Venezuela enters in Cryptocurrency world launching Petro

6 years ago - Published in Fintech Land

Venezuela is moving ahead with plans to “overcome the financial blockade” by launching an oil-backed cryptocurrency known as Petro, and is now recruiting miners nationwide.

The Unique Registry of Digital Mining that Venezuela has created will be open until January 21, according to local newspaper El Impulso. Registration to the registry is a requirement for natural and legal persons to have access to Venezuela’s Petro cryptocurrency.

Local media reported that miners will also enjoy another benefit. They will be able to access other cryptocurrencies as well, if these currencies have been authorized by the government. This means that they can acquire any cryptocurrency.

The cryptocurrency, which will be launched “in days” will be backed by Venezuela’s oil, gas, gold, and diamond reserves and will help it “advance in issues of monetary sovereignty, to make financial transactions and overcome the financial blockade,” Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro said in a TV broadcast.

At the end of December, Venezuela’s Communications Minister Jorge Rodríguez said that the country was getting ready to launch within days its own digital currency—El Petro—which will be backed by more than 5.3 billion barrels of oil and support US$267 billion worth of financial instruments.

Earlier last week, Maduro said that the 5 billion barrels of oil reserves at the Ayacucho block 1 in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt would back the cryptocurrency.

Part of the attraction of cryptocurrencies is that their technology helps circumvent the world’s finance ecosystem by enabling trade payments in forms other than fiat currencies. This could be a boon to the Venezuelan Bolivar, which has rapidly depreciated in the last two years.

It definitely seems that the project is enjoying a lot of success, as it has been revealed that no less than 860,811 people have registered so far and are interested in developing mining farms for the Petro. The people who registered are reportedly from all over Venezuela.