Petro to be used for Global Trade

| Publish date: 09/22/2018
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According to the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the Petro, which is the country’s oil-backed cryptocurrency, will be used for international commercial transactions from October onwards.

A Crypto for the World

Maduro appeared on VTV, the national TV channel, and delivered his speech regarding the latest economic issues being faced by the country. It was during this speech that he made this announcement.

The Venezuelan President did not, however, specify in which areas the Petro would be used and neither did he name any countries that would be willing to accept the crypto as a mode of payment.

Maduro, in his speech, stated that this move to insert the Petro into global trade came after the token had been deployed as a part of the country’s economic recovery program.

The Real State of the Petro

Maduro’s announcement came in the wake of a special report by Reuters last month, where the news agency revealed rather alarming facts about the state sponsored, oil-backed Petro.

Over a period of four months, investigative reporters from Reuters had interviews with dozens of cryptocurrency as well as oil experts. These reporters even travelled to the site where these so-called oil reserves are supposed to be located and also trawled through the Petro’s transactions records to find out what was happening.

The findings were alarming. The cryptocurrency is not being traded on any cryptocurrency exchange and no commercial establishments are known to accept it as payment. The few buyers that were finally located complained that they had been scammed.

Additionally, it doesn’t seem to be backed by the promised 5 billion barrels of oil that Maduro claimed. The Atapirire region, where Maduro said the oil was been stored, shows no signs of any oil related activity and the villagers in that area state that there is “no sign of Petro” there.

According to former Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez, the Petro only exists in the current government’s imagination. Some experts have stated that the Petro is just a smoke screen to cover up Maduro’s failure to reanimate the Venezuelan Bolivar, the country’s fiat currency.

National Crypto-Coin

Despite all the claims that the Petro is actually insolvent, Maduro has gone ahead and linked the cryptocurrency to the country’s economic reforms. The Petro has officially become the country’s second government currency after the Bolivar. This crypto, according to the government is to be used as a unit of account, thereby tying up salaries as well as prices to the Petro.

In fact, it has become a requirement for some state-owned businesses to covert a portion of their sales into the new cryptocurrency.

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