President Donald Trump’s administration issued an executive order on Monday that essentially bans “any transactions within the United States involving any digital currency issued by, for, or on behalf of the Government of Venezuela,” effectively making it illegal to purchase or use the oil-backed Petro cryptocurrency…
Venezuela and Russia both have economies that are heavily dependent on the price of oil. Both countries are dealing with economic sanctions imposed by the United States. And in the past few days, both countries began moving forward with an official state cryptocurrency. Neither of offering sounds like it should be…
Bitcoin managed to set a new price record on Sunday, briefly hitting $11,826 per coin. And governments around the world are taking note of the boom in divergent ways. In the European Union, a new plan is expected to regulate cryptocurrencies under the same anti-money laundering laws as fiat money. It’s expected to…
Over the last few years, Venezuelans have suffered from the devastating impacts of a crumbling economy. Now severe drought has incapacitated its biggest hydroelectric plant, leading to daily blackouts. Earlier this month, the country mandated a three-day weekend as part of energy rationing. Now the situation has…
There is perhaps no unfinished skyscraper more infamous than Torre de David, a 45-story shell of a building that has informally housed about 5,000 Venezuelans since 2007. Now the property that has become known as the world's tallest slum is being acquired by Chinese investors, and this week, the government began…
While many people think countries like Norway are leading the way with recycling programs, an ambitious new idea in Venezuela takes things to a whole new level. The country just announced that it will start recycling abandoned cars, motorcycles, and bikes in order to build houses from their raw materials.
Venezuelan anti-government protesters are cobbling together home-brew gas masks from just about anything they can find—including empty water bottles packed with cloth, stuffed into larger water bottles—to defend against tear gas attacks from their nation's riot police as clashes between the two sides grow more violent…
Zello is a walkie-talkie app made by a small company based in Austin, Texas—but if you've heard of it, it's probably because you've been following the news in Venezuela or Ukraine. Some of its biggest users are protesters taking to the streets. The app's creators hadn't planned on getting involved in political…
Torre de David is a 45-story, partially-finished office tower that houses a vibrant community of squatters in Caracas. It’s also an internationally-known symbol of Venezuela’s economic troubles, to which the The New Yorker and The New York Times have both devoted long profiles. But there hasn’t been much video…
This is completely terrifying. These guys were probably about one second from blowing up in a jet fuel fireball, but they managed to eject with only a hair standing between them and oblivion. Barely.
Who needs a fairy godmother when you've got a doctor with a knife? Venezuelan ad company ZEA BBDO is ready to lure all the kiddies into the operating room with these fairy-tale-friendly, straight-up Prince Eric and Ariel rip-off ads for plastic surgery. Horrifying? Indeed!
This man is not Tom Hanks. Or Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the Iranian who lived in Charles de Gaulle's Terminal One from 26 August 1988 to July 2006. This guy's name is Parameswaran. He's from Sri Lanka and he was stranded in Caracas' international airport, Venezuela for four months.
I've always found it amusing that Angel Falls — the highest waterfall on Earth, and, consequently, a lifelong destination for tourists everywhere — is so difficult to visit.
You know those jokes about how Twitter's only good for telling people what flavor coffee you order? Hugo Chavez respectfully disagrees. He's been using Twitter to govern Venezuela while he's holed up in Cuba.
The Centro Financiero Confinanzas (a.k.a. "the David Tower," named after its investor David Brillembourg) stands half-complete in downtown Caracas and is Venezuela's third largest skyscraper.
Squatters in Venezuela have found a home in an unfinished 45-story skyscraper in Venezuela. They call their home the "Tower of David", after the financier who tried to build it in the '90s. People live up to the 28th floor in the elevator-less building and have jury-rigged electricity and water to every inhabited…
Want a ticket for the express line to federal prison? Try selling nuclear tech to another country. A husband and wife duo—former contractors at the nuke-specializing Los Alamos National Lab—are indicted on charges of exporting secrets to Venezuela.
Hugo Chavez, everybody's favorite completely insane South American dictator, is unveiling a line of PCs.
