The Venezuelan government has recently launched a Petro savings plan that allows the country’s citizens to put their money into the oil-backed cryptocurrency and “save by means of a certificate.”
Venezuela Launches Petro Savings Plan for 18 Million Citizens
According to local news outlet Telesur, the savings plan is part of the “Comprehensive National Cryptoasset Plan,” and will in its initial phase “make available” 4 million petros, equivalent to 14,400 million sovereign bolivars, the country’s fiat currency. The amount equals $240 million.
The savings plan is set to be available on an online platform called the “Plataforma Patria,” which is reportedly accessible to 18 million Venezuelans with an identity card. To take advantage of the savings plan, Venezuelans will have to invest in sovereign bolivars.
Venezuela’s vice president of the economy, Tareck El Aissami, explained:
“The savings method includes quarterly amortizations and a final payment that can be executed between 90, 180 or up to 270 days, a scheme that allows to safeguard the value of the investment “
Per Aissami, there’s a formula that “will be applied so that the value of the bolivar in the present is equal or superior than at the moment that (the savers) withdraw their money.” The minimum amount of petros that can be purchased is 0.01, equivalent to nearly 39 sovereign bolivars.
As CCN reported, the Venezuelan government only announced the Petro was available for sale on November 5. It can currently be purchased with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum.
Petro Adoption
The South American nation has notably been pushing the oil-backed cryptocurrency’s adoption, as the government has required Venezuelans to pay their passport fees in it and ordered the country’s banks to adopt it.
Its sovereign bolivar is pegged to the cryptocurrency, which seems to be a “blatant” copy of Dash after analyzing its whitepaper, as it has the same mining algorithm and has other suspiciously-similar features to it. Part of the Petro’s whitepaper, in fact, appears to have been lifted from that of Dash.
Before the Petro was publicly for sale, Venezuela claimed it could charge for exports in it. Its president, Nicolas Maduro, at the time ordered state-owned companies and airlines to accept the cryptocurrency.
The government itself has made plans to finance villas for the homeless using the controversial crypto token, and more recently the Supreme court ordered a national institute to pay indemnities to one of its employees in it, basing its ruling on a decree on “Cryptoassets and the Sovereign Cryptocurrency Petro.”
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