After months of military build-up and escalating tensions, Venezuela’s crisis accelerated on January 3, 2026, when U.S. forces captured President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas and transported him to the United States. Maduro has since appeared in U.S. legal proceedings, while power inside Venezuela remains contested among senior regime figures and interim leadership. For bitcoiners, a parallel question has resurfaced: what happens to Venezuela’s rumored Bitcoin reserve? Venezuela has long been suspected of using crypto rails to route value around sanctions, and it even launched an oil-linked cryptocurrency in 2018, the ... (full story)