Roast Boy will share with you anecdotes and anecdotes about blockchain, finance, technology and other industries by translating interesting and informative articles from overseas authoritative media and authors, and freeze the worlds splendor for you. Come and stand up with the baked boy, lets see the world!
Roast Boy will share with you anecdotes and anecdotes about blockchain, finance, technology and other industries by translating interesting and informative articles from overseas authoritative media and authors, and freeze the worlds splendor for you. Come and stand up with the baked boy, lets see the world!
Gabriel Jiménez
Photo by: Evan Jenkins, The New York Times
Just after midnight on a Tuesday in early 2018, Venezuelas vice president commandeered the nations airwaves. Despite the darkness of the night, he was still dressed in a blue suit and red tie, with a calm expression. He announced that the Venezuelan government was about to make history by becoming the first country in the world to create and sell a cryptocurrency, which would be called the petro.
Three blocks away, in the spacious vice-presidents office, Gabriel Jiménez sits sleepily at a glass conference table, tapping his fingers on a computer keyboard as an overhead air conditioner pumps a steady stream of cool air. Jiménez is tall and lanky, with large black glasses framed by a scruffy beard and receding hairline. He spent months designing and coding every detail of the petro. Now, he and his lead programmer are working against the clock to get the petro into use as quickly as possible, even though some fundamentals of the petro havent been settled yet.
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Photo by: Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times
Jiménez hid his phone under the table and secretly texted his wife. Although she had recently left him, Jiménez asked her to give him a hug from the air and told him that his father was in trouble.
Before sunrise, Jiménez was finally released. When he got back to the apartment, he burst into tears. Before he could calm down, he received a call. Nicolás Maduro, the President of Venezuela himself, asked Jiménez to come and see him. Jiménez made his way to the presidential palace, walking through the crowd outside with exhaustion and fear.
A few months ago, Jiménez would never have imagined that he would later be summoned by Venezuelas dictator. Jiménez, who was 27 at the time, ran a small start-up company and had been protesting the dictator for years because Maduro had not only misgoverned the country and plunged Venezuela into financial crisis, but also detained, tortured and killed those who challenged his power.
But Jiménez believes in the potential of cryptocurrencies as much as he hates the regime. When the Maduro government approached him with the idea of creating a digital currency, Jiménez saw an opportunity to change the country from the inside out. Jiménez believes that if Venezuela’s cryptocurrency gets off the ground, he can both give the government what they want—a response to hyperinflation—and quietly introduce technology that frees Venezuelans from a government that dictates every detail of their daily lives. gain some freedom.
His friends and family warned him that cooperating with the Maduro regime would not end well. Vice President Tareck El Aissami, who oversees the effort, has been dubbed a drug lord by the U.S. government and has been placed on a wanted list by the federal government. Jiménez acknowledged the dangers of the job, but said the petro was a Trojan horse that would infiltrate the authoritarian government and help him and the opposition achieve reforms he longed for.
2017 and 2018 were full of drama for everyone in the crypto world, with the price of Bitcoin soaring more than a thousand percent before falling off a cliff, and billions of dollars of fortunes built and scattered. But perhaps no one has made such a perilous journey as Jiménez. His faith in digital currency has brought him from obscurity to the center of the nations dark power apparatus. He spoke directly with Maduro and his top lieutenants, who often praised his ingenuity—and before they went so far as to threaten Jiménezs life and drive him into exile.
“The real goal of this project is to change the economic model of this repressive regime,” he told The New York Times recently."image description
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Image credit: Office of the President of Venezuela
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a desperate country
Jiménez was eight years old when military dictator Hugo Chávez came to power in 1998, and he was living in the small town of El Tigre. Chávez has used Venezuelas vast oil reserves to provide social services to the poor, but he has also created a cult of personality in a country that has become increasingly authoritarian.
Jiménez belongs to the well-educated class and is naturally attracted to the opposition. After finishing college in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, Jiménez spent several years in the United States, where he studied, married and campaigned against Chávez and his successor, Maduro. He also interned with a Republican congresswoman from Miami who was a frequent critic of the Venezuelan regime. When reformists won Venezuelas parliamentary elections in 2015, Jiménez felt compelled to return home and join the political opening movement.
When Jiménez and his wife flew to Caracas in early 2016, he found the country in peril. The plunge in oil prices has sent Maduro printing money like crazy, rendering Venezuelas currency, the bolivar, worthless, leading to shortages of medicines, refugees drowning and children starving to death.
Jiménez is doing relatively well. He founded a start-up called The Social Us, which introduced Venezuelan programmers and designers to American companies looking for cheap labor. Like many wealthier Venezuelans, Jiménez keeps nearly all of his money in dollars, which makes spending it a hassle. He has to exchange money illegally every few days, and when he takes a taxi in Venezuela, if he wants to pay bolivars, he has to prepare a thick stack of banknotes, so most drivers only accept wire transfers.
The situation reignited Jiménezs longstanding interest in cryptocurrencies. He started paying his employees in digital currency; even with the volatile crypto market, it’s more stable than a Venezuelan bank account and not at the mercy of the Maduro regime. The Social Us staff began to promote that ordinary people in Venezuela can actually transact in cryptocurrencies, when in fact, more and more Venezuelans are buying bitcoin on the street. One of their companys projects is a payment terminal that evades government spending restrictions.
Initially, the Maduro regime viewed Bitcoin as a threat, after all it uses a decentralized network to create and move money without holding authorities accountable. But later some government members noticed that cryptocurrencies have two sides, and it can also help Venezuela avoid sanctions from the United States and international organizations.
In September 2017, an official loyal to Maduro proposed the creation of a digital currency backed by Venezuelas oil reserves. This is counterintuitive, because one of the principles of Bitcoin is that its value is not derived from natural resources or government fiat currency, but from the laws of mathematics. But in the face of desperate Venezuela, this distinction is no obstacle. Government official Carlos Vargas learned about Jiménezs work in a local publication and asked to meet him.
Before long, Vargas tall figure loomed over The Social Us offices. While eating a whole bag of chips, Vargas praised the group of young programmers, saying they were the only ones in Venezuela that could create the currency he proposed. Thats exactly what Jiménez wanted to hear. Their goal is to create a new Venezuelan currency that, like Bitcoin, circulates freely on an open network that cannot be controlled or destroyed by the government. Vargas wanted to call it the Petro Global Coin, but Jiménez suggested a simpler name: the Petro.
The Social Us prepared a short pitch for the Petro project. But Venezuela is full of people with crazy plans, so Jiménez doesnt take the matter too seriously. But when Jiménez was in Colombia for a conference in early December, he received an urgent text message: Maduro had just announced a national cryptocurrency called the petro. Mr. Jiménez opened his laptop and saw a video of the president, in his usual work shirt, telling a cheering crowd: “This is a big deal.”
Jiménez immediately sent Vargas a message: Did they steal our project?
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Mr. President who beats the air conditioner
Jiménez landed in Caracas late at night and was soon on the phone with some administration officials, in which Vice President El Aissami spoke. While the vice president has a reputation as the second most brutal man in Venezuela, when he began questioning Jiménez, a strange reversal of power appeared to have occurred.
The vice president was friendly and curious and said it was Jiménezs project and they were just learning from him. Mr. El Aissami wondered how many petro coins there would be and whether new ones could be mined like Bitcoin. Jiménez thought to himself that these officials did not have a particularly clear understanding of how cryptocurrencies work.
After the call, Jiménez emailed his employees to come to the office early for a meeting. He got everyone together and stood at his desk and said they should drop all other projects and focus on developing the petro. Employees can choose to leave, but if they do well, it will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change Venezuela, he said. We will free the people from government control, he said.
One Jiménez employee said he couldnt work for a dictator and resigned on the spot. On the outside, creating a state-backed cryptocurrency—almost contradictory claims—has become the butt of ridicule in crypto circles, which have long argued that their technology is designed to avoid state power interference. After the meeting, Jiménezs closest friend, creative director Daniel Certain, pulled him off the table, and the two chatted on beanbags around the office.
Dont do this, its not a good job, Certain told him, You want us to work for them and they see youre useless and theyll take the project away.
No one else in Venezuela knew how to do this, said Jiménez, smiling with his characteristic arrogance on his face, Certain recalled.
Other friends also tried to dissuade Jiménez, but he was treated like royalty in all his dealings with the government. He said that every cryptocurrency has a basic document as a basis, that is, a white paper, and they should submit the petro currency white paper to the central bank. This move will have very important symbolic significance, and a minister agreed to his request. He also advocated that all preparatory work should be completed within a month, so that no one can guess the next step of the project, and the government agreed.
Jiménez chose to base his development of the petro on Ethereum, allowing it to be traded in a free, open market that the Venezuelan government has long banned. However, no one on the government side seems to have any doubts about this, or even realize the problems in the trading market.
As promised by the government, Jiménez presented his plans for the petro at an all-day central bank meeting in late December that also included several U.S. crypto experts. When Vargas — the newly appointed director of crypto assets in Venezuela — took the stage to speak, he seemed to have bought into Jiménez’s outrageous ideas. Our theme is that were moving to a new economic system, Vargas said.
But the real talking happens after the meeting. Vargas told Jiménez and the Americans in attendance that the president himself wanted to see them.
It was one night, and a van drove them through heavily armed barricades to the military base, where the presidents private residence is located. None of them thought that the presidential palace was so simple. An old Chevrolet Camaro is parked in the yard next to a childrens trampoline.
Dressed casually, Maduro sat on a sofa with his wife, alongside other dignitaries. He shook hands with everyone, spoke to them in broken English, and praised an American visitor, Nick Spanos, for his recent appearance in a Bitcoin documentary, in which the dictator said he and his wife had just Watched this documentary on Netflix.
The air conditioner above the door hummed. At this point the President asked the Vice President if he would fix the air conditioner. Then, the president, wearing an Adidas tracksuit, stood on the sofa and slapped the air conditioner several times. Given the scarcity of supplies in Venezuela, Jiménez takes some comfort in seeing that the presidents life is not lavish.
Maduro laughed as he told everyone that his announcement of the petro galvanized cryptocurrency investors everywhere and pushed bitcoin to an all-time high of $20,000. No one knew if he was just joking, and everyone laughed along.
When the president gave Jiménez the floor, Jiménez presented the basic plan for the petro, including an initial offering of $200 million worth of petro coins. Then the finance minister spoke, and for the first time anyone questioned Jiménezs plans. Pulling out a Manila paper folder containing a map of the Orinoco heavy oil belt, the secretary said he hoped the petro program would have continued support from certain oil reserves there, worth billions of dollars , which is several times that of the petroleum currency.
Jiménez countered that it’s one thing to peg the initial price of the petro to oil, but if it can’t be traded freely thereafter, buying and selling at whatever price investors see fit, then it’s not a revolutionary product. If the price of the petro always reflects oil reserves, it is essentially a bond that recent sanctions have made it impossible for Americans to legally buy.
The president doesnt seem to be listening to the debate all that closely. When the meeting was over, Spanos felt that Jiménezs future was not looking good. I felt like he was going to be a scapegoat, he said later. I felt like I would never see this young man again.
Spanos remembers what he said to Jiménez before leaving Caracas:"image description"。
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You cant contradict the presidents words
Maduro has stepped up its petro promotional campaign. He didnt have many other tricks to fight the hyperinflation that cost the bolivar 90% of its value in just four months. Opposition members have publicly called for a coup.
Jiménez, who watched Maduros televised speech, was surprised because the president understood most of what he said in the presidential residence. Maduro mentioned Ethereum, white papers, and transparency.
But the presidents speech also made it clear to Jiménez that he no longer controls the petro project. Maduro announced that the currency would in fact be pegged to a specific area of the Orinoco heavy oil belt, which Jiménez objected to. He complained to Vargas, but was refuted: You cant refute the presidents words. Vargas asked Jiménez to rewrite the petro currency white paper as soon as possible, reflecting Maduros decision in the white paper. He and the vice president are about to travel to Turkey and Qatar to start selling the petro to investors.
Things quickly went from bad to worse. The presidents excited speech made everyone want to get a piece of the petro. In mid-January 2018, a series of meetings at the Treasury Department turned into contention. The chief economic adviser to the Treasury Department wants the petro to have a stable value, controlled by the government, so that it can choose to exchange it for real oil. Jiménezs arguments led to an agreement that the price of oil could serve as the minimum value for the country to accept the petro, but the price of the petro could also fluctuate on the open market. He also ensured that the petro would exist on an open computer network, linked to ethereum, which would fundamentally limit government intervention powers.
But in the end, Jiménez was convinced he would lose control. He said that when he refused to share a digital copy of the white paper, the minister threatened him on the phone: You have to understand that the petro is now a national project. If you dont hand over the papers, I dont guarantee what wont happen to you next. thing.
Some employees at The Social Us worried that Jiménez’s obsession with launching the petro had put them all in jeopardy. In another confrontation between Vargas and Jiménez, Vargas showed him blue folders containing intelligence files on The Social Us employees; have not yet been paid), the Vice President sent a message to Jiménez that he now thinks Jiménez is a traitor.
It wouldn’t be a surprise if Jiménez would face jail time at this point, and the petro project doesn’t need him anymore. However, Jiménez was pulled back to the project team in a series of chaotic events. The government told his team that they would need to compete with an unidentified Russian group to participate in the launch of the petro. Jiménezs staff found that the group had no experience with any major cryptocurrency projects. Time magazine later put forward a speculation: Behind this group is the Kremlin, which intends to control the petro currency.
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I dont know who my enemy is
Entering the Miraflores Palace, Jiménez was taken to the largest auditorium, where the entire cabinet and Maduro were waiting for him. The president greeted him warmly, motioned him to a nearby chair, and asked him how he had been since leaving the presidential residence. Jiménez realized that there were other people in the auditorium and the cameras pointed at them, so he didnt mention the previous night or other interesting things, he only emphasized that his team has completed the final petro coin. release version.
I didnt know who was my enemy in the auditorium, he later recalled of the scene. I was just a guy with no power.
After some small talk, the president ushered everyone into a lobby that had been converted into a petro-themed TV studio. With a crowd watching, an official of ceremonies ushered the Russian on to the stage, then moved Jiménez onto the stage. In front of Jiménez was a pen and a contract that he had been refusing to sign for weeks, and that if he signed it, he would be limited to acting as a sales agent for the petro — a disservice to him. obedient punishment. With live TV going on, Jiménez is caught between a rock and a hard place. He scribbled his signature and forced a smile under the spotlight.
Sitting down, Jiménez still feels dazed thinking about what he just did. Venezuela has raised $725 million from investors, the president said. He named Jiménez and The Social Us. This company was founded and run by a group of talented young people in Venezuela, the president praised them. You must keep this energy.
The petro project never really got off the ground. On March 19, Trump signed an executive order banning Americans from using the petro. The same day, the Associated Press published an article on Jiménez, which noted that he interned with an anti-Maduro House member several years before helping Maduro create the petro. Congressman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen immediately wrote a letter asking the Treasury Department to investigate whether Venezuelan national Gabriel Jiménez meets the sanction criteria of the relevant authorities.
In Caracas, Jiménez came under fire from both the left and the right. The Social Us found they couldnt get any more business. In July, a lawyer submitted a 68-page document to the National Constitutional Convention calling for an investigation of Jiménez for treason.
Jiménez took refuge in his own apartment and, when he could no longer pay the rent, his mothers. Friends say they rarely see him. In the end, his ex-wife convinced him that he should leave Venezuela before the authorities finally decided to arrest him.
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Photo by: Evan Jenkins, The New York Times
Jiménez is now sorting out asylum application materials every day. “As the founder of the petro, my special status has made me persecuted by the Venezuelan government because they want to silence me,” he wrote in the application materials.
After his father reported to prison, Jiménez stayed alone at a friends house. He sleeps in the childrens room with Lego and dinosaurs at the foot of the bed. Because he doesnt have political asylum status, he cant work, so he can only sit in the apartment and play mobile games, and he can only close the blinds all day long to save the electricity bill of turning on the air conditioner.
Im not kidding: Im in a major depression, he said in a lengthy interview last fall.
Incredibly, some countries have started to follow Venezuelas example and say they will launch their own government-sponsored digital currencies. China is leading the way, and the ECB says they are also moving in that direction. Venezuela has restarted the petro several times, eventually launching a digital currency for pensions that has nothing to do with the open digital currency Jiménez originally envisioned.
In October, Jiménez heard he had a U.S. work permit. Weeping with joy, he started a new project: developing a cryptocurrency that would make Venezuelans useless the bolivar.
Jiménez is still nearly broke, but a crypto startup in the San Francisco Bay Area allows him to work outside the office, eat food from their fridge and sleep on the couch in the CEO’s apartment. Recently, a reporter from The New York Times met him at a restaurant near the company. He took out a black notebook, which contained letters of apology to the friends he had lost.
“I always thought that I could find a way to make up for my mistakes,” Jiménez once wrote to one of his best friends. “I know that an apology is not enough. I know that I even deserve this pain, but believe me, life makes me The pain I have endured is beyond words."
