With huge debts, Nicolas Maduro's country defies the financial system with its own virtual currency.
The high value of bitcoin, at over $11,000, may have given ideas to the Bolivarian revolution. Venezuelan Socialist President Nicolas Maduro announced Sunday the creation of the "petro", a virtual currency based on the country's oil reserves.
The black gold-producing country, which is almost in default of about 150 billion euros in debt payments and has been tanned by American banks, intends to "make progress in terms of monetary sovereignty in order to carry out its financial transactions despite the financial blockade" of American banks, according to its president.
In addition to oil - of which Venezuela holds the world's largest reserves - this new virtual currency will be based on gas, gold and diamond stocks.
The government also announced the creation of a "blockchain observatory", a crypto exchange platform.
A dual-edged virtual currency
This announcement was met with scepticism by experts. Because Bitcoin has taken many years to become a reference and then to prosper and guarantees are offered by a value linked to its rarity.
Trust in a country depends on the levels of production and wealth it generates,"says Henkel Garcia, director of the consulting firm Econometrica," for example, people trust the dollar because of the levels of wealth associated with it.
Cryptomonnaies are not unknown in Venezuela, considered by specialists to be a peaceful haven for the production of low-cost bitcoins, mining with the computing power of simple computers in a network. It is estimated that tens of thousands of people mine bitcoins to protect themselves from inflation, expected to exceed 2300% in 2018. These bitcoin "miners" exchange their gains in dollars or new bicoins.
There is an urgent need for the South American country, the Venezuelan Bolivar lost 95.5% against the dollar during the past year.