GETTY•REUTERS Venezuela's new cryptocurrency the petro raises $735miilion in one day

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According to Mr Maduro’s tweet, the 'petro' brought in a staggering £527million ($735million) in the first day of its pre-sale, which took place yesterday. Mr Maduro tweeted: “To big problems, great solutions! From the first minute the game started well, and we started winning: 4.777 billion yuan or 735 million dollars is the initial result of the operations of purchase intent of the Petro. “While in many parts of the world new technologies increase the gaps between rich and poor, in Venezuela we make a technological revolution with socialist vision. A giant step towards prosperity and the new economy.” Caracas has explained how each unit of the petro is pegged to the price of one barrel of Venezuelan oil. The country’s cryptocurrency regulator has said it hopes the petro will attract investment from Qatar, Turkey, Middle Eastern countries as well as European countries and the US.

Shocking images as violence flares in Venezuela Tue, November 14, 2017 Venezuela's political crisis intensified when the Supreme Court issued rulings curbing the powers of the opposition-controlled legislature. The court reversed the rulings, but the opposition intensified its protests from that moment Play slideshow AFP/Getty Images 1 of 30 Opposition demonstrators set an alleged thief on fire during a protest against the government of President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas on May 20, 2017

This new currency comes at time when Venezuela’s economy is far from healthy. It is currently facing hyperinflation and the collapse of its currency, the bolivar. A lot of negative attention has been placed on the petro, with many are suggesting it will just be used as a tool to circumvent the sanctions the US and the European Union have placed on Venezuela. Last month, US Senators Marco Rubio and Robert Menendez both denounced Venezuela’s cryptocurrency in an open letter addressed to the US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The two senators asked how the Treasury Department was monitoring Venezuela’s plan to add to the cryptocurrency market despite sending years in an economic crisis so dire it has resulted in starvation affecting many citizens.

Both Mr Rubio and Mr Menendez wrote in their open letter: "We have serious doubts about whether Venezuela has the capacity to launch a cryptocurrency, but regardless, it is imperative that the U.S. Treasury Department is equipped with tools and enforcement mechanisms to combat the use of cryptocurrency to evade U.S. sanctions in general, and in this case in particular." Even Venezuela’s own national Congress has denounced the cryptocurrency as illegal and have said that the legislature needs to vote on the token’s creation. Other nations are toying with the idea to create a cryptocurrency in order to get around sanctions. President Putin has commissioned a national cryptocurrency called the CryptoRuble.