The petro (₽), or petromoneda,[2] launched in February 2018, is a cryptocurrency issued by the government of Venezuela.[3][4]
Announced in December 2017, it is supposed to be backed by the country's oil and mineral reserves, and is intended to supplement Venezuela's plummeting hard bolívar currency, as a means of circumventing U.S. sanctions and accessing international financing. On 20 August 2018, the sovereign bolívar was introduced, with the government stating it would be linked to the petro coin value.[5][6]
As of January, 2020, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro decreed it mandatory to pay with petro for government document services and airplane fuel for planes flying international flights.[7]
Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro announced the petro in a televised address on 3 December 2017, stating that it would be backed by Venezuela's reserves of oil, gasoline, gold, and diamonds.[8][9]
Maduro stated that the petro would allow Venezuela to "advance in issues of monetary sovereignty",[10] and that it would make "new forms of international financing" available to the country.[8] Opposition leaders, however, expressed doubt due to Venezuela's economic turmoil,[9] pointing to the falling value of the Venezuelan bolívar, its fiat currency, and $140 billion in foreign debt.[11]
On 5 January 2018, Maduro announced that Venezuela would issue 100 million tokens of the petro,[12] which would put the value of the entire issuance at just over $6 billion. It also established a cryptocurrency government advisory group called VIBE to act as "an institutional, political and legal base" from which to launch the petro.[2] Carlos Vargas is the "Superintendent of Cryptocurrencies".