Venezuela's Cryptocurrency Petro Finds Foreign Investors, ICO To Take Place In March
09 Februar 2018 - 11:09AM
ADVFN Crypto NewsWire
Venezuela’s Minister of Foreign
Trade and International Investment José Vielma Mora announced on
Thursday, Feb. 8, that foreign investors will be accepting payments
for their goods in petro, says Latin American government-sponsored
news outlet TeleSur.
The petro, an oil-backed state cryptocurrency set to
be released in both a pre-sale and an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), was first announced by Venezuelan
President Nicolas Maduro in December 2017. The petro’s white paper released Jan. 30 explains that the
idea for the petro came from Hugo Chavez, who had envisioned a
“strong currency backed by raw materials.”
Mora said that Brazilian businesspeople are prepared
to invest $300 mln in Venezuela, beginning with a $100 mln
inversion investment.
The minister also listed Poland, Denmark, Honduras,
Norway, and Vietnam as foreign countries that would be willing to
receive petro in exchange for food and medicine, citing a total
amount of $435 mln. According to Mora, Canada has also expressed
interest in investing in Venezuela in the sphere of “pharmaceutics
for humans and animals.”
The petro is an ERC20 token that has been pre-mined on
the Ethereum Blockchain, with each petro is backed by one barrel
of oil. Maduro had ordered the issuance of 100 mln
in petro on Jan. 14 in preparation for the pre-sale.
The creation of the petro has been viewed skeptically by critics
and members of the Venezuelan opposition parliament who consider
the petro a fraudulent currency that could help Maduro avoid
sanctions.
The petro’s pre-sale will take place from Feb. 20 at
-04:00 UTC to Mar. 19 at -04:00 UTC, and there will be 38.4 mln
tokens available. Pre-sale tokens “may be exchanged for petro
[coins] at any time between the launch date and the closing of the
initial offer,” according to the white paper.
The ICO will take place a day after the end of the
pre-sale, Mar. 20 at -04:00 GMT, with 44 mln petro available for
sale at a reference selling point of $60 - the price of a barrel of
oil in Venezuela in the second week of Jan. 2018. The price is
subject to market fluctuations, according to the white paper.
The white paper writes that the Venezuelan government
will accept petro as payment for national taxes, fees, and public
services, and it will be regulated by the Cryptocurrency
Superintendency and the National Blockchain Observatory.
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