After Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was arrested by the US on January 3, a rumor immediately spread rapidly on global financial forums: This South American nation may hold up to 60 billion USD of Bitcoin.
The rumor originated from an article in the digital publication Project Brazen, which appeared on the day President Nicolas Maduro was arrested.
The article argues that Mr. Maduro's administration controls a quantity of Bitcoin worth about 60 billion USD - equivalent to the foreign exchange reserves of many mid-range economies. However, the article almost does not provide specific evidence, does not mention wallet addresses, does not point out transaction flows or on-chain data for verification.
This point made the blockchain analysis community quickly speak out. Ms. Aurelie Barthere, senior research analyst at the cryptocurrency research company Nansen, said that the above article "does not provide any wallet address as a starting point", making verifying claims almost impossible.
According to her, with a scale of up to tens of billions of USD, if Venezuela really holds such a large amount of Bitcoin, traces on blockchain are unlikely to be completely hidden.
Mauricio di Bartolomeo, co-founder of Ledn financial services company, believes that the level of corruption that has lasted for many years in Venezuela makes the possibility of accumulating such a huge Bitcoin warehouse unbelievable.
According to him, managing, securing and keeping secret digital assets at the national scale requires institutional capacity that Venezuela can hardly maintain stably in the context of continuous economic and political crises.
In fact, estimates of Venezuela's Bitcoin amount are currently very different. Bitcointreasuries.net - a Bitcoin statistics website owned by governments and organizations - estimates that Venezuela only owns about 22 million USD of Bitcoin.
If this number is correct, Venezuela is still in the group of governments with Bitcoin reserves, but on a modest scale and very far from the rumored 60 billion USD mark.
However, it cannot be denied that Venezuela was one of the early countries associated with cryptocurrencies. In 2018, the Maduro administration launched the Petro digital currency, which was declared to be associated with oil reserves, although this project was later shut down.
In daily life, many Venezuelans also use stablecoin as a way to combat hyperinflation and the serious devaluation of the domestic currency.
In that context, US President Donald Trump's statement that he would "run" Venezuela has raised new speculations: Can the US find a way to control or confiscate the country's digital assets or not.
According to Mr. Andrew Fierman, Head of National Security Intelligence at Chainalysis, the control of cryptocurrencies, if it occurs, can take place in two scenarios. One is through centralized platforms, where courts can request exchanges or stablecoin issuing organizations such as Tether or Circle to block wallet addresses. Two is through physical seizure including storage devices, hard wallets and private keys, if there is coercive cooperation.
However, at the present time, there is no way to fully and accurately confirm how much Bitcoin Venezuela holds.
