Venezuela’s Oil-Backed Petro Cryptocurrency is Thriving For Good

Venezuela’s Oil-Backed Petro Cryptocurrency

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced in December 2017, that the nation’s government was going to launch an oil-backed cryptocurrency called the Petro. However the cryptocurrency’s existence has not really been solidified since then.

Since Maduro’s announcement, the Petro has been a controversial cryptocurrency. Maduro has claimed 100 million tokens were to be issued and has since made it an official alternate currency in the country. The Venezuelan leader has pushed its adoption by forcing organizations in Venezuela to use the Petro, and by converting pensioners’ payments to petro.

In September, an investigation carried out by Reuters seemed to show that neither the Petro nor the oil reserves backing it existed.

After visiting the region, the Reuters journalists didn’t find signs of the Petro, nor any shops adopting the cryptocurrency. Recently, however, various Venezuelan political blogs started touting a “cryptocurrency expert”, Jose , who managed to prove the cryptocurrency was real.

CCN reached out to “Jose” to independently verify whether a Petro wallet was accessible and after a short waiting period, the cryptocurrency enthusiast agreed to send some tokens to them.

CCN have come to confirm that it did a transaction and that while Petro block explorer isn’t too user-friendly, they were able to find their transaction in it

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