Venezuela government to start auctioning its petro cryptocurrency
The Venezuelan government has announced it will start selling its new petro cryptocurrency in a few weeks on its foreign exchange platform, Dicom.
The plan to launch the new currency was announced in December 2017 and last month, the country already began selling the digital token in a private sale to investors as a means of avoiding US-imposed sanctions. This marks the first time any nation-state has issued a blockchain-based currency.
Vice president Tareck El Aissami said on Tuesday that the Petro would be Venezuela’s powerful international currency and that it would "stand above" the US dollar.
El Aissami said local banks should buy Petro via the Dicom foreign exchange platform and take advantage of a preliminary-phase discount that will last until 20 March.
The currency will be backed by oil reserves, the government said, but members of the opposition have said the government's issuing of the Petro is illegal under domestic law.
Rafael Guzman, chair of the economic and finance commission of Venezuela's Asamblea Nacional declared the Petro unconstitutional.
“This deepens the crisis that we are living in. The PTR is another [example] of corruption, and we will come out of this crisis with measures that we have announced from this Parliament,” Guzman said.
The US Treasury Department also said that it could violate sanctions and constitute a legal risk for investors, which could put off some foreign companies from accepting the currency as payment.