Nicolas Maduro, Venezuelan President, has said that the oil and part of the gold that the country produces will be sold in exchange for its national cryptocurrency petro.

According to Maduro the country has already signed contracts for the sale of oil, steel, iron and aluminum, plus part of the gold for petros.

Maduro said the Venezuelan government is successfully introducing its cryptocurrency into citizens’ daily lives. He claimed that at least 6 million families in the country have used petro as a payment method to purchase goods and services during the New Year holidays. It was also reported that the #PetroApp hashtag was trending yesterday on Twitter in Venezuela.

After its announcement in Oct. 2017, the sale of petro began in Feb. 2018. According to TASS, the price of one petro is equivalent to the price of one barrel of oil in Venezuela.

Maduro recently said that Venezuela would back the crypto with some 30 million barrels of crude oil sitting in the country’s storage tanks. This is because petro is pegged to the price of oil.

However, the figure is drastically lesser than the 5 billion barrels announced during the petro launch in Feb. 2018.



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