When news spread about cryptocurrency national or government initiatives a wave of enthusiasm also spreads to the crypto community. Maybe because this gives the cryptocurrency phenomenon a legal status. However, In the case of Venezuela’s Petro coin launch, this enthusiasm seems to be absent. Venezuela inflation rate hit 80,000 % in and is expected to hit 1,000,000 % by the end of the year according to the International Monetary Fund. Petro coin has been reported to be available for trading on 6 exchanges: Bancar, Afx Trade, Amberes Coin, Criptolago, Cave Blockchain, and Cryptia.
None of the exchanges that listed Petro coin is on the top 100 list according to CoinMarketCap. Even the Petro coin does not appear anywhere in the CoinMarketCap.com list of coins. At the same time, the Petro can be purchased directly in the state treasury platform.
It is unclear which pairs are available for trading Perto. While the official Twitter Petro account claims that BTC, LTC, ETH, and even DASH pairs are available, the other Twitter account (National Association of Cryptocurrencies) claims that only BTC and LTC are accepted.
An interesting thing is that Petro can be purchased by Euro and Yuan on the state platform. Also despite the sanctions, even the US dollar is accepted in the state’s platform. The U.S. Treasury Department has warned their citizens to stay away from Petro.
But What is the Petro?
Petro is a coin invented by Maduro in an effort to stabilize the worthless national currency “Bolivar”. The Petro project has been a controversy for many reasons.
The government claimed that the coin will be backed by the oil country reserves which is bigger than the Saudi Arabia reserves. It is important to remember that Venezuela already is missing debt payments for more than a year and it is just a matter of time when creditors like China (one of their biggest creditors) will seize their assets and resources. Then they claimed that Petro will be backed by the country oil up to 50% and the other 50% will be backed by other resources like Gold, Iron, and Diamonds.
Also, the ICO claims have been very optimistic securing 5 billion dollars and only in the first 24 hours Maduro claimed $735 million. Despite all these hyperbolic claims by a state government Petro is not yet even listed at CoinmarketCap let alone being listened in any of the top exchanges.
Unlike the decentralized philosophy, the blockchain is bringing Petro also is a centralized coin controlled by the Maduro regime which brought the monetary system of Venezuela at this point of failure.
Despite the big promotional campaign Petro which symbol is PTR did not gain much interest as Venezuelans still are choosing Bitcoin according to volumes on Localbitcoins which are going up every day since the capitulation of the local currency Bolivar.