The president of Venezuela announced last month
that the country will launch its own cryptocurrency.
Apparently the new monetary unit, called the “petro,”
will be backed by oil and gas reserves.
The move comes as the Venezuelan bolivar has collapsed
and U.S. sanctions have crippled the country’s ability to
trade and borrow.
The country is attempting to reset its financial slate by jumping
on the crypto bandwagon.
China, Russia and Ukraine are also seriously looking into
launching cryptographic versions of their own currencies.
However, these state-run cryptos will suffer from the same
problems their legacy currencies did.
That is, governments can still print as much money as they want.
The takeaway here is that countries will adopt this technology
because it’s superior to the old system.
It’s faster, cheaper and more secure.
But the beauty of real crypto is that it’s not controlled by central
banks or governments.
The number of coins can be hard capped.
Bitcoin, for example, will only ever have 21 million coins.
Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, is responsible for this budding revolution.
Its blockchain technology, which is open-source and free to use,
is set to change the world.
With blockchain, anyone can create and trade scarce digital assets.
So while nations will almost certainly attempt to modernize their
own fiat currencies by “going crypto,” the real action is happening
with independent cryptocurrencies.