A few weeks ago, the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro ruled the beginning of the use of cryptocurrencies with regard to national and world trade, now, you will wonder where that interest comes from?
Certainly, Venezuela has been closed in terms of the use of cryptocurrencies, reaching a point where they even created a national "cryptocurrency" that is maintained thanks to the country's natural resources; however, they have surprised with this news.
This is due to a kind of counterattack to neutralize the devastating economic sanctions of the United States.
All this was officially announced in Parliament on September 29, it is well known that in Venezuela the use of cryptocurrencies used to be an open secret, because it was not legal to use or mine them.
Even so, Venezuela had and has high transaction rates, especially because it is an option for sending remittances.
For his part, President Nicolas Maduro said verbatim "this measure will give new strength to the use of Petro and other cryptocurrencies, national and global, in national and foreign trade ..."
When it comes to the Petro. talks about the cryptocurrency named above, which does not really enter the cryptocurrency categorization and has not had the success that was expected by the government. Also, the method of use is quite cumbersome and it is not a frequently used payment method.
For his part, Maduro was delivering an anti-sanctions law aimed at stimulating economic and social development, which was also affected by the United States sanctions.
These types of economic sanctions tend to strangle Venezuela's trade relations with nations that use the dollar as their official currency, because other countries decide to avoid as much as possible any rapprochement with the South American country.
For this reason and its consequences, the country decides dictatorially, to set its sights on the Petro. It should be noted that the sanctions applied to countries like Venezuela do not usually bear the fruits that are believed since ending a dictatorship of this magnitude goes beyond constant economic blockades.
Venezuela, being the sixth largest oil producer in the world, hopes that through cryptocurrencies the restriction of petrodollars can be compensated, which is included in the consequences of economic sanctions.
Outrage by the cabinet
The entire cabinet of this left dictatorship has been scandalized by these sanctions (and to be honest, by all the previous ones and by whatever the president of the United States says or does).
He also said “Donald Trump and his sanctions prevent Venezuela from carrying out transactions in any of the world's banks. There are other ways to pay, and that's what we are using, because our payment system works perfectly in China and Russia "because China AND Russia are its main allies, there is no problem with the use of their payment systems, but in Definitive are not the best example to demonstrate the functionality of the system.
Now, according to the report made by Bloomberg, the central bank of Venezuela is taking into account the statements and studying if they can have crypto reserves and how this would help or affect the country and its economy, which is already in decline.
They also have bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) as their immediate targets.
In fact, they are assets that have already been requested by the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela SA.
This oil company plans to send BTC and ETH to the central bank and once that is done, have it pay the company's suppliers with the coins.
To conclude
It is not a secret that the deepening of the economic crisis in Venezuela has led the country to massive adoption of cryptocurrency, this is proven in the more than $ 8 million in bitcoins that are traded every week according to Coindance data.
However, it should be noted that decisions like these are not taken lightly and are not necessarily going to help the common Venezuelan citizen, since this probably comes with laws that charge high fees and criminal penalties for not using cryptocurrencies in the way in which they prefer. In fact, it could even become another bump for Venezuelan society and its daily quests to survive.
Finally, it is important to note that the government recently signed a new tax agreement with which it will be able to collect taxes and fees on the petro, as we said before, most of its decisions have more pros than cons.
