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This was a peculiar scene in December of last year, in Venezuelan capital Caracas. The battered President Nicolás Maduro had just announced that he would introduce a Kryptowährung named Petro. It will solve country’s economic problems. Hastily, president’s officials set up a symposium and flew a team of experts from abroad: money advisors and currency traders, for example Nick Spanos from information Service Bitcoin Center New York City. They were people who know about digital currencies.
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Then on one side re were ultra capitalists from land of imperialist Erzfeinds, United States – people like Spanos are so fascinated by digital currencies, not least because y do not hold much of government-made money, and In fact, not from State interference in general – and on or hand, state employees of Nicolás Maduro, who are known in his country as a particularly control-rabid president, listened to m. Maduro has recently crushed furious millions of protests on streets of several Venezuelan cities and has largely dispowered country’s parliament. So his government is not perfectly democratic.
A strange contrast. But apparently symposium was successful, because this Tuesday, Venezuela brought petro to market. Head of State Maduro stood in presidential palace of Miraflores and declared exuberant – and as expected – new currency to “roaring success”. It was Venezuela’s step into 21st century; A currency “strong as Superman” was created. An economic identification code was also mentioned: on first day, Petro brought state more than 735 million dollars.
Careful, exuberance!
The Venezuelan and Venezuelans are accustomed to exuberant explanations from Miraflores Palace. They treat m with great care – international financial press has less experience. The 735 million dollars were reported as fact all over world, and re are or big figures: 100 million Petro wants to spend government, and price of a petro is supposed to be about value of a barrel of oil, well 60 dollars piece. That would bring Venezuela revenue of six billion – money that country desperately needs.
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How realistic are expectations? From circles of Venezuelan digital experts, it is to be learned that Maduro’s experts have run a race against tight time in last few weeks. They exchanged ideas with Chinese and Russian experts and eased part of work by using an existing technology for ir new digital currency, Ereum platform for digital contracts. Over past few weeks, y have been panicking regularly because ir head of state has repeatedly publicly commented on any details of new currency that y have had to take into account quickly. For example, Maduro decided only in January that price of new currency should actually be based literally on cost of a barrel of oil.
The result is a strange construct that has been “distributed in a pre-sale phase” Since Tuesday: This means that larger quantities of Petro will be transferred to institutional investors. The government has not announced which institutions in which places in world might be interested in buying petro – it does not have to, it is private business. Venezuelan delegations with petro-promotional material in ir luggage are said to have been travelling in Qatar, Turkey and China last. We even addressed us and European investors, it is said.
Discounts on price
However, prices to which Petro changes owner in se days can be negotiated freely. It is not to be assumed that someone really pays official “orientation price” of 60 dollars; Probably price is far lower. It is also not clear wher number of 735 million dollars announced by Maduro is correct and what it is oriented towards. Are re actual amounts of dollars taken? Or rar those sums that Maduro would have gotten if each petro were actually worth as much as a barrel of oil?
There will be no possibility of buying normal population until later, presumably in a second phase of issue from 20 March. About 17 per cent of currency is to remain in hands of state, which will put now much-reported figure of six billion dollars once more into perspective.
Maduro’s government has announced that Venezuelan and Venezuelans will soon be able to pay for all possible government services in new currency: fees at offices, for example, and even ir taxes. Perhaps public servants will get ir salaries paid out in Petro, which is quite probable, because state is very bankrupt and state employees can barely defend mselves. If petro-project fails, your wages are worthless.
