Venezuela has automatically converted pensioners’ most recent monthly bonus into its national oil-backed cryptocurrency, the Petro (PTR), according to a report from English-language politics blog Caracas Chronicles Dec. 12. First launched as a pre-sale in February, the controversial Petro has been in circulation as one of Venezuela’s two official currencies as of August 20: the second being a rebranded fiat currency, the Bolívar Soberano (Sovereign Bolivar, or Bs.S.), which is indexed to the Petro. According to Caracas Chronicles, pensioners’ recent government payouts Dec. 7 arrived initially in Bs.S. to pensioners’ web fiat wallets, but were automatically withdrawn and converted into …

Venezuela’s рresident, Nicolas Maduro, has raised the reference value of the national cryptocurrency, Petro, the president’s official Twitter tweeted Nov. 30. According to major Latin American television channel TeleSur, Maduro first announced the new Petro rate on Thursday, Nov. 29, against the background of the country’s ongoing hyperinflation. The value of the Petro is now set at 9,000 sovereign bolivars, instead of the previous 3,600 bolivars. Speaking in Caracas that day, Maduro also ordered an increase in the monthly minimum wage by 150 percent, which is the sixth increase in 2018 and 25th in total during Maduro’s presidency. Later that …

The Constituent National Assembly of Venezuela has approved a bill on cryptocurrency regulation, the country’s Ministry for Communication and Information reported Nov. 21. The law was proposed by the country’s leader Nicolas Maduro and consists of 64 articles and five transitory provisions. It validates Petro, Venezuela’s controversial oil-backed cryptocurrency, as a unit of commercial exchange within the country, and states that goods and services can also be purchased with Petro. According to Cuban state news agency Prensa Latina, the Assembly has also approved amendments to current anti-money laundering lawс. Under the new rules, Venezuela’s crypto exchanges are reportedly allowed to …

Venezuela will present its state-backed cryptocurrency Petro as a unit of account for crude oil trading to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 2019, the country’s oil company PDVSA reports on its Twitter Nov. 7. The PDVSA has cited its president Manuel Quevedo, who also holds the position of Venezuela’s Minister of Oil and Mining, speaking about the future presentation: "We will be presenting Petro to OPEC in 2019 as the main digital currency backed by oil." According to the PDVSA, Quevedo also added that Petro will be offered as a unit of account for global crude …

Venezuela’s controversial state-owned cryptocurrency the Petro is now available for purchase for fiat and crypto, Venezuelan Economy Department announced on Twitter Monday, Oct. 29. According to an infographic included in the tweet, Petro can now be purchased directly from the country’s treasury via the coin’s official website or from six crypto exchanges authorized by the government. The state-issued coin can be purchased for fiat, specified in the graphic as yuan, Euro and U.S. dollars, or for certain cryptocurrencies, by legal entities and individuals who have registered and passed a validation process on the coin’s official site. According to Petro’s official …

The CEO of Dash Core Group, Ryan Taylor, told Cointelegraph in an interview Oct. 23 that central bank-issued cryptocurrencies are the “inevitable future,” but it will be people who “will decide what form of money they want to consume and use as part of their lives.” Speaking with CT during the Money20/20 conference, Taylor stated that central banks have certain advantages in issuing their own cryptocurrencies, but questions remain as to what form will it take and how the market will react. Taylor noted that the “free market can ultimately design the better money than the government,” underlining: “I do …

The president of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro called on workers to save in gold and state-run cryptocurrency Petro during a salary shake-up he announced Thursday, October 18, local news portal Noticiero Digital reports. In a television broadcast, Maduro said that “in the coming weeks,” workers would begin receiving bonus payments “based on” Petro, rather than extant fiat currency, the Sovereign Bolivar. Since receiving its formal launch, Petro has continued to garner suspicion from multiple sources both within and outside Venezuela, criticism stemming from its alleged backing from a state oil company with larger debts than the cryptocurrency’s market cap. The tenuous …

Stablecoins have been making the headlines in recent months, attracting big investors, tempted by the allure of a on ‘non-volatile’ cryptocurrency. At first, we usually pay attention to the backing connection, in other words, to the coin’s stabilizing mechanism. Broadly speaking, this is broken down into 3 categories: asset-backed (including fiat), crypto-backed, and non-backed stablecoins (including algorithms and the Seigniorage shares’ approach). This is a great way of introducing the concept of stablecoins and a good basis for providing an overview, but it doesn’t paint a full picture in terms of how the composition of stablecoins can ultimately affect its …

Venezuelans can only use the state-backed cryptocurrency, the Petro, to pay for passport fees starting next week, the country’s vice president Delcy Rodriguez said in a press conference Friday, Oct. 5. Ahead of Petro’s official “launch” in November, Rodriguez confirmed that as of Monday, Oct. 8, fees for all passport applications will only be payable in Petro, and will cost an increased amount: 2 petros for a new passport and 1 petro for an extension. The average monthly minimum wage in Venezuela, Bloomberg reports, is four times less than the cost of the raised passport fee. “In the case of …

Coming every Sunday, the Hodler’s Digest will help you to track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions, and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week Crypto Exchange ShapeShift Rebuts WSJ Report of Money Laundering Cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift has issued a denial in response to a Wall Street Journal article that the exchange had laundered around $9 million in ill-received funds. The article, which calculated a total of $88.6 million funneled through 46 exchanges, pinpointed $9 million as going …

Venezuelan state-owned cryptocurrency Petro has apparently plagiarized parts of its white paper from the GitHub repository of Dash. Core developer of Ethereum Joey Zhou pointed this out in a tweet posted Tuesday, Oct. 2. Zhou has tweeted that Petro, which has just been officially launched by president Nicolas Maduro, is "a blatant Dash clone." To illustrate this, he posted a link to the Venezuelan coin’s white paper, which had an exact copy of an image from Dash's repository on Github. An image from Dash’s repository on Github, added to p. 11 of Petro’s white paper with an added title in …

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has appeared on national television to announce the official launch of the national cryptocurrency Petro, according to a brief summary of his speech posted on Venezuela’s government website Monday, October 1. Maduro stated that the official website for the Petro has already been launched, and the official Petro wallet is also available in Google Play. However, the public sale will only start November 5. Maduro also stressed that Petro will be available on six major crypto exchanges starting Monday, October 1. The Venezuelan president did not specify which ones will eventually trade oil-backed currency, nor was …