That's interesting and shows once more that the SUPCACVEN wasn't able to set up something decent. This contract doesn't make any sense in the case you want to buy petros with other crypocurrencies.

As an aside: The "buyers guide" from the official website up to this very moment doesn't say anything about this contract but speaks only about a "wallet petro" you are meant to receive. To my knowledge nobody was able to get to that wallet!


Yes, not even offers like yours are cash in the hands of the Venezuelan government, contrary to what tells us Maduro:

"I looked at the numbers of the Petro and there are thousands of offers. We have more than 5 billion dollars in our hands, now, 'cash', in offers of the presale of the petro."

(“Estaba viendo los números del Petro y son miles de ofertas, tenemos en las manos más de cinco mil millones de dólares ya, ‘cash’, en ofertas de la preventa del petro”)


And I recommend people in Venezuela (or doing business or traveling there) to refrain from signing this contract. One reason is, that they may be forced in the end to buy petros at a price they do not like. There is another reason: They have to buy their cryptocurrency or hard currency at the parallel market or the existing exchanges. At this moment they have to pay 1.962.682.466,50 Bs for one bitcoin or 216.809,42 for one dollar. Only if they expect either a massive official devaluation of the bolivar or an impressive price hike of the petro they will be able to recover their investment.

No, I never would sign such kind of contract. But I did register my (meaningless) intention to buy. So my "offer of intention to buy" counts among the $5 billion. Did you send in your last sworn declaration of taxes?

Thanks, yes this helps. Although, the fine print is juicy too


Thanks for the link! Only that "on its first day of trading the petro" didn't raise $375 million. The claim was $735, and these were (at best) just non-binding intentions to buy petros. So far the petro didn't raise anything.

You have two valid points here: 1. People who indicated that they would pay in ethereum and bitcoin should have gotten a different contract than those who indicated that they would pay in euros, dollars or yuans. It would be great if somebody could share this contract! 2. I agree that Venezuela probably will not be able to enforce a contract like the one I shared in Europa. It will be a problem for Venezuelans though.


Unfortunatelly I can't post images here. But I'll see whether I find a way to put the screenshots online. As an alternative, would you be prepared to take a look at the document at archive.org?

It's at: https://web.archive.org/web/20180303155926/http://elpetro.gob.ve/docs/OFERTA%20FINAL%205.pdf

I'm not mixing up anything, the numbers are directly from one of Maduros talks. Resumed by AVN (the Venezuelan News Agency) this way:


Natural persons 83.761 plus 3.523 companies makes exactly the total of 87.284 users who realized more than 171.000 offers.

No big thing. Just according to the official information there are people making more than one offer. As of 26 of February for instance there were 171,000 (so we are told) offers from 87,284 users, among them 3,523 companies and 83,761 natural persons


Is this the contract you signed: http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=94401636341335571359 ?

If so, there is according the contract no way to get out. You made an irrevocable binding offer to receive whatever you are assigned in petros for the amount or part of the amount of money you offered. And you are not going to be asked to make a payment, but they are going to debit your bank account automatically. (You authorized them to do so.)

If your contract is different, could you point out the differences?

It depends what crossed 5 billion dollars. If it is just the non-binding intentions to buy petros you have to indicate to register, this doesn't consitute a success. Looking at the timeline of the claims I assume that only those non-binding intentions crossed 5 billion. There is no primary source at all where Maduro, the Superintendent or some other official links those 5 billions to certified offers. Nowhere is explained what kind of criterium offers have to pass to count as certified. Finally, Maduro spoke of 186.306 "offers in intentions to buy", not people making offers.

Thanks for that information. If you get your petros it would be nice if you could tell us about the price.

I thought so. So you registered at the website your intention to buy petros for a certain amount of other currencies and that was it. You didn't receive a contract you were asked to print out, sign, and send in with a number of scans of personal documents, did you?

You "jumped in head first", does that mean that you bought petros? How did you do that? Did you register at elpetro.gob.ve? What else did you do?

It could. And it could be lower, even much lower, if the project doesn't succeed.


Probably. Remains to be seen, by how many.


Nothing indicates that the petro will be accepted for these purposes "from day 1". As according to the white paper the petro will be accepted for these purposes with a discount of at least 10% this promise only is relevant for the case that the petro will be less than an outright success. Only if the petro trades at least 10% below par with a barrel of Venezuelan oil it can be of any interest to use it for e.g. tax purposes with the acceptance price given by the formula in the white paper. The promise therefor is no incentive for a large adoption. (As long as you trust the Venezuelan government - I wouldn't - it gives you some assurance that losses might be limited.)

This in itself will only result in big numbers if trading partners first want acquire petros and then pay for Venezuelan oil with them. Many won't.  

There might be private negotiations where investors are offered those discounts. (Or not.) So far there is no way to secure them for investors who want to buy petros through the official way indicated on the elpetro.gob.ve website.

They surely could. Actually I expect the government to exert pressure in this direction if they don't do so freely.

It could. I rather expect the government to give out menes (minimum unit) as bonuses. If it really would switch to pay public employees and pensioners in petros (menes) in full this probably would clash with the promise of a limited supply of petros.


There is a promise not to increase the amount of petros, but so far no guarantee. One cannot speak of an anti-inflationary nature of the petro therefor. Especially if the government embarks on a wider use of the petro (for instance by paying salaries with petros) it might break the promise. There is no guarantee either that the petro will not become as volatile as other cryptocurrencies. It would be less convenient and safe than US dollars then.

If the petro is still meant to be an ERC20 token, this might be the contract:

https://etherscan.io/token/0x3341b14ea28a4627cd807d704fbb85ff51239775

(If not, it might be the contract they planned to use before the last minute changes to NEM.)

This is widely believed to be the NEM contract for at least presale:

http://explorer.ournem.com/#/s_account?account=NCGBBZKOTERO3EXMPPCNDNDXZQQJXBEMWWO7MB66

The white paper says:


In my understanding this says that the Petro will be on NEM. All references to ERC20 where extinguished from the white paper and replaced by references to NEM. (After the official launch of presale!) But the formulation is ambiguous and is compatible with the interpretation that only the presale toke will be on NEM. Also, as they changed the white paper after the official launch of presale without any explanation they might change it again. (Presale BTW didn't start yet in fact.)

The advantage for foreign investors is the possibility that the petro will profit from the crypto hype and therefore its price will increase well above the oil price. Add to this the support the government of Venezuela is giving to the petro through its well running propaganda machine and various ways of forcing the petro on the Venezuelan population and Venezuelan private and public companies as means of payment. The white paper states: "The State will actively assume the commitment to promote the adoption of Petro, encouraging the growth of its national and international user base." So far they are fulfilling this promise. With which success remains to be seen: There is up to now no public commitment of anybody outside of Venezuela to accept or use petros - for instance in international trade with Venezuela.

The price you pay is the much higher risk than that of an oil ETF:

• The government carefully avoided to implement any mechanism by which you could claim the international price of Venezuelan oil for your petros. For that reason the price of Venezuelan oil does not constitute a lower bond for the price of the petro, it might go well below. (There is a promise to accept petros for instance for tax payments in Venezuela. But there will apply a discount of at least 10% and this will apply to the price of oil in bolívares determined by a government set exchange rate.)
• In the newest versions of the white paper there is a promise not to increase the number of petros above the original 100 million but there is so far no technological guarantee. In earlier versions the possibility to add further petros was explicitly contemplated.
• The white paper speaks also about a discount during presale and part of the initial sale. But if you look at the actual contract they ask you to sign, you will find that there is no contractual obligation at all on the side of the Venezuelan government to give you such discount.
• If you are an American investor you might incur sanctions as forewarned by the US treasury (see https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Sanctions/Pages/faq_other.aspx#551 ).
• As all disputes are going go be decided by Venezuelan courts you can be assured not to be able to recover your investment if something goes wrong through the courts.

No public record at all for this claim.


You are wrong:

http://runrun.es/rr-es-plus/319427/fotos-infografia-y-mapa-muertos-en-protestas-en-venezuela-parte-dos.html


Another one by PROVEA:

https://www.derechos.org.ve/actualidad/139-personas-fallecidas-en-contexto-de-manifestaciones-hasta-el-27-de-julio

Sentenced without any credible evidence:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/09/venezuela-sentence-against-opposition-leader-shows-utter-lack-of-judicial-independence/


None of them a billionaire. You are making this simply up without any evidence. There are at this moment only two Venezuelan billionaires on the Forbes list.

Baseless defamations and nonsense ("mostly led by billionaires").


This report isn't part of the work of the so called "Truth Commission" of the Constituent Assembly and it is not based on information coming from relatives and witnesses. It is a "journalistic investigation" (!)  written and published by the "Ministry of Communication and Information" based on publicly available communications of official sources and information gathered from social and traditional media. (To a large part media presenting the government's point of view.) The report presents the version of the government and doesn't possess the impartiality one would expect from the work of a true Truth Commission.

Obviously the report never was made public.

Was Correa a right wing, US puppet?

Exports from Ecuador to Venezuela 2014: $234.960 millones
Exports from Ecuador to Venezula 2016: $67.935 millones


The problem is simply that Venezuela cannot pay. No conspiracy, but bad economic policy.

Is the result of this research publicly available? Could you provide a link?