The silent moves: How much bitcoin did Venezuela accumulate during the crypto winter?

While the world ridiculed “Crypto-Petro” as a failed project, the Caracas regime was executing a completely different strategy behind the scenes. Between 2018 and 2020, during one of the harshest periods for cryptocurrencies, Venezuela conducted transactions that now deserve a deeper analysis.

The context: when bitcoin was not trending

Those three years marked a particular turning point. Bitcoin experienced a sharp decline in 2018 (from $20,000 to $3,200), remained in unstable territory during 2019 ($4,000-$10,000), and only began to recover modestly in 2020 (around $7,000-$9,000). For most institutional investors, it was a time of uncertainty. For a regime under sanctions, it was an opportunity.

Pressures were multiple: U.S. sanctions, depressed oil prices, economy in severe contraction. In this challenging environment, Caracas executed a move that combined necessity with opportunism.

The numbers behind the operation

According to U.S. intelligence, Venezuela proceeded to liquidate approximately 73 tons of gold, generating nearly $2,700 million in revenue. The immediate question is: how much of that capital ended up invested in Bitcoin?

Calculations suggest a conversion of approximately 400,000 BTC. This implies an average entry price of around $6,750 per coin — a level that, to be honest, captured market panic without being the absolute minimum.

The strategy of imperfect but smart timing

The crucial point is not whether they bought at the exact bottom, but that they did so when most of the world considered Bitcoin a toxic asset. While Western analysts debated whether cryptocurrencies would disappear, Venezuela was already positioning itself.

This was not a blind gamble. It was a pragmatic decision by an actor needing to evade international financial restrictions and recognizing, beyond all propaganda rhetoric, that a digital asset was less vulnerable than gold reserves to selective confiscation.

The next act: monetization through USDT

By the end of 2025, records show an even more sophisticated shift in the strategy. Up to 80% of oil exports began to be liquidated in Tether (USDT), which was subsequently converted into Bitcoin — an arbitrage cycle that turns sanctions into operational advantage.

This mechanism reveals a deep understanding of cryptocurrency markets as tools for evading multilateral financial restrictions.

The unanswered question

While institutions in the West are just beginning to consider strategic Bitcoin reserves, how much of that initial position remains intact? Where exactly are those private keys stored?

What started as a secondary chapter in the history of cryptocurrencies — a desperate regime seeking alternative exits — may have resulted in a position of significantly greater magnitude than any Western analyst assumed five years ago.