Petro (PTR), an asset **backed** cryptocurrency launched by the Maduro administration in December of 2017. The VIBE advisory group (a cryptocurrency council that is close to the Maduro government) "...recommended Venezuela sell 38.4 million Petros with a face value of around $2.3 billion in private placements starting on Feb. 15 at a discount of up to 60 percent."(1)
This, though interesting, is against many of the pillars of cryptocurrencies. First, the coin is centrally issued and simply created. This is based on the principle of Maduro that the coin is backed by the oil reserves of Venezuela. These oil reserves are estimated and such calculations are open to manipulation. If it were based on the price of oil in general, this would not be so easily done, but this also shows the short sighted nature of the backing. Oil is a limited resource but unlike other resources used for financial backing, the applications are very limited and the booming fracking industry of the US has lead to more reserves being discovered, taking away and already blocked market.
Second, the coin is simply "backed" by the price of Venezuelan oil. It's not backed by the oil itself. There is no way to redeem a barrel of oil for a Petro and there is no specific systems in place to ensure users are provided with the promised "share" of the oil revenue. This is all on top of the fact that the congress, the one of the only institutions that still has some opposition, has declared the use of national oil reserves to issue debt illegal.
The current exchanges are being decided and courted, but support is limited, both based on market skepticism because of current economic unrest and human rights abuses by the Venezuelan State and associated sanctions from the US and other countries. There are other alternatives for truly asset redeemable investments.
Assetbase.io and it's precious metal tokens are truly based in an asset. For each token, there is an equivalent amount of gold, silver, platinum, rhodium, and soon other physical assets in an actual vault or secure storage. There will never be a token that is issued based on debt, like the Petro, or a "reserve". All holdings are audited independently by Bureau Veritas and if a user wishes, they can request their actual asset to be securely transported to them, anywhere they wish. This could be to their house, to their private vault, wherever they wish,
Assetbase.io will be there.
These truly asset redeemable tokens are 180º from the "vision" of the Maduristas. It's ensuring financial stability and security. True liquidity as with cryptocurrencies, combined with the rock solid stability of precious metals.
1)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-economy-cryptocurrency/u-s-warns-investors-over-venezuelas-petro-cryptocurrency-idUSKBN1F52AB
