Ripple CEO Garlinghouse Claims BTC Is A Store Of Value

Venezuela’s Maduro, the controversial president announced that he plans to revive the economy of the country and his oil-backed cryptocurrency Petro which never attracted any users as per the reports in the altcoin news.

The past few years have brought a lot of economic difficulties for the country of Venezuela whose native currency, bolivar crashed and suffered a loss of value because of the extreme inflation. In the meantime, the cryptocurrencies were entering the markets and became a huge trend around the world which is why the country decided to create its own, national cryptocurrency that was backed by the oil supplies of Venezuela.

The coin was supposed to be a safe haven from the worthless bolivar but it also aimed to avoid the US sanctions. Petro was launched in 2018 but it failed to attract users as the people were more interested in Bitcoin and other assets. Venezuela’s Maduro announced that he plans to bring the Petro back. Maduro published a decree that says that the airline flying from Caracas now have to pay for Venezuela’s fuel via Petro:

‘’I decree the sale of all fuel sold by the PDVSA for planes operating international routes be made in petros from now on.’’

He ordered that the coin has to be more widely used throughout the country since the US banned the use of the coin and marked it as a scam which only crashed the popularity of the coin.  Another one of his decrees states that the coin has to be used for paying the state document services such as passports but the people of Venezuela avoid Petro as much as possible since many do not know how to use it. For the tourists and foreigners, they also don’t use it because it was marked as a scam and labeled as a risk. Venezuela showed that it is open to the idea of crypto by using decentralized coins to battle the hyperinflation.

Venezuela even attempted to discuss trades in Petro with Russia and both countries had issues with the US and discussed they were discussing methods of getting rid of the use of USD in their trade deals. Maduro approved bonuses for the public employees and pensioners but insisted they should be paid in Petro. The coins were later exchanged for bolivars and used to purchase other currencies. The country banned the possibility of exchanging petro for bolivars.