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The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner is a Bitcoin advocate.
Venezuela opposition leader María Corina Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last week for keeping “the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.”
Machado told Human Rights Foundation Chief Strategy Officer Alex Gladstein in a Bitcoin Magazine interview last year that she believed Bitcoin should be part of Venezuela’s national reserves. These remarks came as she said the leading digital asset had been a “lifeline” for many Venezuelans amid hyperinflation.
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“Some Venezuelans found a lifeline in Bitcoin during hyperinflation, using it to protect their wealth and finance their escape,” she said. “Bitcoin bypasses government-imposed exchange rates and thus helps many of our people. It has evolved from a humanitarian tool to a vital means of resistance,” she said.
Blockchain data company Chainalysis ranked Venezuela 18th in the world for cryptocurrency adoption this year.
Machado, the daughter of steel magnate Henrique Machado Zuloaga, has a degree in industrial engineering and a master’s degree in finance. But she entered politics in 2002 with the founding of the nonprofit Súmate, a self-described vote-monitoring group.
At Súmate, she led a signature-collection drive for a 2004 recall referendum against then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, due to dissatisfaction with his rule. The referendum, however, failed and Machado and other members of Súmate were charged with treason and conspiracy.
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Machado still managed to get elected to the National Assembly in 2010, receiving more votes than any other lawmaker. In the National Assembly, where she served until 2014, she famously had a heated exchange with Chavez, slamming his expropriation of private properties as “stealing.”
Machado’s opposition to Venezuela’s ruling socialist party continued into President Nicolas Maduro‘s 12-year administration, as she has supported protests and other initiatives against the government.
Machado tried to run for the presidency in 2012 but lost the Democratic Unity Roundtable party’s primaries. She returned with another presidential bid in 2023. This time, she won the primaries, but was barred from continuing by Venezuela’s Supreme Justice Tribunal, which is widely alleged to be controlled by the ruling party.