Opinion: 'Venezuela's $60 Billion Bitcoin Holdings' Claim Lacks Evidence

BlockBeats News, January 8th. Recently, there have been market rumors that the Venezuelan government may secretly hold up to $60 billion worth of Bitcoin. However, Mauricio Di Bartolomeo, co-founder of Ledn who lives in Venezuela and has been involved in Bitcoin mining for a long time, stated that this claim is more based on speculation and second-hand information, lacking credible on-chain evidence. The three main sources of these rumors:

1) In 2018, Venezuela conducted a large-scale gold sale and exchanged it for Bitcoin;
2) Some oil revenue was settled in Bitcoin or cryptocurrency;
3) The government confiscated or stole mining machines for mining.

Mauricio acknowledged that Venezuela did indeed receive cryptocurrency in some oil transactions and that there were cases of the government confiscating mining machines. However, he emphasized that there is no credible evidence to suggest that the approximately $2.7 billion from the 2018 gold sale was converted to Bitcoin. The key figure in this transaction, current Minister of Industry and National Production Alex Saab, was detained by the United States from 2020 to 2023 and was released at the end of 2023 as part of a prisoner exchange agreement.

If it is true as rumored that they control BTC worth $10-20 billion, it would obviously contradict the official reserve size of about $9.9 billion disclosed by the Venezuelan central bank at the time, and there has never been any on-chain address reliably attributed to Saab or the Venezuelan state.

In addition, even if the Venezuelan regime had received cryptocurrency income, the extremely corrupt system would almost certainly not allow these funds to enter the national treasury. Using the 2023 SUNACRIP (National Crypto Regulatory Authority) corruption scandal as an example, Mauricio pointed out that from 2020 to 2023, officials embezzled about $17.6 billion through illegal oil transactions, and gains from cryptocurrency assets were likely similarly misappropriated.

As for the claim of "using confiscated mining machines for large-scale mining," Mauricio also takes a negative stance. He pointed out that Venezuela has long suffered from severe electricity shortages, aging infrastructure, large-scale loss of technical personnel, and even core assets like the state oil company PDVSA struggle to operate effectively, making it unlikely to have the conditions to operate large-scale Bitcoin mining farms stably. "Venezuela does indeed have Bitcoin, but they are not in the hands of the regime."