Maduro Announces Crypto Casino in Support of Petro and Public

Published at: Jan. 20, 2020

Nicolas Maduro, president of Venezuela, announced on Friday the opening of a new crypto-run casino in a battered country where betting halls have all but gone extinct. 

A casino for relief

Maduro said Ávila National Park’s Hotel Humboldt will soon be home to an international casino that will operate with Petro (PTR), Venezuela’s state cryptocurrency, and that proceeds will fund the country’s public health and education sectors. 

The announcement comes less than a decade after Maduro’s mentor, former president Hugo Chavez, ordered the closure of all betting places as harbors of prostitution, drugs and crime. Since 2011, as the then-relatively-prosperous country has degraded, only a limited number of online platforms have allowed Venezuelans to gamble. 

What is this place, anyway?

While the casino seems to lack a name, Maduro’s enigmatic announcement comes with plenty of questions. He kept mum on the casino’s exact opening and whether the establishment, located in the “lungs of the city,” will give oxygen to similar venues. The logistics of how the casino will run — must guests use the Petroapp? Will the casino house crypto ATM’s? How will winners collect their spoils? — also remain a mystery. 

Perhaps the announcement’s most poignant question is how, in a country that now lags globally in education and suffers a gutted public health structure, will the crypto casino’s funds support dire public health and education needs?

Given the Venezuelan government’s history of not delivering on promises related to the Petro, Cointelegraph advises readers to approach news on the subject with skepticism.

The power of crypto

As Cointelegraph reported last week, Madura announced plans for Venezuela t sell the reserves — 4.5 million barrels of oil — of its state-run oil and gas company, PDVSA, for Petro. 

According to Maduro, the sale will help Venezuela “open roads to the new economy” and build a world of “peace and integration of peoples, their happiness and improvement.”

Tags
Blockchain
Business
Cryptocurrencies
Venezuela
Petro
Maduro
Related Posts
Maduro Orders State-Run Firm to Sell 4.5M Oil Barrels for Petro
Venezuela will soon sell oil from reserves of a state-run oil and gas company for its national oil-pegged cryptocurrency, the Petro (PTR). Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has signed a decree to sell 4.5 million barrels of oil from the certified 30 million-barrel reserve maintained by Petroleum of Venezuela (PDVSA), the state-owned company officially announced on Jan. 14. According to PDVSA, Maduro announced the news in a speech before the Constituent National Assembly — an assembly elected in 2017 to draft a new constitution for Venezuela. Oil sales to be an exploration mechanism Once the initial sale of 4.5 million barrels …
Altcoin / Jan. 15, 2020
Petro Couldn’t Save the Cartel of the Suns Conspiracy From the Sting of Sanctions
At the end of February, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement revealed its Cryptocurrency Intelligence Program, which targets peer-to-peer and darknet markets for the illicit use of cryptocurrencies. Then, in a press conference one month later, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and 14 other top officials in the country. The charges include leveraging political offices, financial systems and cryptocurrencies for conducting and concealing a massive government-run drug-trafficking, narco-terrorism and corruption operation for over 20 years. This systemic corruption raided Venezuela of billions of dollars and economically wrecked the country, according to the U.S. prosecutors. …
Blockchain / April 9, 2020
Venezuelan Petro Against US Sanctions: History and Use of the Crypto
For the entirety of cryptocurrency’s short history, Venezuela has been seen to be among the most striking example of the need for the utility. The South American country has hosted escalating political tension for years, as skyrocketing hyperinflation, electricity blackouts and shortages of vital food and medicine intensified popular discontent. Venezuelan trade volume dominates P2P markets Venezuelan peer-to-peer (P2P) markets have long been a leader in terms of volume, in part owing to widespread geo-blocking that targets Venezuelan citizens on the part of cryptocurrency exchanges. Recently, Binance announced that as of July 1, 2019, the residents of Venezuela and 28 …
Bitcoin / July 17, 2019
President Maduro Orders Bank of Venezuela to Accept Petro Crypto
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro ordered the country’s leading bank, Banco de Venezuela, to accept the nation’s cryptocurrency, the Petro (PTR) at all of its branches, the country’s Finance Ministry tweeted on July 4. According to the tweet, Maduro gave “the express order to open Petro desks in all the branches of the Bank of Venezuela.” The announcement apparently came during an event celebrating the tenth anniversary of the nationalization of the bank in question. On June 19, Maduro announced that 924 million bolivars (over $92.5 million) were allocated to the Digital Bank of Youth and Students to open one million …
Altcoin / July 4, 2019
EU will cut off 7 Russian banks from SWIFT, with ordinary Russians facing consequences
On Wednesday, the European Union announced that within 10 days, it intends to remove seven Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, messaging system. The list of sanctioned banks includes Russia's second-largest bank VTB, Bank Otrkitie, Novikombank, Promsvyazbank, Bank Rossiya, Sovcombank, and VEB. Without access to SWIFT, a Belgian messaging system that connects over 11,000 financial institutions worldwide, Russian banks, and by proxy, the Russian economy, is likely to endure severe losses. For example, Iran lost 30% of its foreign trade after being banned from SWIFT in 2012. VTB stock price | Source: Yahoo Finance …
Blockchain / March 2, 2022