Political disputes, economic sanctions, and use of cryptocurrencies in Iran and Venezuela

The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela since the establishment of their current constitutions, in 1979 and 1999 respectively, have publicly and notoriously professed, on the part of their diff governments, their disagreement on the foreign policies of the United States. For its role, the American State has severely sanctioned the economies of both countries. The present investigation proposes to show several indicators of the economic and demographic scope to understand the impact of these economic sanctions on both countries. With special attention to the use of cryptocurrencies, in this case, bitcoin, as an alternative to traditional fi mechanisms controlled mostly by the United States. With a detailed narration of recent historical events and all executive orders regarding sanctions, a reconstruction of diplomatic relations is made, which, together with a review of cryptocurrency regulations, allows a better understanding of the evolution of indicators displayed. Finally, it is shown that the change in the trend in the economic indicators of both countries occurs in the years in which sanctions by the United States of America become more acute. On the other hand, given the constant values of the fl of remittances shown by the world bank, an estimate of this amount is proposed through the number of migrants, which shows that there is a high correlation between this fl of remittances and interest in the term “bitcoin” in the popular Google search engine. The fi could suggest that the primary use of said cryptocurrency is the transfer of remittances.