The pre-sale of Petro, the cryptocurrency driven by the Venezuelan state, which began on February 20, has been full of confusion, uncertainty and changes at the last minute, while in the country they seem to be adopting cryptocurrencies in general at a unprecedented level.
One of the main problems that has occurred in this pre-sale is the uncertainty about which network would be used to launch the Petro, since from the beginning the Venezuelan authorities had announced that the Petro would be an ERC-20 token in the blockchain of Ethereum, however, on the morning of this day, according to the official manual of the Petro buyer, it was established that the pre-sale of this cryptocurrency would be based on the blockchain of NEM. Something that, in addition, was confirmed by the developer team of said platform.
Comparison between the two versions of the Petro Purchaser's Manual. Source: elpetro.gov.ve
Later, on the afternoon of the same day, it was re-placed that would be based on the Ethereum network, but several hours later, at the time of writing this article, the official information again shows that the Petro will be supported in the network of the NEM.
At the moment, apparently, there are petro tokens contracts both in the Ethereum network and in the NEM network. And that's not all, because the total supply shown in the last of these blockchain exceeds what was previously expected. In addition, in Ethereum you can find, at the time of writing, only 5 transfers and the same number of possessors of the tokens.
For its part, in the official Twitter account of the Journalistic Writing Room of the Presidency of Venezuela, it is possible to find a photograph where President Maduro is presumably meeting with representatives of the NEM Foundation, a fact that at the moment has not been could confirm officially.
The government also reported the closure of an alleged agreement with Aerotrading, a company that, according to the Venezuelan president, is one of the largest blockchain companies. However, the company is not known in the ecosystem nor appears in Google searches. This information was also published by the Vice Presidency of the Republic.
If a trend search is done on the web, the only country in the world where Aerotrading is spoken of is Venezuela, which is, to say the least, disconcerting; even more taking into account that President Maduro mentioned that this is "one of the biggest blockchain companies".
Apart from all this, many users have exclaimed through social networks that the platform of the Petro does not let them complete their registration for the pre-sale, claiming that the confirmation email of their registration has not been sent to them. Despite this, it was announced that the Venezuelan state has about 735 million dollars in "purchase intentions" for the Petro.
Not everything has been inconvenient. The Venezuelan president also announced that the state companies Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), Petroquímica de Venezuela (PEQUIVEN) and Corporación Venezolana de Guayana (CVG), in charge of exploiting forest and mineral resources for the country's development, would make purchase and sale transactions with the Petro.
Likewise, the approval of the payments with Petro for the airlines, for the tourism sector and for consular services was announced, as well as the creation of student mining farms in universities throughout the country, the delivery of certificates to more than 5,000 national miners. and the authorization for savings banks, which are non-profit civil associations created and directed by their associates to promote savings by managing and investing the contributions made, acquire cryptoactive products to protect the funds of more than 6 million workers.
THE JOURNEY OF PETRO
Recall that the Petro was announced at the beginning of December 2017. After that, it has suffered an avalanche of hypothesis and changes in its operation, where even Decred was considered as the blockchain from which the Petro network would branch.
The recent circumstances have meant that Petro's pre-sale is surrounded by a lot of distrust and uncertainty. However, this is not the first time that the authorities have made changes to the Petro project in a sudden manner, since the draft of the Petro White Paper was previously modified to eliminate the section corresponding to the Vibe Foundation.
It is important to bear in mind that US investors will not be able to invest in this cryptocurrency and that, in addition, the Venezuelan National Assembly declared it unconstitutional last January. Despite this, the Venezuelan government seems to continue advancing with its plans and even Petro is expected to be only the first of a series of cryptocurrencies based on the country's natural resources.
And although the Petro will not be a minable cryptocurrency, but rather a federated blockchain, practically centralized, it seems that the Venezuelan government is interested in the mining of other cryptocurrencies. In addition to today's statements about the installation of mining farms in universities, recently the Venezuelan authorities declared that the Venezuelan companies of Technological Industry (VIT) and Inspur are working on a prototype of national hardware called VIT Mining E8000, destined to the mining of cryptoactives.
Update: The NEM team, through the Twitter account Inside NEM, denied that any representative of the NEM Foundation has met with President Nicolás Maduro. In the statement it reads: "This is not correct. The NEM Foundation is not involved in this photo. The team of Zeus met with them and we asked the editor to correct this article, "referring to the description of the photo made by the Journalistic Writing Room of the Presidency.
Cool Post. Since you got the bitcoin tag do you have a prediction for Bitcoin over the next few days? Also followed you for future posts :)
Petro no se puede considerar criptomoneda por dos motivos: está bajo control estatal, las criptomonedas por definición deben ser DESCENTRALIZADAS, en el momento que existen controles gubernamentales o de alguna entidad financiera no puede considerarse criptomoneda. Segundo: no se ha establecido por código un número máximo de criptomonedas a generar, es decir, el gobierno de venezuela puede emitir todas las que considere, con lo cual su problema inflacionario no se resolvería con esta medida. Petro sería una moneda digital nacional, en todo caso, pero no una criptomoneda como tal, aunque creo que todos sabemos que es una medida del gobierno venezolano para evitar las sanciones internacionales.