Key takeaways:
- In the midst of protests over contested presidential election results, the government of Venezuela has restricted access to X (formerly Twitter), Binance, and other online services.
- Users of Binance were reassured by the company that their money is secure, and it added that it was actively monitoring the situation to respond as quickly and effectively as possible.
In the midst of protests over contested presidential election results, the government of Venezuela has restricted access to social networking site X (formerly Twitter), cryptocurrency exchange Binance, and other online services.
Local anti-censorship group VE sin Filtro reported in an Aug. 9 X post that it found a DNS block on cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which interferes with the exchange’s website and mobile app from operating normally. On August 10, the exchange posted on its Latin American-focused X account:
“Like several websites of companies from different segments in Venezuela, including social networks, Binance pages have been facing access restrictions.”
Users of Binance were reassured by the company that their money is secure, and it added that it was actively monitoring the situation to respond as quickly and effectively as possible.
In Venezuela, people use Binance’s peer-to-peer service, which allows them to instantly trade cryptocurrency for cash to get rid of their overvalued bolívar currency.
Venezuelans are advised by VE sin Filtro to circumvent the block by using a virtual private network or VPN.
The August 9 Binance block occurred one day after Reuters reported that Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, gave a televised speech in which he instructed the telecom regulator Conatel to impose a 10-day ban on access to X within the nation.
Elon Musk, the owner of X, and Maduro recently got into a public argument. Both have put up and accepted challenges to engage in combat.
According to NetBlocks, an internet monitoring project, the encrypted messaging software Signal was also disabled on the same day. The project further stated that the app continues to work even with the “censorship circumvention” setting enabled.
After Maduro and opponent Edmundo González declared victory in the July 28 presidential election, there were massive protests throughout Venezuela.
Without disclosing a complete vote total, the nation’s government-run election body declared Maduro the victor with slightly more than 51% of the total. González asserted that his party’s collection of voting machine printouts demonstrated his victory with close to 70% of the vote.
Many South American nations, the European Union, the United States, and others have demanded comprehensive vote tallies in response to Maduro’s claim to the president.
