But the only reason that people are doing bitcoin mining there, in that land of Bolivarian plenty, is because economic idiocy has made electricity, to all intents and purposes, free. So, think it through, we've an energy hungry process, the government makes energy really cheap, people do the process, government arrests them for stealing the cheap energy. And apologies, but they really are:Recently, the law enforcement agencies in Venezuela cracked down on Bitcoin miners. It has made electricity artificially cheap at which point people do things which thrive on cheap electricity. So then they come along and arrest the people doing what they've just encouraged them to do by making electricity cheap.

Source: Forbes January 27, 2017 17:31 UTC