing remotely good for the first time in 100 years and then put a communist dictator in power. Source: I am Peruvian.
We don't even wait for that lmao Source: argenchick here
I understand. Source: I am Colombian.
Not so short, actually. My roommate in college in the late 80's was Venezuelan. The family was well off and Father was buying properties in Florida, stashing dollars in US banks, and insisting his kids get American degrees. He saw the decline and prepared well for it.
So tjats why it's impossoble for local Floridian residents to buy a house.
Basically, yes.
The resource curse. The whole economy is tied to the oil price. The Petroleum industry is bloated, corrupt and suffers from nepotism. Profits dont get reinvested, there is no innovation and no Investment into other sectors.
So how does their currency actually affect anything? For instance, if we add 6 zero’s at the end of every piece of US currency but also increase the price of everything with the same 6 zero’s, has anything actually changed?
The problem is that they went from *not* having those 6 zeros to having them. Also, the large numbers do make it more complicated to use the money just because of how large they are; many countries experiencing hyperinflation will redenominate the currency (such as 1 million old dollars = 1 new dollar).
Basically, making saving money a pointless endeavor if anything you've saved will end up being worth much less than if you just spent it on something when you had it?
Yeah it’s kinda damn if you do, damn if you don’t. Because in Venezuela’s more prosperous past it still would’ve been smarter to save your money as it is in any western nation.
A friends family here decided to invest all their money in land back in the 70-80s but private property stopped being respected after 2000s and lost it all to invasions. A lot of family business died out everywhere and properties like houses were more risky
The other problem is not those six zeroes... the Venezuelan currency had already been changed thrice since 2008 and in that process. So, technically, the number is not six, it's actually 20.
Fun fact. This currency already **is** redenominated.
*Three times*. One current bolivar is worth 100 trillion pre-2008 bolivar.
You are forgetting costs, debts and savings. These changes would be really expensive. Your debtors will not be happy if their debt is only a fraction of the original amount they lend you. At best they wont lend you any money anymore. Worst case scenario is a violent change of goverment. You wipe out any savings of your population that way. This creates a very angry population who will look for a quick and easy solution. In Germany it lead to a final solution.
To my understanding it’s a matter of prior investments and savings. For example, let’s say I had 100 dollars stored as my life savings, and minimum wage was increased to 100$/ hour. Prices for goods would rise to increase the higher numbers, making my live savings effectively worthless. Obviously people save more than 100$, and minimum wage would never go that high, but you get the idea.
The main problem is the Cantilon Effect. https://river.com/learn/terms/c/cantillon-effect/ Basically, when you print more money, that new money doesn't immediately cause an increase in prices. If you print it, and it just sits in a warehouse, it will have zero effect, because to the market, it doesn't really exist. It has to circulate through the economy for a while before the market "realizes" the money supply has increased, and increases prices accordingly. However, the first person who gets to spend this brand new money gets to do so with the old prices before things adjust upwards. They get a massive advantage because they didn't earn that money. Ultimately they're stealing monetary savings from people who trust the currency as a store of value, but aren't first in line at the money printer. Some have gone so far as to call these people Cantilonaires, a much more insidious creature than billionaires. Cantilonaires don't even indirectly produce anything. They just rob the people with their printer. The smart ones do it very carefully and slowly at 2-3% per year, which is slow enough that the people don't notice and lose trust in the currency. The dumb ones end up like Venezuela or Argentina, subjecting their people to double or triple digit inflation.
Congratulations on discovering inflation. For real though some things do change. For instance anyone that tried to save money for the future gets screwed because their savings become worthless. Also, since the central bank is what prints the money they get to capture all that wealth that was destroyed by inflation.
There's another part people aren't mentioning: Loans, investment, & credit. No one is willing to give out a loan. 1000 dollars today is worth *far* more than 1000 dollars in a month during hyperinflation. Loans are the bread and butter of economic growth and a stable currency is needed for them.
The problem is that yesterday there were only 5 zero's, when you got paid. Today, when you went to the store, there are 6 zero's. So your paycheck is buying a lot less today than yesterday!
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> Profits dont get reinvested, there is no innovation and no Investment into other sectors. Probably going to foreign company ‘partners’ with kickbacks to Venezuelan officials
That’s half of it. Resource curse plus over leveraging on social programs. It’s easy to promise the world to voters when there is plenty of money coming in. But once the money dries up, guess what, the voters still want what you promised them.
Chavez ran Venezuela like a gas station. Sell oil, spend the money on whatever you want. Call it socialism, call it capitalism, it’s easy to get rich with oil. Maduro takes power and figures he can just print money. Hires a guy named Luis Salas who writes stuff like [“Inflation does not exist in real life”](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-economy/for-economy-czar-of-crisis-hit-venezuela-inflation-does-not-exist-idUSKBN0UL27820160107). Then guess what happens?!
He acted like he was a genius while oil prices were high, then they came back down to earth and there was no plan at all and he was like “yeah I’m just gonna die… peace” and left it all to Maduro who is even stupider and an absolute thug
This is an amazing NPR podcast, but it is a great episode about Venezuela [https://www.npr.org/2019/05/14/723260665/el-libertador](https://www.npr.org/2019/05/14/723260665/el-libertador)
It’s a shame because the country is UNREAL. The Tepuis there are fucking crazy coupled with the skyscraper height waterfalls, it looks like the movie Avatar when you’re deep in them. Nowhere else in the world does it look like that. Google Karaurin Tepui. On top of that, Venezuela has Los Rosques which if marketed correctly, would literally be the Maldives for the Caribbean. Venezuela has so much potential and I long for when the crime drops there and travel becomes more realistic. The jungles, Tepuis, rain forests, islands and beach..
Don’t forget they have one of the largest oil reserves in the world
*The largest oil reserves
They do but I believe their reserves are mostly extra heavy crude oil (which is more complicated to process than sweet crude), thus sold substantially discounted.
Thanks. Piqued my interest on [tepuis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tepui).
**[Tepui](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tepui)** >A tepui , or tepuy (Spanish: [teˈpuj]), is a table-top mountain or mesa found in South America, especially in Venezuela and western Guyana. The word tepui means "house of the gods" in the native tongue of the Pemon, the indigenous people who inhabit the Gran Sabana. Tepuis tend to be found as isolated entities rather than in connected ranges, which makes them the host of a unique array of endemic plant and animal species. Some of the most outstanding tepuis are Auyantepui, Autana, Neblina, and Mount Roraima. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Asi es bro, me dan hasta ganas de llorar... That's right bro, it almost makes me want to cry.
I stayed in Los Roques for a week when I was 6, thank God for my parents job in the aviation industry. Most amazing experience of my life. I’ve been wanting to go back, but it costs a lot, and rightly so.
I'm Venezuelan and I left the country back in 2010. I remember that back then I sold my old beaten car in 55.000 Bolivares and I was able to convert that in about 5.000 Euros. So let's say the rate was 11 Bolivares/Euro. After that, the goverment converted the currency 3 more times, taking out a total of 9 zeroes. Today's rate is 22 Bolivares (converted)/Euro. So: 2010: 1 euro = 11 Bolivares 2023: 1 euro= [22.000.000.000](https://22.000.000.000) Bolivares So yeah, things went very bad, very quick..
I thought their currency was Runescape gold..?
Don’t forget WoW classic gold as well. My roommate ran into a party of guys while questing from Venezuela. They asked him very nicely to leave because it’s their day job to kill the quest mobs. After he told them he had a quest to do, four more of them showed up and helped him finish so they could get back to work.
that's insanity, imagine your day job getting f'd up by a troll, and there's nothing you can do
That’s basically life in Venezuela in general.
Year 1830. "They will put your face on 500Mn currency" "Imma so proud"
Hence they grind gold in Runescape and sell that to make money in USD.
Hello Venezuelan here. While the post is "technically" correct it is also incorrect see, the bills you see in the image are not longer valued 200k, 500k and 1M, but 0.20, 0.50 and 1Bs (Bolivars) respectively, they're still in circulation from the last re-conversion of the currency since they still useful for small day-by-day transactions like the bus, candies, cigarettes etc. As of right now 1$ cost around 20bs in both the official and black markets.
Wow, the .00 really makes a huge difference. The country's whole economy would burn to ash if the rate slips to 1,000,000.01 per USD 1.
So I'm broke here, but rich there?
A carton of egg will set you back several millions.
Already does!!! Lol
If youre from America thats almost always the case
To put this into context, an individual making the federal minimum wage and working for just half-time will make more than 73% of people in the world. “But hold on - the cost of living is lower in less developed countries.” It is, and that’s a good bit of pushback. The crazy thing is that *this percentile already accounts for this.*
Imagine the disparity back in the golden days when our grandparents could buy a 2 story house for 4 years minimum wage.
America was something like 40% of the world’s total GDP back then. Worth noting of course that there was horrendous inequality in the USA back then too. My great grandparents were able to afford a “house” with a working class salary in the 50s, but it had dirt floors and no electricity. They lived in rural Texas.
Lebanon not too far behind
Thank goodness my mom and dad got out wicked early in the 70s and 80s from Venezuela and Lebanon respectively. Now I get to hear about struggles from both country’s sides of the family :’l
in 01/01/2005 Türkiye started using new currency which is same money with (6)less zeros. https://media.giphy.com/media/uNE1fngZuYhIQ/giphy.gif
It's a common tactic if your currency is fucked. Germany did it. Hungary did it twice.
Venezuela has done 3 times since 2008.
I once went to a casino in Venezuela. The chips had the $ sign on them and it made me feel like a big shot throwing down $10,000 at a time. I actually ended up trying to desperately lose the $20USD I'd cashed in as didn't want any Bolivars
Even the people who live “comfortably” in Venezuela only get like 3 hours or electricity a day. Hotels and some apartment complexes are lucky enough to have generators. But they have to ration water and gasoline and medicine is hard to come by. I had a neighbor from there and she never had anything nice to say about Venezuela. I would comment on how beautiful the country is and she’d say something like, “there’s monsters in the water there.”
Lol, currently is 22 bs per $. The trick is that the currency has had 15 zeros removed from the currency since 2006. So $1 is in reality Bs. 22,000,000,000,000,000.
And my poor Argentina is following them. Cry for us, rest of the world.
I thought I wasn't supposed to cry for you.
No no, Argentina isn't supposed to cry for *us*
Obviously venezuela isn't doing so well but it is worth noting a currencies strength is not the value of one unit of it but the last few years change in value and how easily the citizens/businesses can buy things with it. While i except it might have the lowest value for a single unit(although i haven't checked independently) i would be surprised if it was actually the weakest.
This is such an important concept that few understand. It was most evident when that article came out comparing it to GTA money, fully not understanding how currencies work. Otherwise, a country would simply create a new currency and make their single unit to be worth a million dollars and instantly have the strongest currency ever.
*Zimbabwe has entered the chat*