(Red Friday) in Venezuela refers to Friday, 17 August 2018, when President Nicolás Maduro announced a series of economic reforms known as "Program of Recovery, Growth and Economic Prosperity", in response to increasing hyperinflation. This event is also known as (Red Package) or Madurazo by some media outlets. These reforms include the introduction of the a new currency with five fewer zeros, increase the minimum wage based on the Petro and increase VAT to 16%. According to President Maduro, these reforms have the goal of recovering the population's salary in two years through the Economic Recovery of Growth and Prosperity program, to eliminate the fiscal deficit and to eliminate the use of paper money. Economists and experts argued that the economic measures lacked coherence and would contribute with increasing hyperinflation, indicating that they would have a much greater impact than the Black Friday of 1983 under President Luis Herrera Campins, El Gran Viraje of President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1989 or Agenda Venezuela of President Rafael Caldera in 1996. History Venezuela's hyperinflation began in November 2016. Inflation of Venezuela's hard bolívar (VEF) in 2014 reached 69% and was the highest in the world. In 2015, inflation was 181%, the highest in the world and the highest in the country's history at that time, 800% in 2016 and over 4,000% in 2017 with Venezuela spiraling into hyperinflation. While the Venezuelan government "has essentially stopped" producing official inflation estimates as of early 2018, one estimate of the rate at that time was 5,220%, according to inflation economist Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University. Inflation has affected Venezuelans so much that in 2017, some people became video game gold farmers and could be seen playing games such as RuneScape to sell in-game currency or characters for real currency. In many cases, these gamers made more money than salaried workers in Venezuela even though they were earning just a few dollars per day. During the Christmas season of 2017, some shops would no longer use price tags since prices would inflate so quickly, so customers were required to ask staff at stores how much each item was. The Bs.F 2 and Bs.F 5 notes were no longer found in circulation due to the inflation, but remain legal tender until they were demonetized in August 2018. By early-December 2016, the Bs.F 100 note, Venezuela's largest denomination of currency, was only worth about US$0.23 on the