UPDATE: Because of a lack of maintenance and corruption Venezuela is plagued a second time in this month by a huge blackout which is far from being resolved. Government webpages not considered to be essential are down. Among them, who would have thought, the two main pages linked to the petro: http://www.petro.gob.ve/ and https://explorador.petro.gob.ve/

Related: Since some weeks there isn't any government propaganda for the petro anymore.

Small update: All the main petro related webpages – https://explorador.petro.gob.ve/ http://www.petro.gob.ve  http://patria.org.ve/ – are down since 7th of march: Great way to promote an alleged “cryptocurrency”.

That’s because of the more or less total blackout. But please note, that most of the main government sites continue to be online. You see the real priority el petro has for the Venezuelan government.

I’m sorry, but these people are not buying petros but “Certificates of Saving in Petro”, something totally different from a cryptocurrency or cryptoasset. Nothing crypto about a piece of paper. (I showed you in one of my last posts how it looks.)

Even your twitter links only say (in Spanish of course) that those people received those certificates, nothing about receiving or buying petros.

The simple truth is: The petro as a cryptocurrency wasn't released yet and all the propaganda of the government can't change that.

And it’s only a small number of Venezuelans who buy those “Certificates of Saving in Petros”. If you look closely at the photo of the lady who bought here certificate on 17th of January you will see that the number of her certificate is four digit, that’s below 10000. It’s difficult to read, but the first number surely isn’t a 9 or 8, so actually the number is below 8000: Less than 8000 Venezuelans bought this crap.

This of course is wrong. What people are buying are “Certificates of Saving in Petros” and not petros. They receive a piece of paper which says that they acquired a certain amount of petros, nothing more. They don’t receive petros on the blockchain.

Short resume on the petro:

We are now with version 4 of the petro. Before we had petro as ERC20 token (version 1), then as Nem token ve:ptr (version 2), then as Nem token ven:ptr (version 3) and now we have the petro as a dash copy (version 4).

None of those versions ever hit the market: A small number of petro:ico tokens, which were supposed later to be changed to petros, where sold, but investors can’t do anything with them except admiring them in the now useless petro wallets for version 2.

Also petros of version 4 cannot be bought or sold:

• One can buy “certificates of purchase of petros” at the counter of the government agency responsible for the petro (SUNACRIP);
• one can buy “petro saving plans” over the web (millions of pensioners received – as a gift by their president! – such saving plans, worth 0.1604 petro);
• and one can buy “petros” over a web page (a clone of uphold). In the last case they credit you petros, but don’t give you any petros. (The web page says since its launch, that “soon” you will be able to pay with petros.)
  

None of these purchases is reflected on the blockchain of the petro: As of December 15th there were less than 115 addresses on the blockchain with a positive balance. You can look at a list of almost all addresses, accounting for more than 99.99% of petros here: https://pastebin.com/KEJR6iGF

Most of the addresses with positive balances are older than the official launch of the petro (version 4) sale, others are newer but serve as backing for, for instance, the saving plans, certificates or petros credited. Example: First 4,000,000 petros were put aside for the saving plans, later on these 4,000,000 petros were devided into a few smaller junks:

https://explorador.petro.gob.ve/address/p8XCqVa3zLq98pX3dBYAsgHpVXnoFPkQNF
https://explorador.petro.gob.ve/address/p5wfevURqApT9s2Yc4ifjjbddrodfSTmZr (now zero, but on 12/15 still positive)
...

There’s no petro wallet. Since many weeks there’s an announcement that the petro wallet for windows and linux will be coming soon:  https://www.petro.gob.ve/wallet_eng.html There was an android wallet, but it was retired and there is no announcement of a new one.

The beauty is: Nobody can change his “petros” into international currencies or other cryptocurrencies. Nobody except the government has petros:

• Not those who like criptoviagra thought they bought petros in the first round.
• Not those who buy a “certificate of buying petros” at the counter of “SUNACRIP”.
• Not those who buy “petros” over the web.
• And of course not those who  buy "Petro savings certificate" with bolivars.
  

Too bad that according to coinve only to part of the last ones it was promised that they will be able to change there substitute for petros to other currencies.

You can't buy petros really. You only can buy titles to petros (paper certificates or an electronic equivalent).


As of now there are exactly 577 addresses on the blockchain, but only 81 have a positive balance. Most of those (really, most probably all of them) are owned by the government or developers. http://sprunge.us/785ZXR


If you are buying petros through the web interface you don't receive an address with a positive balance on the petro blockchain. Whatever is the software behind the web interface, it's not a petro wallet.

Also, they didn't decide to start with a web wallet. They started with an Android and a Linux wallet which later on had to be redrawn.


They are so tightly controlled by the government and have to follow the exact same procedures, so that's like dealing with the government.


Where do you find this "official" info?

It didn't go anywhere so far, nothing to regret. If you want to loose your money with the petro just head over to registro.petro.gob.ve and buy your petros. (Well, you have to catch a moment when the site isn't down or in maintenance.)

So, did they contact you?

Well, the petro didn't enter the market. You can't buy it yet. Perhaps you can buy it starting 5th of November.

No talk anymore of the (alleged) great success of the petro so far, of the more than 3.000 millions of dollars captured.

I don't think that Europa is the problem. https://www.uptrends.com/tools/uptime shows that the two sites are accessible from there. But why don't you install tor and try connect through it?

Update: Now the Spanish version of the new whitepaper and the linux version of the new wallet are available: http://petro.gob.ve/descargas/Petro_whitepaper.pdf http://petro.gob.ve/descargas/Wallet_petro_Linux.zip

• No word whatsoever about how this new petro links to the petro of the former whitepapers. Reading the new whitepaper only, one would get the impression that there never existed any other version of the petro based on nem.
• There is no fixed limit to the emission of petros. There first emission will be of 100,000,000 PTR.
• Petros cannot be mined.
• Opening price (?) will be $60.
• There is only a very minor discount of 3% for the first three emissions.

criproviagra cannot sell his "petros" as there is no exchange where his petro:ico are traded. There cannot be such exchange, as petro:ico are only movable if one has petro:presale_transfer and those are all in the hand of the government.

OK, today is the great day when the petro finally will enter the market. (Anyway, Maduro told us so.)

And indeed new developments: A new whitepaper (http://www.elpetro.gob.ve/descargas/Petro_whitepaper_eng.pdf - well, just the cover page), a new wallet (http://www.elpetro.gob.ve/descargas/Wallet_petro_Windows_eng.zip - an empty zip file) and a new user guide (http://www.elpetro.gob.ve/descargas/Manual_usuario_win_eng.pdf - or just the cover page).

But one important information: They obviously switched technology again, now the petro is going to be based on the x11 hash (like dash): http://www.elpetro.gob.ve/index_eng.html

You are right. But actually they are no amateurs. So if anyone knows Spanish I recommend to read the article as I did translate only a very small part of the interview with the developer:

https://awriterwithfreedom.wordpress.com/2018/05/19/el-petro-es-el-hijo-malquerido-de-dos-rusos-muy-cercanos-al-escandalo/

One of the developers present at the "launch" in February:


https://awriterwithfreedom.wordpress.com/2018/05/19/el-petro-es-el-hijo-malquerido-de-dos-rusos-muy-cercanos-al-escandalo/

Because they don't have a price.


Look at https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/utk/post/p_161230/ETH (And read the title of the graph in the Petro case.)

These are no prices, but "cryptocompare points", expressing according to some algorithm the interest people take on that webpage in some coin.

Let me clarify. The petro token is ve:ptr. (100,000,000 tokens corresponding to the total number of petros; cf. Whitepaper p. 22 and http://explorer.nemchina.com/#/s_tx?hash=d6a1b554b2a99f16bf19a357677cc10a2cbf845ec33eba85dd6f96f23a05b87a.)

You received petro:ico. (There exist 82,400,000 tokens corresponding to the total number of petros to be sold during the initial offer.) The document of its creation (http://explorer.nemchina.com/#/s_tx?hash=14fd14e9a3e7c5d474cec561ee2529ce4fb253b2200e85fb1c1e1e269e98db28) clearly states that you will receive petros only at the end of the ICO.

It also states: “This token can not be moved”. You as owner of petro:ico mosaics indeed are not able to transfer them. To transfer them you would have to pay a fee (levy) in petro:presale_transfer tokens. (http://chain.nem.ninja/#/mosaic/14fd14e9a3e7c5d474cec561ee2529ce4fb253b2200e85fb1c1e1e269e98db28/0) But you didn‘t receive any such tokens, they all are still in the hands of the government.

You need patience and hope that

• either things will considerably speed up
• or the Whitepaper is wrong in claiming that the closing of the ICO “depends on the total sale of the Petro created”
• or that the description of petro:ico is wrong and you receive your petros before the end of the ICO.

Good luck, anyway.