Venezuela Chooses the Ruble Instead of Petro Cryptocurrency

Because of economic sanctions and freezing of accounts, Venezuelan authorities are considering the idea of switching to settlements in rubles instead of the national cryptocurrency Petro. This is reported by RIA Novosti. On May 17, the Ambassador of the South American country, Jorge Valero, announced that the representatives of Russia and Venezuela are going to discuss the possibility of making international money transfers in rubles. Now Venezuelans use other fiat currencies and Petro tokens, created by the President Nicolas Maduro. According to Valero, Venezuela has a partnership with Russia, so the South Americans turned to the Russian government for help in restructuring foreign debts. The ambassador complains that because of the American sanctions, it is difficult for the country to receive funding, which negatively affects the economy and the solvency of the state. Petro cryptocurrency was released by the Venezuelan government on February 20, 2018. The digital asset has received the status of stablecoin, as its rate is set by the authorities of the country. Maduro claims that every coin is supported by oil, gold, and diamonds. In February 2019, the Venezuelan authorities opened the Sunacrip platform, where Petro can be exchanged for Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC). Local residents complain about the high fee: the minimum payment for processing operation is approximately 18 rubles. According to data provided on the Sunacrip website, Petro trade is launched on seven licensed Venezuelan crypto exchanges. However,  there are no trading pairs with Petro on these sites and there is even no graph of the dynamics of the token exchange rate. Either a digital asset is not traded, or the Petro market is displayed only among registered users. We want to remind you: https://thecoinshark.net/the-opposition-leader-of-venezuela-fancies-bitcoin-over-petro/ Subscribe to The Coin Shark news in Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coinshark/