LATIN AMERICAHEADLINE NEWSVENEZUELA Venezuela’s Brilliant End-Run Around Sanctions – Oil Will Be Sold For Petro Cryptocurrency

By Joaquin Flores

CARACAS – Venezuelan oil will be sold for Petro cryptocurrency in 2020, said President Nicolas Maduro. The introduction of cryptocurrency operations, according to Maduro, is a response to US sanctions.

“We are going to sell Venezuelan oil for Petro. We already sell Venezuelan iron and steel for it. We have a signed contract for the sale of oil, steel, iron, aluminum and a part of the mined gold for Petro,” Eluro quotes Maduro.

Test payments to pensioners and public servants in the national cryptocurrency launched in February 2018 were effective, the Venezuelan president said. He stressed that Petro is backed reserves of oil, gasoline, gold and diamonds.

This means that while the Petro is a crypto-currency, it is not strictly fiat-based. It is based in real tangible wealth, but its crypto nature means that they can be used to get around US sanctions. This means that many international actors will be dealing with Venezuela in secret, despite US sanctions being in place. Being backed not only by tangible wealth but also a national government lends tremendous weight to the Petro.

The sanctions against Venezuela are poorly termed, in that they rather constitute an embargo.

Latin America, despite continued U.S interference – coups, soft-power plots, economic sabotage – is in a process of regional economic integration. With economic integration comes political integration. The creation of the Sucre and groups like Mercosur point in this direct. Even while Washington Consensus-backed governments have arisen in Latin America and appear to have reversed the so-called Pink-Tide, in reality the profitability of integration is far too attractive, even for Latin America’s financial elite who had previously backed and supported U.S initiatives in the region.

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