Author: Nancy, PANews
Overnight, Venezuela lost control of its own destiny.
The forced removal of President Maduro and his wife by the U.S. military not only marks the darkest moment for this South American country but also reveals a harsh reality: under economic blockades, legal extraterritoriality, and financial sanctions, the traditional defenses of sovereignty are gradually collapsing. This situation may become a survival issue that more countries and even individuals will have to face in the future.
In Venezuela, which has long been mired in hyperinflation and the shadow of sanctions, a response seems to have been preemptively provided. Here, sovereign currency is gradually being abandoned, and crypto assets have become the value carriers on which the people rely for survival, while also providing the country with alternative financial tools to bypass financial blockades.
Today, this survival choice is rapidly evolving into a mainstream financial trend globally. For the crypto industry, how to build a safe and reliable new financial channel for users outside the circle? This is not only a technical challenge but also a historic opportunity for the industry to break through.
Fiat Currency is Worthless, Venezuela Builds a Crypto "Parallel Economy"
In Venezuela, crypto assets are not a lottery ticket to wealth but a ticket to navigate through the economic storm.
This country, long consumed by hyperinflation, is undergoing an unprecedented financial transformation. Data shows that Venezuela ranks ninth in the world for per capita cryptocurrency usage, and the adoption rate continues to rise at an astonishing speed year by year.
Imagine a country where over 30% of businesses, services, and enterprises have begun to fully embrace cryptocurrencies. From street vendors selling food and grocery store daily consumption to salary payments and service fee settlements, cryptocurrencies have permeated every corner of social operation.
The root of this financial migration lies in the complete collapse of Venezuela's fiat currency system. Excessive money printing by the government, plummeting oil prices, international sanctions, and systemic corruption have pushed inflation into an uncontrollable abyss. Despite the government's repeated attempts to salvage the situation by "removing currency zeros," the depreciation of the bolívar has long surpassed the speed of the printing press.
Ultimately, reality became almost absurd, with people holding "million-dollar bills" unable to buy a roll of toilet paper or half a dozen eggs. The fiat currency completely lost its monetary attributes, even being folded into wallets, handbags, or woven into crafts sold on the streets. For millions of Venezuelans, holding bolívars means watching their savings evaporate.
On the ruins of traditional finance, the entire country is forced to seek new ways of survival. Now, in the streets and alleys of Venezuela, a parallel economic system supported by cryptocurrencies, aimed at combating inflation, has quietly taken shape.
Many ordinary citizens immediately exchange their bolívar income for USDT or other cryptocurrencies to avoid further devaluation, which has become a daily habit; millions of Venezuelans have emigrated abroad, and crypto remittances are increasingly becoming a vital lifeline for families left behind. Statistics show that about 9% of the approximately $5.4 billion in remittances to Venezuela each year are completed through cryptocurrency channels. Of course, USDT is not only used for savings and remittances but has also extended to daily commercial transactions, with about 10% of grocery payments made using cryptocurrencies.
As U.S. sanctions restrict the circulation of the dollar and the government cracks down on black market dollar transactions, the Venezuelan government has gradually allowed the private sector to use USDT for currency exchange starting in 2024 to maintain economic operations. It can be said that crypto assets have become a shield for the people to protect their labor results and prevent asset depreciation, as well as a necessity for maintaining basic living standards.
The penetration of cryptocurrencies is not limited to the street economy; it also affects the economic lifeline of Venezuela. An increasing number of local businesses, banks, and even oil-related institutions are beginning to turn to stablecoin settlements. An open secret is that to evade U.S. financial sanctions, about 80% of Venezuela's oil revenue is settled in USDT. The Venezuelan government also launched a state-supported cryptocurrency, Petro, but it was eventually halted. Additionally, Venezuela is widely speculated to have established a "shadow settlement system" for cryptocurrencies worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and although there is a lack of concrete evidence, this system is indeed maintaining the economic operations of the entire country.
The case of Venezuela reveals that cryptocurrencies are becoming a reliable alternative when traditional financial systems fail. As global geopolitical risks continue to escalate and traditional financial infrastructures are increasingly weaponized, marginalized countries, businesses, and individuals are in urgent need of a censorship-resistant, borderless financial tool.
The "Re-tooling" of Crypto Assets, Geopolitical Crises Drive Narrative Reconstruction
In the past, the mainstream narrative around cryptocurrencies often revolved around myths of getting rich and technological utopias. However, as global geopolitical crises intensify, cryptocurrencies have unexpectedly been pushed to the forefront of practical value, becoming essential tools for avoiding financial blockades, maintaining wealth stability, and executing cross-border payments in the real world.
When a country's banking system is sanctioned or a region's financial network is cut off, cryptocurrencies, with their censorship-resistant and decentralized characteristics, become a financial "safe haven" and "escape route." For countries, when the banking system is sanctioned or the SWIFT network is cut off, it serves as a strategic alternative to bypass blockades and maintain cross-border trade settlements; for individuals, in regions where fiat currency credibility collapses and hyperinflation erodes wealth, it is a reliable means of wealth transfer and preservation.
Especially in high-inflation regions with unstable geopolitical conditions, the vulnerabilities of centralized systems are laid bare, making cryptocurrencies a "digital Noah's Ark."
Data also supports this trend. According to Chainalysis, from July 2024 to June 2025, Turkey's crypto trading volume reached $200 billion (with local inflation around 32%), Argentina reached $93.9 billion (inflation around 31%), Nigeria reached $92.1 billion (inflation around 16%), Venezuela reached $44.6 billion (inflation over 170%), and Bolivia reached $14.8 billion (inflation around 22%).
It can be said that cryptocurrencies have evolved from marginal innovations to core supplements of mainstream financial infrastructure. People are gradually shifting their focus from mere price fluctuations to the underlying utility of cryptocurrencies as tools for value transfer and storage.
Of course, this narrative reconstruction is inseparable from the maturity of crypto infrastructure. Having moved past the challenges of network congestion and high gas fees, cryptocurrencies are upgrading from "expensive geek toys" to "inclusive financial tools," supporting not only small payments and daily use but also capable of meeting commercial-grade high-frequency trading demands. At the same time, the invisibility and ease of use of the infrastructure have significantly lowered the barriers to entry, making crypto truly accessible and laying the foundation for its large-scale expansion in practical business scenarios.
Today, crypto assets are undergoing a profound transformation and rebirth. They are no longer limited to early speculative tools but are evolving into comprehensive financial assets with multiple functions, including payment settlement, value storage, and cross-border circulation. Accompanying this is the expansion of use cases, extending from a single high-frequency speculative market to practical applications in daily payments, salary settlements, cross-border remittances, and asset management.
This "re-tooling" not only reshapes the perception and application scenarios of crypto assets but also presents new challenges and requirements for industry participants, fundamentally restructuring the logic of competition within the industry.
Building a Crypto "Safe Haven," Exchanges Move Towards Future Financial Entry Points
Venezuela's parallel economy and the global trend of "re-tooling" clearly indicate that cryptocurrencies have evolved from a marginal asset to an indispensable financial lifeline and infrastructure at critical moments. When millions rely on them to store value, make payments, and even sustain the country's economic operations, a fundamental question arises: how can ordinary users safely and conveniently access this new system and manage their crypto wealth?
The core of the answer points to centralized exchanges (CEX) that serve as key interaction nodes. In a turbulent macro environment, the most critical demand for these users is a sense of security. For them, crypto assets not only play the role of daily transactions but also serve as a means of savings. This means that to achieve mainstream acceptance of crypto assets, the key lies in providing a platform that users can easily access and absolutely trust. The security, stability, and usability of the platform directly determine its capacity as a new generation of financial infrastructure.
Reality has shown that the more unstable the geopolitical situation in these regions, the more crypto exchanges are gradually evolving into the core channels for ordinary users to store and manage their assets. Taking Venezuela as an example, according to Chainalysis, over 38% of the country's cryptocurrency activity occurs on P2P (peer-to-peer) trading platforms. Exchanges play a core role locally, not only providing secure storage for funds but also becoming central hubs for trading, exchanging, and referencing exchange rates.
This shift in role accelerates the reconstruction of the competitive logic of exchanges. In the past, competition among exchanges often focused on rates, listing speed, and marketing gimmicks in an "involutionary competition"; now, the dimensions of competition have fundamentally changed, focusing on whether they can transcend being mere "trading venues" and transform into a "future financial entry point" capable of supporting multiple narratives of cryptocurrency payments, savings, and appreciation, empowering users to participate in wealth activities comprehensively and securely.
As a well-established trading platform with eight years of experience in the digital asset field, CoinW has built a multi-layered product ecosystem to create an open, free, efficient, and friendly financial portal for users seeking to participate in the crypto world, based on safety and reliability:
CoinW serves as a one-stop comprehensive trading platform, offering a full range of services including spot trading, contracts, ETFs, copy trading, and wealth management, supported by industry-leading liquidity and risk control systems to ensure smooth and secure transactions.
GemW is dedicated to "earlier discovery, faster participation, and broader coverage," focusing on trading early popular on-chain assets, and significantly lowering the entry barrier for users into the on-chain world through innovations like wallet-free registration and zero gas fees.
DeriW helps users explore the cutting-edge field of decentralized derivatives, providing a trading experience comparable to centralized platforms through high-throughput blockchain and innovative liquidity models.
PropW focuses on trading capability assessment and enhancement, supporting traders' growth through professional tools, simulated capital participation, and transparent reward mechanisms in a practical manner.
These four segments are not isolated but form a progressive ecological loop: users can enter through the main portal CoinW, leverage GemW to discover richer on-chain opportunities, participate in the cutting-edge on-chain trading track through DeriW, and enhance their trading knowledge and skills through PropW. Together, they transform the "future financial entry point" from a concept into a tangible, participatory, and growth-oriented complete service experience.
However, building a future financial entry point requires not only a rich product ecosystem but also a solid security foundation. CoinW regards compliance and risk control as its cornerstone, building trust through systematic construction. Over the past eight years, CoinW has adhered to a "compliance-first" global strategy, with its compliance footprint covering multiple jurisdictions worldwide, and continues to advance license applications and regulatory communications.
At the same time, on the security front, CoinW has built a multi-layered deep security system of "self-defense + open collaboration." Internally, the platform has independently developed a real-time risk control engine and equipped a professional penetration testing team to maintain a continuously iterative proactive defense capability; it has also introduced a zero-trust security architecture (Palo Alto Prisma) and strict endpoint device management to achieve minimum privilege control from the network to the device. Externally, CoinW has long-term collaborations with top international security audit institutions like CertiK to align security standards with global practices.
Additionally, the platform has established an open governance security ecosystem through a bug bounty program aimed at global white-hat researchers. This series of security pursuits has allowed it to maintain a continuous AAA rating in independent assessments by CER.live.
From solidifying the foundation of security compliance to building a comprehensive trading ecosystem, CoinW is providing more possibilities for ordinary users' crypto journeys, allowing them to participate safely and with low barriers, while truly enjoying the dividends of future crypto financial development. Today, CoinW's global user base has surpassed 20 million, with annual trading volume exceeding $200 billion. This achievement not only reflects the accelerated mainstreaming of crypto assets but also the results of CoinW's continuous refinement of infrastructure and long-term capabilities.
Summary
In the eye of the storm, new orders often take root. From the daily exchange of cryptocurrencies for food to the flow of oil trade on the blockchain, the crisis in Venezuela unexpectedly reflects a bottom-up global financial reconstruction. It heralds a future: when traditional levees show cracks, cryptocurrencies will become an indispensable "digital ark."
This ark needs a safe harbor and a reliable helmsman. Therefore, the focus of the crypto industry is shifting from chasing prices to building a trustworthy entry point—one that can encompass savings, payments, appreciation, and all aspects of financial life, empowering users with ease and autonomy. This requires infrastructure to be not only robust but also worthy of trust.
What CoinW practices is precisely to become such an entry point. Through a solid compliance foundation and a multi-layered product ecosystem, it aims to filter out the short-term fluctuations of the market for users, safeguarding their long-term financial journeys. Its significance transcends commercial success; it lies in enabling every individual, in an era full of uncertainties, to hold a reliable ticket to enter the future financial system.
As the mainstream world begins to seriously examine the practical value of cryptocurrencies, the real competition lies in who can deliver this value safely and smoothly to every ordinary person.
This is not only about laying the technical groundwork but also about building trust. And history favors those builders who set out early.
Risk Warning: The content of this article is for general information sharing and does not constitute any investment advice or trading invitation. The services or products mentioned may not be available in all regions. The risks of trading crypto assets are high; please fully understand the relevant risks before participating.
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