Video Game's Currency Worth 7 Times More than Socialist Venezuela's Bolivar
So you think there’s no value in playing video games, huh?
Players of the popular World of Warcraft video game have evidence to suggest otherwise — as do the people of Venezuela.
The economic collapse of the socialist country has greatly devalued its benchmark currency, the bolivar. The devaluation is nothing new, but the rate at which it’s doing so is stunning.
In fact, the bolivar is now worth significantly less than the make-believe currency used in World of Warcraft.
At the start of the week, one U.S. dollar was worth 68,915 bolivar.
Fortune magazine breaks down how the bolivar pales in value to the value of the fake gold in Azeroth, the mythical setting of World of Warcraft.
“World of Warcraft tokens – used to extend play time or a character’s life – can be bought with $20 or in-game gold. The in-game gold price of a token comes out to 203,035 pieces, according to WoWTokenPrices.com. That comes out to about 10,152 gold (pieces) per U.S. dollar,” according to Fortune.
By that standard, the mythical gold used in World of Warcraft is worth 6.8 times the value of the bolivar.
Did you know:
World of Warcraft currency is worth 7 times as much as Venezuelan cash?
The problem with Venezuela is not that socialism was improperly implemented, it is that it was perfectly implemented.
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) May 8, 2018
As bad as it may seem to have a currency that’s worth many times less than that of a video game, in some ways its even worse.
The black market rate of the bolivar is roughly 636,771 per U.S. dollar, according to Dolar Today, which tracks the black market rate of the bolivar.
Based on that calculation, the video game’s gold is worth nearly 62 times as much as Venezuela’s official currency.
More than 1 million citizens have fled Venezuela in the past two years. The country’s economy, which relies almost exclusively on the state-run oil company, has been hit hard by falling oil prices globally and competition from other oil exporters, including the United States.
Venezuela’s crude production has been falling for the past 25 months, OPEC numbers show. In April, neighboring Colombia surpassed Venezuela as a net exporter of oil to the United States.
Venezuela’s oil company, PDVSA, once had revenues in the billions per year, according to company reports analyzed by CNN. Today, PDVSA can barely meet expenses.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley called for Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro to step down Tuesday as the country’s economic crisis worsens.
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