[from]

It is if you have friends in the central bank. In Venezuela the official rate was like 10x the black market rate at one point so if you had the connections you could go say 60000 bolivars -> (official rate) 10000 USD -> (black market rate) 600000 bolivars -> (official rate) 100000 USD.

The massive profitability of this scam resulted in a number of Miami condo sales.

Reading the article:

> A substantial number of debit card holders had been using cards to make bulk purchases, often in the United Arab Emirates, of gold, mobile telephones and other products to take advantage of the Egyptian pound's low official exchange rate.

Looks like a similar arbitrage was going on here. I predict they will introduce more capital controls to stop bleeding forex reserves, which won't work and then they will eventually be forced to float the currency, resulting in massive inflation that will stabilize in a year or two. Or they'll just continue on like Argentina and let their economy languish because they refuse to recognize economic reality.