warning upfront- investing into the $Petro might result in getting prosecuted by the almighty US-Government!
this posting is not an investment recommendation, it is for educational purposes only
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/03/trump-bans-purchases-venezuela-cryptocurrency-petro-180320094506428.html

100 Mio $Petro tokens supply, 38.4 sold already sold in pre-sale, ICO for another 44 Mio tokens

21.08.2018 : Venezuela is in a severe economic and humanitarian crisis. Until yesterday one USD was worth 6.000.000 VEF (Bolivares) and was suffering 250.000% inflation ( yes 250 thousand) and it was expected to rise up to the x million % in the Weimarer Republic in Germany in 1929 when people had to carry truckloads of papermoney just to buy basic foods.

a plan

Today the government announced the activation of the a plan it has been spoken and acted upon about for almost a year:
in combination with other measures, such as cutting 5 zeros from the currency (6.000.000 will now count 60),
it introduces the $PETRO, which is a cryptocurrency, or, to be more precise: a token on the Ethereum blockchain.
(It had already done so in a pre-sale earlier this year.)

This might sound sensational for the cryptocommunity, but given the reality of a broken economy that is being fled by millions(!) of its own citizens, corruption and bad prioritizing and a seemingly out-of-their-mind elite (which isn't actually restricted to Venezuela) we ought to be very careful with this historic news.

kitties + vulnerability

Exactly the very fact that it will be an Ethereum based token might be a problem, when it comes to stability, speed and transaction costs that the ethereum network has not yet solved. Venezuela might make itself even vulnerable to kitties and other weaknesses that are primarily Ethereum challenges. The co-funder of TRX attacked the v. gov. for this immediately:

This is equally a bold and desperate move by the "socialist" gov of V. which so far has proven its inability to care for its own people. In the whitepaper it proclaims to back up the token with 5 Billion barrels of oil, which (if i am not mistaken) at a price of $42 USD sums up to a theoretical value of 210 Billion USD, of which according to Wikipedia 3.3 B USD have already been netted in the pre-sale during the first half of 2018. On the other hand, and here I may need some help, there are only 100 Mio tokens of which each represents 1 barrel of oil worth 60 USD:
100000000 x 60 = 6 Billion USD ?

1 $PETRO = 60$ = 1 barrel of oil ( = 2 minimum wages )

The current value of a barrel of oil is 66 USD, so the ven. gov. sets it at 60 USD
and anchors the minimum wage for its citizens to half a $Petro which corresponds to half a barrel of crude oil = 30 USD/MONTH, which is around 5-6x the average wage that it was until now. [ Yes, people in Venezuela, such as a simple employee in a bank) earned around 2-4 USD/MONTH (!) during the last year or so, tendency: falling. And still they receive it in 2 payments(!) every 2 weeks, and it is usually just enough for ~2 kg or rice, a cup of pulverized milk, half a chicken and some corn flour from which they cook their incredibly delicious "Arepa" meal :) ]

the Petro as an ER20 token on the Ethereum blockchain

Originally the Petro had been based on NEM and seems to have been swapped to be a ERC20 token on the Ethereum blockchain.
https://etherscan.io/token/0x3341b14ea28a4627cd807d704fbb85ff51239775 (token)
https://etherscan.io/address/0x3341b14ea28a4627cd807d704fbb85ff51239775 (contract + code)

doubts from an experienced Argentinian

"... Frederico Bond, founder of Argentinian digital startup Signature, stated that his advice would be to “treat vary carefully with this — especially considering the track record of the Venezuelan government." ..."(https://www.ccn.com/eth-nem-confusion-surrounding-venezuelas-petro-token-blockchain/)

more information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro_(cryptocurrency)

On the Petro as an ICO:
https://foundico.com/ico/petro.html

Venez. citizens may register here:
https://registro.blockchain.gob.ve/web/

And the wallet can be downloaded here for any operating system:

my ideas

Personally I think that cryptocurrencies could be a miraculous joker in the downwards spiral of several economically declining latin american and other countries, due to its optional transparency, optional non-inflationary, optional instant-transaction attributes favouring a different kind of monetary system that could systemically combat corruption, inflation and incentivise citizens in decentralized ways to participate in economic recovery that is not controlled by banks and governments, but by the economy (producers & consumers) themselves. People have lost trust in the economic and monetary politics of their governments. Blockchain technologies seemingly magically (geniously) remove trust from the equation. Blockchain technology and smart contracts could facilitate much of the bureaucrazy thats a first class corruption magnet and will be as useful as manual telephone operators in the era of smartphones. Much of manual bureaucracy has already been successfully transformed into electronic and interconnected devices and many more jobs in that area will simply disappear with the mass adoption of high performance blockchain based smartcontracts with zero fees.
These technologies could be gradually introduced. State currencies could cooperate with international currencies just as we already know it. But anonymous cash should never disappear, yet it could be easily replaced
with real paper tokens (bills) that must be anonymous and unforgeable at the same time, for which technologies are just emerging outside the perception of most politicians.

The window is opening. Fresh air is pouring in. Let's hope that the $Petro can be a great learning example of how a state induced mass adoption might work or not work. Let's observe it closely and learn from it. ;)

_{I am just researching this subject, also for its political implications.
Since the ven. crisis is quite a dramatic and sensitive subject I'd like to apologize for mistakes or misinterpretations due to a lack of knowledge or details about these news. I am not involved or connected, neither politically nor economically to the $Petro. I did research this for educational purposes.}

Informative comments are very welcome.

The monetary recovery program in Spanish

(I'll make a translation at some other time)

More about Venezuela:

(BBC)

(Abby Martin)

"Giuseppe Cammarano Pj Grube (6 months ago)
Guys I am Venezuelan, the government there is a dictatorship and they will use your money to stay in the government while people cant afford to buy food and there is no medicines, my family and friends are not living, they are surviving there. Anyway if you want to lose all your money and support the dictatorship its ok, I hope you can sleep in peace while thousands of children die in my country.
All the sanctions of the US government are against the responsable of the crisis (the people of government), no against the population, the people of the government have millions of Dollars in properties and luxuries in US and Europe and they just took all these assets from them as they have used money of our national reserves to buy all this stuff. Our government is full of criminals, some people of the government cannot leave the country as they are DRUG DEALERS and the DEA would catch them, if you dont belive me even the president Maduro's nephews are in jail in US as they try to take 500Kg of cocaine to this country. I highly recommend you to read a little more about the situation there before invest in this shit that will make you lose all you money and help these criminal to stay in the government."
https://disqus.com/by/giuseppe_cammarano/

https://bitcoinist.com/venezuelas-currency-devalued-maduro-announces-new-crypto-pegged-forex-rate/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/venezuela-bolivar-cryptocurrency-economy-crisis-collapse-petro-bitcoin-a8499266.html
https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/08/20/crypto-is-taking-over-venezuela-due-to-the-countrys-destroyed-fiat-system/
https://cointelegraph.com/news/japans-financial-regulator-wants-crypto-industry-to-grow-under-appropriate-regulation
https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/02/21/venezuela-maduro-petro-economia/
https://www.quora.com/Are-things-actually-bad-in-Venezuela-or-is-that-capitalist-propaganda

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/02/venezuela-petro-cryptocurrency-180219065112440.html