I'm Simon Chamorro.
I'm the co-founder and CEO of Valiu.
And we're a product that helps Venezuelans, living
in hyperinflation, protect their money from losing value,
receive remittances,
and pay locally to buy food and medicines.
Both businesses and consumers are able to exchange goods
and services with each other,
paying in cryptocurrency.
The vision for us is to increase economic freedom.
Venezuela is known
for its political and economic instability.
Hyperinflation has caused the Bolivar
to lose 99.9% of its value,
in just two years.
Wealthy Venezuelan families saw their fortunes disappear,
and the poor were pushed even further into desperation.
Simon Chamorro knows this story all too well.
Growing up in Venezuela,
essentially, wherever my dad
and my mom were able to build,
during their life, was lost.
When the economy started to fail, we, for example
had water shortages or like electricity blackouts
across the country.
Money was starting to get hyper inflated.
This is not like a sad story that I'm trying to tell.
This is the reality of most Venezuelans.
More than 99% of the Venezuelans
lost everything they've built,
because the country failed.
All of the Venezuelans savings
of most middle-class people went to zero,
and I knew if I wanted to build something
I had to find my purpose.
I always knew I wanted to start a company
and to build things, which is the reason why
I studied industrial design with the hypothesis
that I was going to be able to build things.
I didn't pursue that career,
but I learned a lot of things that got me into tech.
So I found crypto through tech.
I felt passionate about the technology.
And then when I understood the potential of crypto,
I realized that Venezuela is potentially
the best place to do this at a massive scale.
The reality is, if we deconstruct cryptocurrencies,
the base, most basic thing is that it helps disintermediate.
And this may have the possibility to change society
as we know it.
The main problem Venezuelans are going
through right now is hyperinflation.
Hyperinflation is just a byproduct
of total mismanagement of the country.
Venezuela's descent into an impoverished dictatorship
put the devastating effects of hyperinflation
on full display for the world to see.
Lines for basic needs,
extreme shortages of food and medical supplies,
civil strife,
violence,
and the citizens spared
were the ones who could move their currency
out of Venezuela to other more stable currencies,
like the US dollar,
a luxury mostly saved for the ultra elite.
But Simon's platform, Valiu,
promises the opportunity
for everyday Venezuelans to protect themselves
from hyperinflation by way of cryptocurrency.
And according to him,
the unstable conditions
of his country are the perfect breeding ground
for such an experiment.
Nobody trusts the currency or the government.
People are looking for solutions.
In a place where people are trying to survive,
the barrier of trying new things is much lower.
So digital dollars, Stablecoins, cryptocurrencies,
people are going to be willing to try it
with a little bit of money
and then slowly kind of get there.
Our main objective right now as a company is to
enable merchants to accept digital dollars
as a medium of payment.
And so people have to use the,
the Bolivar less and less.
We're focused on building a product that serves
from the richest person,
with a lot of education and technical literacy,
from the lowest income person,
with very low education nd low technical literacy.
In a country like Venezuela,
where the minimum wage is one dollar,
you have a situation where most people
are starting their own little business,
selling hot dogs or selling the local food called, arepas,
or whatever they do,
but they sell it to their community.
And you have these hyper-local communities,
so we want to help them accept payments in dollars in
in digital dollars and Stablecoins,
and then onboard users.
The more consumers that pay in dollars,
the better for the merchants.
The more merchants that accept it,
the better for the consumer.
So far, we've moved millions of dollars,
we've helped more than 150,000 households,
30,000 monthly active users and it's working.
The reality is,
is that economic freedom
is only directly tackled
by the innovation that is cryptocurrencies.
But we can't forget that Venezuela has tried this already.
El Petro was a proposed cryptocurrency backed
by the country's most abundant resource, oil.
While El Petro was widely considered a resounding failure,
many experts agree that the experiment was a necessary step
in establishing cryptocurrency for the future.
And Simon is convinced that its foundations,
namely blockchain technology, remains stronger than ever
and ready for another more practical iteration.
Blockchain is really a paradigm shift
for the human race.
It's one of the most important things
that has happened in recent history.
What you're starting to see, is companies
starting to completely build their products
on top of this blockchain.
It's almost like it's creating its own economy.
If there's a way to provide more stability
and economic freedom and financial freedom
to Venezuelans without crypto, I would rather
for that to happen, than for me to be successful
with a product that doesn't bring value to the people.