Venezuela’s finance minister, a sociology professor, insisted that inflation wasn’t real. Then inflation went into the infinite percentage points. The socialist dictatorship ran out of money to print its own currency, tried to launch a cryptocurrency scam, and is just switching to dollars and euros.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro embraced the currency of his bitter rival the United States on Sunday, calling it an “escape valve” that can help the country weather its economic crisis amid U.S. sanctions aimed at forcing him from power.

The inflationary spiral has slashed the purchasing power of the South American country’s minimum wage, which together with food assistance, is equivalent to about $10 per month.

“I don’t see it as a bad thing … this process that they call ‘dollarization,’” Maduro said in an interview broadcast on the television channel Televen.

Maduro, who at least until 2018 forbid the use of the dollar, added that while he is still evaluating transactions in U.S. currency, which have been growing in recent months, the bolivar will continue to circulate as the official currency.

A completely worthless official currency.

And so Venezuela admits defeat and goes the way of Zimbabwe. 

Maduro is sacrificing Chavez’ Bolivarian revolution to cling to power. The regime is becoming hollowed out. It’s just a bunch of drug lords clinging to power by bribing armed men with food. If it takes dollars or euros to keep this regime afloat, they’ll do it.

Under increasingly severe U.S. sanctions, the central bank has started injecting euros into the economy. The government and state oil company PDVSA have even begun to pay contractors with the European currency.

Viva la revolucia.