On Thursday, President Nicolas Maduro announced that a digital cryptocurrency-fueled bank would be created for young individuals and students, starting with an initial pool of 20 million Petros. He also announced that the new institution would receive $1.2 million in funding so that the bank would support “productive initiatives” in this particular sector.
This plan is a part of the Chamba Juvenil plan, which is meant to ease the process for younger individuals to find their first job in the country.
Moreover, Maduro emphasized that it’s important for all high schools and universities to have their own mining farms to “help strengthen the national economy.”
Although it’s been months since the Petro launched, details of the cryptocurrency’s sale ultimately come from the words of the country’s president alone.
The Petro has a NEM wallet address, but it’s largely been inactive and had only $25 in value the last time we checked in at the beginning of April, two months after the ICO sale.
If this is the Petro’s actual blockchain, then it wouldn’t make sense for Maduro to announce something so ambitious as a youth bank when the cryptocurrency’s market capitalization is less than $100. This leads to the conclusion that the Petro may have sold some tokens, but it has very little in the way of transparency when it comes to providing a proper blockchain for potential investors to analyze.
The Venezuelan government’s Whitepaper shows that the token’s price is equivalent to one barrel of Venezuelan oil. This means that a ministry inside of the country itself is fixing the price of the token.
Since the total pool of Petros sits at around 100 million, if Maduro’s grandiose claims about the enormous $5 billion sale are correct, that means that every single token must have been sold already. This can be calculated by taking the price of a barrel of Venezuelan crude oil in February 2018 (roughly $55) and multiplying it by the entire pool of Petros. The result is $5.5 billion.
By now, according to their whitepaper, Petros should flow freely through exchanges around the world. This isn’t happening, as even their own DICOM exchange doesn’t list it.
All that can be seen is that Maduro is pushing for this cryptocurrency’s involvement in every possible avenue of Venezuelan life, but there is little if any evidence that the Petro has any true market value as of yet.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
