- "Venezuela will create a petromoneda cryptocurrency to advance the matter of monetary sovereignty," Maduro said, "as it will help defeat the financial blockade and move toward new forms of international financing for the economic and social development of the country."
The petro will be backed by strategic reserves of oil, gold, gas and diamonds — tangible support that the government hopes will help it fight both sanctions and Venezuela's high inflation rate.
"We joined the world of the 21st century," Maduro said as he unveiled the plan at a science and technology fair, according to Venezuelan state TV — which calls the petromoneda "the next step of the technological evolution of humanity" that will do away with banks' bureaucracy as well as paper money.
That's probably not going to work. Backing a blockchain with oil, gold, and diamonds would need oracles that report the supplies in a trustworthy manner. That seems an Achilles heel. There's no real advantage here, except perhaps of there was intrinsic transparency around the supply of tokens.
Agreed that this probably won’t work. The only reason bitcoin works is there is a limited finite supply. This will likely be vulnerable to abuse by local governments and future attack by foreign governments though hackers or just overwhelmingling the crypto through raw computer power.
while my instinct here is to facepalm, how cool would it be if Venezuela becomes the first nation to rebuild its economy on the back of a crypto acting as its primary national currency.