"This is like the Cosa Nostra": this is how the exclusive and clandestine club of bitcoin mining and other cryptocurrencies operates in Venezuela

Neither does it require a secret key to be provided to a porter in shady glasses and microphones with headphones, or to leave the cell phone behind for fear of being tracked by the authorities.

His work cubicle is a quarter of six square meters, acclimated with air conditioning, full of computers, cables and multiple connections. It is a smaller area of ​​an upper middle class family's apartment in La Lago, the most exclusive area of ​​Maracaibo, in western Venezuela.

Thirty-year-old, head of a young family and passionate about gourmet food, does not want his real identity to be known. Ask me to call him by his alias: "Han Solo". One of the most famous fugitive rebels of popular culture.

The shell of a CPU (the hardware of a computer) rests dismembered in front of him, on a desk of brown veins.

The computer, on, is the basis of an architecture of gray plastic tubes, medium size. Two professional video cards are attached to them with stickers. Your micro fans work at full force.

"Han Solo" looks at your monitor. Lines on lines of yellow, purple and gray texts follow each ten seconds. It details the categories: "total shares (total shares)"; "rejected (rejected)"; "time (time)"
The operations do not stop. They have hours after hours processing. Even days

They are pulsations of an outlaw trade in this nation of the Caribbean tropics, whose economy is governed by a tight control of change since 2003. A hurricane of inflation, price speculation and scarcity has abated since then.

"Han" is one of the many comptrollers of cryptocurrencies or digital currency: a "miner" of bitcoin. "This is like Cosa Nostra, in Venezuela we operate in the shadows."