Bitcoin Forum

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has reportedly approved the ‎registration of 16 cryptocurrency exchanges in the country, months after ‎introducing regulations for ‎the emerging space.
Maduro hopes that these exchanges will start listing Petro soon, but ‎none of them did confirm the inclusion.
https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/16-cryptocurrency-exchanges-get-approval-launch-venezuela

What implications can this step have on Venezuelan economy being the economy with highest inflation rate and simultaneously what does this mean to cryptocurrency world wide?

It is very clear that Maduro has approved 16 exchanges to open soon so that their ever beloved Petro can be listed and can be trade locally or globally. As for the implications on their economy, I don't see anything will change or even improved their financial status even if they open up exchanges. As long as he is the sitting? President, the country will suffer. The only good thing though is that the population can have something to hedge their money. But what I'm afraid of is that how secure those exchanges are, I'm sure that there will be a lot of money flowing and the possibility of hackers targeting them are extremely high that might result on more sufferings if that happens.

I think this is to give liquidity to the petro coin from Venezuela? It sounds great that the country that is near to economic collapse is embracing blockchain tech but it also sounds risky for putting the petro in the blockchain way too early in hopes of restoring the economy. I feel pity for the people and hates the corruptions going on. Anyways, I hope Venezuela get back on their feet soon.

It means essentially nothing for cryptocurrencies worldwide but it does spell trouble for the country of Venezuela. While this will provide liquidity for the Petro, I don't think that is something the average Venezuelan wants. The reason for this is because you know the funds obtained through the Petro won't get re-distributed to the poor. Worse they will only go to fatten the pockets of those individuals who are corrupt and in no need of extra money. All I can hope for now is that karma does its job and this Maduro fellow gets what he actually deserves in this life. One day.

This is likely the aim, but this isn't beneficial to crypto in any way. This dictatorship is attempting to circumvent international sanctions on the country with the Petro, and anyone buying into it is helping to prop up the regime. Venezuela just arrested executives of Chevron because they didn't sign a contract with the Venezuelan oil company and Chevron has since pulled the rest of the team out of the country. Source:  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-oil-chevron/venezuela-arrests-two-chevron-executives-amid-oil-purge-idUSKBN1HO2V7  The Venezuelan state-owned company is full of graft and corruption, and the country keeps firing executives and installing soldiers to run things. This is particularly why the country is failing. The use of the Petro is an attempt to get cash into the the economy despite the fact that international sanctions have mostly cut it all off. By selling the Petro for cash instead of oil, the government hopes to get around the international sanctions, but anyone helping is selling out to support a dictator in hopes of making crypto gains.

This, he is just trying to save his government and nothing more he is trying to circumvent the sanctions against his government and its trying to make it last for as long as he can, but it's going to fail no one is going to invest in anything that has the Venezuelan government behind it, they have shown over and over again that they are not to be trusted I just hope that the Venezuelan people get him out of the power before he really destroys the country completely.

Given venezuela's past behavior all 16 exchanges will probably be heavily nationalized.

Venezuela seized a General Motors factory in the country last year and has always had a strong anti-capitalist stance which contributed towards venezuela being in the crisis it is in now. Venezuela faces the same issue russia faced under stalin and china faced under mao. Replacing a private sector with government run enterprises(or heavy state regulation) doesn't work as socialism fails to create value or address economic and financial demand as efficiently as markets which are incentivized via competition.

Google and apple are examples of this. Both are large corporations that began and were run out of someone's garage. This defines the most efficient method of creating value. Allowing people to create their own business, patent their own ideas and innovate in a way limited by their own imagination. The trouble with states like venezuela is socialists have all the power, they want to limit competition, run and control everything with an iron fist in a way which satisfies their egos/greed rather than solves problems or deals with issues faced by society.

Socialists in venezuela have waged a passive aggressive war against capitalism for decades and only succeeded in the limiting the private sectors ability to create value and solve economic problems. This in turn led to an economic downturn which began well before price of oil began to decline and has little or nothing to do with petrol prices imo.


If exchanges in the country are nationalized or heavily regulated by the venezuelan government, I'll go out on a limb here and predict they will be run far more inefficiently with more corruption than other exchanges and as a result they will have a difficult time competing as their userbase and trading volume will likely be low.

Seems like they want to try to legitimize their centralized cryptocurrency so that they can attract overseas investors (very unlikely to happen, but you never know since there's a lot of idiots in the world), but I wonder who's going to be dumb enough to trade Bitcoin or Ethereum (to name a few cryptos) for Petro or even invest in a scamcoin like Petro? and if the corrupt and incompetent "goverment" of Maduro approved those exchanges then I bet they're going to be controlled by govt officials, meaning that those exchanges have a high chance of being absolute mediocre in terms of tech, security and efficiency, so it would be highly dangerous to conduct any type of business in these platforms.

It won't have any major effect in their economy since the money [from the Petro cryptocurrency] will go into the pockets of the leaders of the regime like Nicolas Maduro & co. and not the country. Also, a cryptocurrency can't be the saviour of such economic collapse like the one Venezuela is experiencing today.
What does it mean to the cryptoworld? absolutely nothing.

Venezuela has big ambitions to break through America's economic sanctions against venezuela by developing block technology and digital cryptography.

Open more exchanges and tax revenue to develop the domestic economy!

This President move is something has to do with their own created coin Petro in which it will make the coin become more popular and power up the coins so that it may attract more investors to pour their capital to this coins because it will be listed on 16 exchanges for sure as a favor of making these exchanges to operate legally in the country. I believed Cryto currencies will help to improve the economy of this nations and save from controversies if ever these exchanges will agree to the inclusion of the Petro coin to their market.

What he's doing with the exchange approvals is good, as I've said, countries who welcome crypto businesses into their country to operate will always reap the rewards later on when the adoption rates of crypto becomes much higher.

However, the Petro, which is essentially a centralized crypto, isn't something that I'd want to personally invest in.

Nor will any of this affect the average Joe in Venezuela, since it's all restricted to the elite people who actually have the capital to trade. For them, BTC is still the most accessible store of value at the moment in my opinion. And if functional exchanges can actually launched, it'll definitely help Venezuela's suffering economy, at least on the front of storing value, which their currency is not capable of.

Apparently they had over 100 applications as well which is pretty incredible. I this goes to show that as long as we have an open internet there will always be a place to buy crypto simply because of the game theory coming into play!

There maybe other red signs to the economy but I am of the view that the country will grow economically and attract new investors.Blockchain will also provide jobs for some of the citizens so that they do not have to heavily depend on the government for their daily bread.As blockchain will unlock a lot of potentials to the economic growth and recovery of the country.

Seems like a good move by Venezuela not only for the good of the country but also for the good of it's own people and economy. I do hope that countries will be having like that move too. Not just restricting or banning cryptocurrency as a whole but has to allow investors and enthusiasts to trade globally for a much better result. Kudos to the Venezuelan government as they can now choose  from that 16 local cryptocurrency exchanges with their own Petro coin.

People are working well together in Venezuela, and it also nice to hear that their president is approving exchanges to welcome their token, one impact of this is that many investors will buy their token since many exchange will listed this token. Income will come to that place.

It will just give them more source of tax, and might help improve their economy(a little) but so long as Maduro is the president, that country wouldn't see a massive recovery on their economic status. To the cryptocurrency as a whole, I think this is a good way of exposing it to the public since Venezuelan citizens might want to use crypto to hedge funds temporarily against their own national fiat currency.

Well i think President Maduro wants to take an eye for an eye, thinking "ok i'll approve you 16 exchanges so long as you list my petro in it" knowing these exchanges, not any one of them listed petro so he's gonna go saying "ok you 16 exchanges, i will kick you all to the ground if you don't list petro" so these exchanges will be forced to list it anyway.

If I were a Venezuelan resident, then I'd never trade with any of these exchanges. This just makes it more easier for Maduro and his government to seize your coins. It will be better for the Venezuelans to use foreign exchanges such as Wex.nz and Kraken.

WEX is garbage. On the other hand, I would do everything I could to stimulate local communities to adopt Bitcoin. If lightning network becomes fully deployed, and the everage person can easily connect with their their favorite stores and people, then it's just a matter of time before Maduro and his corrupt bandit crew become irrelevant. It's going to be a very tough and time consuming journey to get Maduro out, but when you take away his capital and everything else that's allowing him to maintain his criminal empire, it should be doable in the end. The only problem then will be who or what is going to take over, and how exactly things will be taken care of.

I actually wonder if they can nationalize the exchanges as it would seem to defeat the purpose in the first place. Essentially, the problem is this: they don't produce everything they need to survive. In order to buy the things they can't produce, they need dollars because the Bolivar has no virtually no value. In order to get dollars, they would normally trade the excess of things they normally produce (oil) and sell it for dollars so they could then buy the things they need from the rest of the world. Because of US sanctions, the trade in dollars for oil is very limited/nonexistant. The economy is therefore very poor because they're having trouble selling what oil they produce. To get around the sanctions, they are going to try the Petro. Additionally, they may set up or allow exchanges in order to facilitate trading of the Petro. The whole aim here is to get dollars into the country. But this won't happen if they nationalize the exchanges. It will fuel larger backlash and ultimately result in circumstances that defeat what they're trying to do in finding a way to get more dollars into the country. For this reason, I wonder if they will even attempt to nationalize the exchanges, or if they even can. They're far too desperate it seems. The great irony is they may have to let little pockets of capitalism in (GASP!) in an attempt to save the failing socialist system.

It is so weird, on one hand they were busting miners, and then they issue their ico, and now are allowing exchanges. Crypto is undermining their central banking system. It is all weird to me

Venezuela means nothing to cryptocurrency world. It is the republic with extremely low standards of living, constant revolutions and frustrated population which is frequently unable to buy a slice of bread.
I wonder why they need those cryptocurrencies if they still have problems with the fiat money and their economics in general? There are not as many rich people as in other countries, so I wouldn't expect Venezuela to be a serious player on the market.

So basically they regulated the cryptocurrency simply because they wanted to trade their government backed coin, it is a good initiative by the government to promote their petro coin and it will have an implication in the world market because they are moving away from dollars and the monopoly to sell oil changes and in turn it might boost their economy.

I agree with everyone else lol, Venezuela is just trying to save their failing gov / economy by turning to crypto en masse. It's like one big scam, I guess. People send tokens over, Venezuela suddenly shuts down their operations and keeps the $$$.

But I can't blame them. You have Brazil defaulting on Venezuelan loans that they're not paying. So the Venezuelan gov is actually missing revenue and funding from countries that are screwing them over.

I think crypto can save them... if they don't scam anyone.

This sounds like a fair trade off. Why should Maduro not be allowed to have his government back crypto on the exchanges? The only problem is if they restrict other mainstream cryptocurrencies from also being traded.


Nah, expanding competition always helps the consumer, the people! This won't be a "cure all" move but it's a step in a great direction. If people are invested int he Petro and the Petro starts to waver or Maduro starts to manipulate it they can easily jump to Bitcoin or another non-government backed crypto option.

This news provides new liquidity to a market that desperately needs it.

Good news for crypto traders of Venezuela.