re: Serious Question about Gold/Silver In Venezuela currently

Your diehard friends are ignorant.

There have been numerous collapses like this, many far worse than Venezuela. Usually the first thing everyone does is try to acquire a "hard" currency, like the dollar. In Zimbabwe just a few years ago dollars practically overnight became the defacto currency. Funny that at the same time goldbugs here wanted to ditch their dollars in favor of gold, they could have gone to Zimbabwe and made a fricking killing selling greenbacks if they could avoid getting murdered.

The other thing that the population does is simply barter as much as possible. By getting transactions off the books everything escapes government notice.

Speaking of which, the government of course tries to make it difficult to get hard currency but smugglers are usually better than the police and are buying them off to look the other way anyway.

I'll speculate that if you get scared and convert your stuff to gold before tSHTF you can hold on to it until better times come later, but it will have very little use while the fan is spinning.

It's sad what's happening over in Venezuela. I was there about five years ago and it was obvious things were about to go to hell, it was in the air everywhere. Incredible natural beauty though, and I met many locals who I hope are doing okay but probably aren't.