The "Look at the popularity of Bitcoin in [country]" argument always turns out to be made-up rubbish.
I did actually try tracking the Venezuela hype to its source. You have linked the Reason article as a reference, but if you actually read the thing, its title is "The Secret, Dangerous World of Venezuelan Bitcoin Mining: How cryptocurrency is turning socialism against itself" and the article itself is an unhinged libertarian polemic fiercely advocating Bitcoin as a way to avert the SPECTRE of SOCIALISM and REGULATION. One of their interviewees had been arrested for stealing electricity to mine bitcoins, which the author describes as a "government crackdown" on "freedom" because "bitcoin mining is arguably the best possible use of electricity in Venezuela".
A story in The Guardian in the wake of the Reason story appears to be where the rest of the press picked it up. It spoke of some Venezuelans relying on Bitcoin for "basic necessities" - and was based on interviews with a Bitcoin exchange owner, one of his employees and two of his customers. The author had previously written similar stories of Argentina and bitcoin. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/16/venezuela...
These two questionably-founded stories were echoed and elaborated upon by the rest of the press, including - amongst many others - the Washington Post claiming that Bitcoin mining is "big business" in Venezuela (which it in no way is), the New York Times claiming that Bitcoin has "gained prominence" because of Venezuela, and BBC News repeating claims from a Bitcoin boosterism blog - all of this being factoids repeated in a media game of telephone.
The Venezuelan volume on LocalBitcoins at the time was on the order of 300-400 BTC/week, which isn't nothing, but is negligible in the context of a whole country, and tracked fairly closely with LocalBitcoins usage in other countries.
Thank you for your research into this! I found it difficult to locate good sources too, and that fact is worthy of more disclaimer than I gave. I think you're right in giving any claimed causality in new territory a good hard knock.
The rate of usage growth could give more insights than just current volumes:
> It could indeed be just a blip, but would you agree that there exist reasonable incentives for usage of DLTs in unstable economies?
tl;dr no. Cryptocurrencies (we're not talking about the general euphemism "DLT", your question is about cryptocurrencies and specifically Bitcoin) don't solve any of the problems people have in that situation. When every story about "Bitcoin in [troubled country]" has turned out to be made-up rubbish, this leads me to consider all such claims wishful thinking on the part of holders.
I'm writing a book on Bitcoin/blockchain https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/ and have taken to researching Bitcoin/blockchain stories that make it to mainstream media - because this is what ordinary people hear about it - and tracing them to their sources, because far too much of what I'm trying to use as sources just doesn't check out.
In almost all cases they're complete BS started by Bitcoin/blockchain promoters. Every "Bitcoin adoption in xxx" story is rubbish. Most corporate blockchain adoption stories are rehashed press releases, usually from IBM.
Blockchain marketers consistently claim some prominent company "is using" a blockchain when there’s just been a press release that they are "investigating" running a future trial. This is because an "investigation" is cheap, and telling Beleaguered Bob in the office to look into this "blockchain" stuff is worth the PR value in showing you're fully up to date with current buzzwords. "Researching the opportunities" could mean anything, but pretty much always does mean nothing.
If you see a use case that catches your attention, a web search on the company names and the word "blockchain" will often track down the original press release. Check very carefully which details are clearly substantiated in the present tense, and which are (what's a good word) aspirational.
Journalists who bother actually picking up the phone and talking to people, e.g. Izabella Kaminska at FT, get a barrage of personal abuse from Bitcoin advocates, whose social skills really haven't gotten any better in the past several years.
The Bitcoin press is possibly even worse - it pretends to be news coverage, but it's actually advocacy blogs posting any boosterism that crosses their path, because what their readers want is reassurance that this is the future and their holding will go TO THE MOON. The best of them is probably CoinDesk, and even they've never seen an unreleased hype they didn't like and run an enthusiastic article on. The mainstream press keep assuming all this is specialist coverage that's done with journalistic intent (rather than advocacy from holders) and copy'n'pasting it.
Even when the Bitcoin blogs are trying to do real news, they're inexcusably sloppy, and you really do have to check every factual claim individually.
I did actually try tracking the Venezuela hype to its source. You have linked the Reason article as a reference, but if you actually read the thing, its title is "The Secret, Dangerous World of Venezuelan Bitcoin Mining: How cryptocurrency is turning socialism against itself" and the article itself is an unhinged libertarian polemic fiercely advocating Bitcoin as a way to avert the SPECTRE of SOCIALISM and REGULATION. One of their interviewees had been arrested for stealing electricity to mine bitcoins, which the author describes as a "government crackdown" on "freedom" because "bitcoin mining is arguably the best possible use of electricity in Venezuela".
A story in The Guardian in the wake of the Reason story appears to be where the rest of the press picked it up. It spoke of some Venezuelans relying on Bitcoin for "basic necessities" - and was based on interviews with a Bitcoin exchange owner, one of his employees and two of his customers. The author had previously written similar stories of Argentina and bitcoin. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/16/venezuela...
These two questionably-founded stories were echoed and elaborated upon by the rest of the press, including - amongst many others - the Washington Post claiming that Bitcoin mining is "big business" in Venezuela (which it in no way is), the New York Times claiming that Bitcoin has "gained prominence" because of Venezuela, and BBC News repeating claims from a Bitcoin boosterism blog - all of this being factoids repeated in a media game of telephone.
The Venezuelan volume on LocalBitcoins at the time was on the order of 300-400 BTC/week, which isn't nothing, but is negligible in the context of a whole country, and tracked fairly closely with LocalBitcoins usage in other countries.
tl;dr no, Venezuela isn't a thing either.