Today I wanted to talk again about Venezuela's cryptocurrency, "El Petro" (PTR).
I wrote a couple of posts about it last month but since it's white paper was made public I didn't have the chance to address this topic. This is the link to the official document:
http://www.elpetro.gob.ve/Whitepaper_Petro_en.pdf
The first thing that stands out to me is the use of "crypto asset" instead of "cryptocurrency" to define PTR. It might seem insignificant to you but after so many people (including myself) have expressed their doubts about PTR having all the traits that would make it qualify as a real cryptocurrency (descentralization most of all) I think that this shows how the venezuelan government admits implicitly that it is not.
Then we have a couple of chapters that talk about some economic background (nothing specific about PTR) and about blockchain. In this case some generic information about how does a blockchain works, but again nothing about how PTR's particular blockchain. It says that on the pre-sale fase an ERC20 token will be issued so we can guess that it's transactions might work on top of the Ethereum blockchain but it doesn't say anything about actual mining and the generation of brand new coins.
After another redundant chapter talking about cryptocurrencies and digital tokens, we get to this section about "Venezuela's oportunity" in which they bring up how it's oil reserves (the largest in the world) gives the chance to create a stable store of value avoiding the volatility of traditional cryptocurrencies such as BTC and ETH. It talks about it's potential for mass adoption and it opens up the possibility of using some other assets instead of oil to back it's value. It doesn't say anything about an actual mechanism to trade PTR for the tangible asset that backs it.
At this point, we get to "Emission and Initial Offer". A 100,000,000.00 tokens will be issued but only 82,400,000.00 will be available for sale. The rest will be kept under the government's control. According to this section the venezuelan state will not be able to make new emissions and leaves open the future possibility (subject to holders approval) that PTR generates a PoS incentive.
Then we have "State backing". This doesn't have a real value by itself when said state's own national currency has shown how much this is worth. But at least the venezuelan government will accept it as "a form of payment of national
taxes, fees, contributions and public services" which should give it a real value in the national market.
The venezuelan government is committed to stimulating a strong demand and at this point seems that those 17,600,000.00 tokens left will be used for that end. Promoting the inclusion of PTR on international cryptocurrency exchanges on allied nations (no US or EU based exchanges here) and using it to pay for labor and social benefits (giveaways) on a local basis will be the main ways to do it.
The funds raised by this token sale would be distributed as follows:
Finally, it establishes the start of the pre-sale on February 20, 2018 (38,400,00.00 tokens available) at 08:30 a.m. (-04:00 GMT) and the proper ICO on March 20, 2018 (44,000,000.00 tokens). The reference price would be 60 USD/token (based on the venezuelan basket barrel in the second week of January 2018) with an unknown discount for those who buy it on the pre-sale process.
It should be noted at this point that tokens will be also available for sale in VEF at the official current rate, as of now around 30,000.00 VEF/EUR (as this was the outcome of the most recent "auctions" in which some potential buyers were not assigned any EUR despite having offered more than that), while the real market value is more like 290,000.00 VEF/EUR.
So yes, those "lucky" enough to be assigned some PTR to be paid with VEF will buy these on a 90% discount, as long as they can sell it in exchange of USD or BTC. Totally transparency there.
That's basically it my friends. I tried to explain this without being judgemental on each and every detail but I can't help to show my reluctance about this project.
I would like to know how do you feel about it.
Please share your thoughts
