Venezuela’s currency is called the Bolivar fell massively in price last year due to problems within the country. Since then the currency has slid further and further down and it is becoming worth less and less.
In August las year WoW’s currency was worth just over two times what the Venezuelan Bolivar is and since then has risen to 6.8 times.
One US Dollar is worth 68,915 Venezuelan Bolivar and if you compare that to the price of WoW tokens you can then see the staggering difference. WoW Tokens are bought with $20 in the real world. There is a tracking service which lists the current WoW gold price for 1 token as 203,035 pieces. That works out to about 10,152 gold pieces per 1 USD.
This means approximated 10,152 WoW gold is equal to 68,915 Venezuelan Bolivar.
There have even been reports of Venezuelan players farming gold instead of working as it will make them earn money faster.
The Venezuelan president has moved away from his support of the Bolivar and created a national crypto-currency called the Petro.
This all sounds particularly odd and is hard to wrap your head around the fact that a video game currency is worth many times more than an actual real life one. I can only see the difference getting bigger over the coming months until Venezuela eventually ‘give up’ on their national currency.
I can definitely see an episode of Black Mirror being along these lines. ‘All banks have failed and no one has any money. Everyone has to trade WoW items and gold to buy real life food with.’ Mark my words!
Maths source – Fortune