VENEZUELAN president Nicolás Maduro has launched the petro – a cryptocurrency in a similar vein to bitcoin. Maduro hopes that it will raise hard currency for the cash-strapped country, and help ease trade with foreign suppliers in the face of US sanctions imposed last year.
There are already widespread food and medicine shortages across Venezuela. The International Monetary Fund predicts inflation could hit 13,000 per cent this year, causing the collapse of the currency, the bolívar.
Unusually for a cryptocurrency, the petro will be administered by the central bank and each petro will be backed by a barrel of oil. Maduro claims that about 100 million petro tokens, worth around $6 billion, will be issued.
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But critics are unconvinced. “Who would give a vote of confidence to a bank that hasn’t even been [able] to maintain public confidence in the traditional currency?” Jean Paul Leidenz, a Caracas economist, told Colombian TV.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Venezuela debuts cryptocurrenc”
