"You get to pay for coffee, lunch, or car parts. You ask for the price and the seller takes out their phone, opens Instagram, searches one of those monitor pages and tells you with absolute certainty: 'It's so many bolivars, at the Binance buying rate.'
Up to that point, everything seems normal in our chaotic economy. But then, to save yourself the differential and the transfer, you make the logical offer:
'Perfect, I’ll send you the USDT directly at that rate. Give me your Binance account email or your wallet address.'
And it is at that precise moment when reality distorts. The person's face is a poem. A mix of confusion, distrust, and even offense. They look at you as if you were speaking to them in ancient Aramaic and respond with the script we all know by heart:
'US... what? No, no, kid. I don’t work with that. The price is in bolivars at that rate. Either you give me the bolivars or you give me the dollars in cash.'
And this is where one’s blood boils and the real debate begins. We are living in an economy where people use a digital asset they do not understand, do not own, and do not know how to use as a price reference. They have adopted the thermometer but have no idea what temperature is.
Is it pure malice or induced ignorance?
On one hand, it’s easy to think that it is a cleverness in its highest expression. They cling to the highest possible rate – the rate at which someone desperate buys USDT with devalued bolivars – to set the price of a good or service. They know it is the most expensive number and use it to 'protect themselves', but in the process, they end up artificially inflating the cost of everything for the average Venezuelan who earns and pays in bolivars. It is a distortion that hits us all.
But if you scratch a little below the surface, you realize that the story is more tragic than malicious. That person is not a trader, nor a financial expert. They are a merchant or a worker who is terrified of losing money. Someone told them, or they read somewhere, that 'the Binance dollar' is the 'real' reference to not lose against inflation. And in their eagerness to survive, they clung to that number like a lifeline, without the slightest curiosity or education about what it means.
They do not know what USDT is. They do not know that they could receive those payments instantly and at no cost. They do not know that they are missing out on the efficiency and security of the tool they so often mention. They simply repeat a number they see on a screen.
The real problem is not the merchant. It is the educational abyss. The villain is misinformation. We have adopted the price of an asset as a national economic marker, but we have failed miserably to educate people on how to use that asset for their own benefit.
So the next time this happens to you, breathe. You are not talking to a Wall Street speculator. You are talking to another victim of a broken economic system, trying to navigate the storm with a compass they cannot read.
To debate: Tell me your experience, has this happened to you? How do you react? Do you think it is a strategy to 'mess with' others or is it a reflection of a deep fear of economic ruin? #venezuela #binance $USDT