Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Tuesday said that Caracas had received US$735 million in the first day of a pre-sale of the country’s “petro” cryptocurrency, aimed at pulling the country out of an economic tailspin.
Maduro is hoping the petro would allow the ailing OPEC member to skirt US sanctions as the bolivar plunges to record lows and it struggles with hyperinflation and a collapsing economy.
Blockchain experts have said the petro is unlikely to attract significant investment.
Photo: Reuters
Opposition leaders have said the sale constitutes an illegal debt issuance that circumvents Venezuela’s majority-opposition legislature and the US Department of Treasury has said it might violate sanctions levied last year.
Maduro did not give details about the initial investors and there was no evidence presented for his figure.
The president added that tourism, some gasoline sales and some oil transactions could be made in petro.
“Today, a cryptocurrency is being born that can take on Superman,” Maduro said, using the comic character to refer to the US, as he was flanked by mining rigs in a state television address.
The official Web site for the petro on Tuesday published a guide to setting up a virtual wallet to hold the cryptocurrency. The cryptocurrency goes public next month.
Venezuelan Cryptocurrency Su-perintendent Carlos Vargas last week said the government was expecting to draw investment from investors in Turkey, Qatar, the US and Europe.
The value of the entire petro issuance of 100 million tokens would be just over US$6 billion, Maduro said in recent months, though no new price information was provided on Tuesday.
The tokens will each be valued at and backed by a barrel of Venezuelan crude oil, he has said.
Advisers working for the government have in the past recommended that 38.4 percent of the petros should be sold in a private auction at a discount of 60 percent.
Maduro says his government is the victim of an “economic war” led by opposition politicians with the help of the government of US President Donald Trump.
Sanctions levied last year by Washington block US banks and investors from acquiring newly issued Venezuelan debt, effectively preventing the nation from borrowing abroad to bring in new hard currency or refinance existing debt.
The petro will not be a token on the Ethereum network, as was previously disclosed in a white paper provided by the government.
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