Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro asked the 10 countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for Peoples to our America (ALBA) to work together on creating Petro, its proposed oil cryptocurrency, according to local sources.

At a meeting of ALBA on January 12, Maduro had announced:

"I put it on the table, the governments brothers ALBA, the proposal of the cryptocurrency Petro, so that we can assume as one of the 21st century integration projects in a daring way, but also to the way of a creative and creative. "

Maduro declared his intention to create the Petro in early December, and on January 6, he ordered the issuance of the first 100 petros mln, each supported by a barrel of oil. The president has already set aside 5 million barrels of Venezuelan oil in preparation, the currency to be launched in 6 weeks in the form of an auction because it will be pre-mined

. 9, the Venezuelan parliament declared the Petro an illegal currency. Parliament has opposed President Maduro since his Socialist Party lost its majority in 2016, and protested what they regard as a fraudulent currency.

The MP of the Parliament, Williams Dávila, declared, according to the newspaper El Universal, that the creations of Petro are only used for:

"Avoiding financial penalties , [and is] openly violate the Constitution, and legitimize illicit transactions. "

Venezuela, a country facing both hyperinflation and the sanctions of the EU and the United States, saw a massive amount of use of Bitcoin among its population, who chooses to use the digital currency in relation to Bolivar failure issued by the government. Some see the high volume of use of Bitcoin in Venezuela as the beginning of one of the first "bitcoinizations" of a sovereign state.

While the upcoming launch of Petro is uncertain due to its tenuous political context, the idea of ​​using cryptocurrency for the oil trade had already occurred in 2016 when the tense relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia had caused concern over the stability of the oil market.