Randy Brito is the head of Bitcoin Venezuela, a non-profit organization dedicated to educate and promote Bitcoin in Venezuela. He is also spearheading the Locha project, which he describes as “an effort to push the needed
developments and research for achieving the hyperbitcoinization in
Venezuela.” Brito also sees a use case for bitcoin in countries like
Turkey and Iran,which have suffered hyperinflation and sanctions aimed
at damaging the economy.
Brito’s family left Venezuela and moved to Spain in 2004 to escape what he describes as the persecution of the middle class.
“After the 2002-2003 national strike where companies went
to strike for several days, business owners, entrepreneurs, and even
store managers started being persecuted for disobeying the Government’s
rules, companies started to be expropriated targeting anyone who was
part of the call to join the strike.
“Lists were made during later years (Lista Tascón 2003-2004), more
lists appeared with names of people who voted against Chávez in 2004 and
the 2006 elections and those people in the list where banned from any
public sector, fired from their positions or having their companies
specifically persecuted or threatened of expropriations by their own
employees.”
Brito learned about bitcoin and through it, libertarianism, in 2011,
going on to found Bitcoin Venezuela the following year as well as
co-founding a liberal/anarchocapitalist group in Seville, Spain after
that. From 2014-15, Brito tried to open a local BTC-VEF exchange, but
the effort was stopped by the government, and all other cryptocurrency
exchanges were shut down.
Now he feeds 2,000 Venezuelans every day, collecting donations
through his non-profit in bitcoin and using the money to feed 1,600
people via a food shelter with the remaining 400 fed in orphanages,
schools, hospitals, and elder care institutes, which Brito discussed in a
recent AMA on Reddit.
