The recent buzz in the crypto world revolves around a claim — that the Venezuelan government may have secretly accumulated hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin. It sounds quite sensational. But upon closer inspection, this is mostly based on speculation and secondhand information, with almost no on-chain evidence.

This claim mainly centers around three clues: selling gold for Bitcoin in 2018, using Bitcoin to settle oil revenues, and confiscating mining equipment. These points sound plausible, but how true are they? While Venezuela has indeed used crypto assets to settle oil and gas transactions and has confiscated some mining machines, the idea that the money from gold sales was massively converted into Bitcoin back then is actually unsupported by concrete evidence.

A more realistic issue is — Venezuela has long been plagued by corruption. Any crypto asset gains that are generated are more likely to be siphoned off by individuals rather than flowing into the official treasury. Looking at cases involving their national oil company and related regulators, many large sums have been embezzled over the years, yet the official reserves data show not a penny.

There are also fundamental flaws in the mining angle — outdated power infrastructure, frequent blackouts, and a government that isn’t adept at complex operations make it almost impossible to sustain large-scale Bitcoin mining. Overall, there is currently no solid evidence to support the claim that the Venezuelan government is hiding a massive Bitcoin reserve. This rumor remains in the realm of speculation.