State news agency Telesur reports Venezuela president Nicolás Maduro has announced formation of a youth bank funded by the country’s recently launched cryptocurrency, the Petro. Mr. Maduro also took the opportunity to urge countrymen to continue mining its state-backed digital money, including creation of mining farms.
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Venezuela’s President Creates Crypto Funded Youth Bank
Embattled Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, ahead of a contentious May 20 national election, has launched a ‘youth bank,’ funded by the state-backed cryptocurrency Petro. Aimed at appealing to its younger population, 20 million petros are to be allocated.
Petro is a closely watched experiment for countries feeling the sting of sanctions meted out by the likes of industrial powers such as the United States, sanctions the once-oil rich government routinely points to for its current economic ills. Mr. Maduro seems to have worked closely with Russian operatives to bring about a first: a state backed, oil backed cryptocurrency. The country’s current economy is in shambles, and daily horrors abound, flooding headlines.
Mr. Maduro noted over $1 billion in petro will be used to prop up the new bank, a bank which will function in ways that are unclear as of this writing. And though petro is itself a divisive issue among branches of the government, such as the legislature, Mr. Maduro has quipped he’s looking into yet another state crypto launch, this time backed by gold. For its part, the Trump administration has openly ordered United States citizens and businesses to not participate in any aspect of petro.
Mining Farms
The country has also become a use case for decentralized, open source cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin cash
