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Venezuela is still dealing with a political, economic and humanitarian crisis. The problems are among other things caused by historical over-valuation of the currency and the so-called Dutch disease of a mono-commodity economy. Apart from oil, practically everything is cheaper to import than to produce in Venezuela (Lander, 2014). This has generated serious consequences and distortions, which continue today.

One of the most damaging consequences is the 95.8% devaluation of the Bolívar, the national currency (Efecto Cocuyo, 2018).  In 2018 the government launched its own cryptocurrency ‘El Petro’, backed by oil, to provide a solution to the economic crisis. According to the president, Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan cryptocurrency’s meaning for the country was a way to become more financially independent and to resolve problems in the economy (Gozzer, 2019).

Using cryptocurrency tools opened breathtaking possibilities. Venezuela was starving for a trusted currency, and its citizens were accustomed to mining and using cryptocurrencies. Global investors were wild for anything crypto and were buying into even obvious frauds. Even though el Petro had very weak backing, royalty and tax savings on oil that possibly never would be extracted, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies had no backing at all. Still the market capitalization of the latter was approaching $1 trillion (Brown, 2019).

Despite the hopeful promises made by el Petro, it turned out to be a myth rather than reality.  “It does not exist” or “it was a scam” are usually the first answers that are obtained when asking about el Petro to cryptocurrency experts. The reason: el Petro is absent in all major international exchanges or exchange houses, those digital platforms such as Binance or Coinbase where users buy and sell bitcoins, ethers, litecoins or any of the more than 2,300 cryptocurrencies that exist in the market (Gozzer, 2019). On top of that, there is the problem of trust in the honesty and competence of Venezuela’s currency management. As the official currency, the Bolívar, showed; the Venezuelan government could not be trusted (Brown, 2019).

Jhonathan Higuera, an analyst at the National University of Colombia and a member of the Blockchain Foundation confirms the disappointment of el Petro. Nevertheless, he points out that Venezuelans still seem to prefer storing their money in a digital wallet, in for example the form of Bitcoins, rather than holding on to the enormously devaluated national currency: “It is interesting to see that the total volume of Bitcoins that are traded through localbitcoins in the world is on average 13,000 per week. Venezuela is responsible for an average of 1,800, which is 13% of the world volume.” (García Casas, 2019)

A major reason for citizens of countries in crisis to choose crypto currency is that it gives them access to the financial world outside of their respective country. They are not free to exchange their currency for e.g. US dollars or any other more stable currency, neither do they have access to worldwide banking services. Hence, crypto currencies allow them to bypass these barriers. Despite the future of Venezuela still being very uncertain, I am glad to see that there is at least one country in the world where crypto currencies are serving a practical value for ordinary citizens rather than speculators.

 

 

Brown, A. (2019). Venezuela’s Failed Cryptocurrency Is the Future of Money, Retrieved from: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-10/venezuela-s-failed-cryptocurrency-is-the-future-of-money

Efecto Cocuyo, (2018). BCV oficializa devaluación de 95,8% y tasa de cambio pasa a 60 bolívares soberanos. Retrieved from: https://efectococuyo.com/economia/bcv-oficializa-devaluacion-de-958-y-tasa-de-cambio-pasa-a-60-bolivares-soberanos/

García Casas, L. (2019). El petro, la moneda invisible. Retrieved from:  https://www.dw.com/es/el-petro-la-moneda-invisible/a-47304724

Gozzer, S. (2019). Crisis en Venezuela: qué fue del petro, la criptomoneda con la que el gobierno de Nicolás Maduro quería evadir las sanciones económicas. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-49045096

Lander, E. (2014). Venezuela: terminal crisis of the rentier petro-state model? Retrieved from: https://www.tni.org/files/download/venezuela_terminal_crisis_of_the_rentier_petro-state_model._with_very_minor_chaanges_0.pdf

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According to the Nielsen Total Audience Report, adults spend over 11 hours per day interacting with media on screens (2018). Cindy Holland, vice president for original content at Netflix, revealed that the average Netflix subscriber spends two hours a day on the streaming service (Clark, 2019). The consequences for human health are not rosy; for example neuroimaging research has shown that too much screen time actually damages the human brain; its overall ability to function and it also shrinks in size (Dunckley, 2014). This clearly indicates the importance of spending time ‘offline’, but most traditional hobbies now seem to be replaced by digital ones. Did Netflix contribute to the murder of hobbies?

A hobby is one of the few activities where you can totally shut yourself off. That is valuable time because you allow yourself to withdraw from the hectic pace of work for a while and that happens too little in recent years, says Ap Dijksterhuis, professor of psychology at Radboud University in Nijmegen who is specialized in happiness. “That lack of recovery is the number 1 cause of the burnout epidemic.” (Dijksterhuis, 2015)

Flow discoverer Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian-American psychologist, calls it “the optimal human experience.” People who get into flow more often are structurally happier than people who are rarely or never in that state. You achieve flow according to Csikszentmihalyi if you perform a task that you control, with full focus, with a clear goal in mind, on which you are able to receive direct feedback, where you experience no headaches and which allows you to forget about the time (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).

Netflix and the smartphone are particularly unsuitable for flow. Due to all incoming messages and easily accessible distractions, you rarely achieve the focus needed for flow behind a screen. Active time use such as playing a musical instrument or doing something that makes you move makes flow much easier (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).

Another important element in which real hobbies are winning is that it makes you happy if you make progress in something, in which you can noticeably improve. Mastery, in psychology terms. This is the case with almost all hobbies, from kite surfing to knitting (Nietzsche, 2016). No matter how much time you spend Netflixing, you will not get better at it.

Furthermore, it is good for your happiness in life to actively organize your leisure activities, says psychologist Paraskevas Petrou from Erasmus University Rotterdam. He conducts research into so-called leisure crafting, adjusting leisure time to personal wishes and requirements, as opposed to just seeing how the day goes. So deliberately freeing up time for hobbies. According to Petrou, the benefit of leisure crafting is that you continue to learn: “Growth, development, deep contact with other people and ultimately life satisfaction and meaning.” (Paraskevas, 2015)

Hence, actively allowing yourself to recover by performing offline hobbies has shown to positively contribute to the prevention of a burnout and increase happiness in life. Perhaps you already started to consider to cancel your Netflix account and to sign up for pottery classes.

 

References

Clark, R. (2019). Netflix says its subscribers watch an average of 2 hours a day — here’s how that compares with TV viewing. Retrieved from: https://www.businessinsider.nl/netflix-viewing-compared-to-average-tv-viewing-nielsen-chart-2019-3?international=true&r=US

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Journal of Leisure Research, 24(1), pp. 93–94

Dijksterhuis, A. (2015). ‘Geluk is iets anders dan genot’. Retrieved from: https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/geluk-is-iets-anders-dan-genot~b806210d/?referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

Dunckley, V. (2014). Gray Matters: Too Much Screen Time Damages the Brain. Retrieved from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mental-wealth/201402/gray-matters-too-much-screen-time-damages-the-brain

Nielsen. (2018). Time Flies: U.S. Adults Now Spend Nearly Half a Day Interacting with Media. Retrieved from: https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2018/time-flies-us-adults-now-spend-nearly-half-a-day-interacting-with-media/

Nietzsche, F. (2016). The Psychology and Principles of Mastery. Retrieved from: https://academyofideas.com/2016/11/psychology-principles-mastery/

Paraskevas, P. (2015). Crafting one’s leisure time in response to high job strain. Human Relations. 69 (2). 10.1177/0018726715590453.