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Venezuela Says Its Cryptocurrency Raised $735 Million -- But It's a Farce (arstechnica.com)
Earlier this week, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro claimed that a new state-sponsored cryptocurrency called the petro raised $735 million on the first day of its sale. ArsTechnica dives deep on the matter to suggest that it's all a farce. From the report: The government hasn't provided any way to independently verify that $735 million figure. And there's reason to doubt almost everything the Venezuelan government has said about the project. Moreover, there's little reason to believe that the petro will maintain its value over time. The Venezuelan government has portrayed petro tokens as backed by Venezuela's vast oil reserves, but they're not. The government is merely promising to accept tax payments in petros at a government-determined exchange rate linked to oil prices. Given the Venezuelan government's history of manipulating exchange rates, experts say investors should be wary of this arrangement. Moreover, the petro scheme has been opposed by opposition legislators in Venezuela's opposition-controlled legislature. They say that the Maduro government is essentially issuing oil-backed debt, and legally that can't be done without approval from the legislature. If Maduro falls from power in the future, his successor might refuse to honor petro redemptions.
Didn't I say that YESTERDAY when we discussed this new crypto currency?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
1. Announce new cryptocurrency
2. Get "investors"
3. ???
4. Profit!
5. Flee country
I should have read your yesterday comment. I bought 734,999,995$ worth of petros, flew to Venezuela and now I am here to collect my oil :(
What a bummer!
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
government.
The summary says there is reason to doubt what the Venezuelan government has said about the 'petro". Well, of course there is. There is reason to doubt anything said by the Venezuelan government.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
because trading oil on a market other than the US Dollar is an excellent way to experience sudden and unexpected violently American Freedom(c) and Democracy(c) in your country. https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
Good people go to bed earlier.
"there's little reason to believe that the petro will maintain its value over time"
...and given the evidence we get from other cryptocurrencies and analysts, there are many reasons to believe the opposite.
Even if they raised $7.35B with a capital B, it would be wasted and transferred out of the country by the corrupt People's Cadre running the country.
In related news, the ANC has announced that they plan to seize white-owned land in South Africa, but they'll be smart this time and won't "hurt the economy." (This puts us on the right into the awkward position of pointing out that Mugabe is corrupt, not stupid. He didn't intentionally set out to burn his agriculture sector to the ground. It's just a byproduct of taking fertile land from farmers and giving it to patsies.)
So in the future, we keep adding third world countries to the list of victims of "poverty that just happens" like it's some sort of Act of God/Satan(tm) instead of the, by now, highly predictable consequences of adopting radical wealth transfer policies that don't even attempt to say "hey, make sure you transfer the money to the workers who actually know what the fuck to do with it instead of the ones who'll buy more beer, pot and a TV."
I say, let them claim they raised any amount they like. 10 billion? Fine by me.
Then of course, the question is what happens with all the money supposedly raised? Will Venezuelans start getting food and toilet paper in stores? Will government workers start getting paid regularly again? Will they have functioning hospitals once more?
No? Well then, what happened to all that money...
The more they claim the more guilty they look later when it's gone.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Moreover, the petro scheme has been opposed by opposition legislators in Venezuela's opposition-controlled legislature.
Maduro's party is IN CONTROL of the legislature (and the courts). That's like saying Pelosi opposed Obama.
It is now required that somebody start selling a cryptocurrency called the vuvuzela in order to catch on with brand confusion. If you buy 1 $vvz, that prevents one of the people we will employ as vuvuzela blowers from visiting you at your house. The more $vvz we sell, the more employment as vuvuzela blowers, so this currency actually promotes employment. Obviously we have a built in market cap of ~7.9 billion, with some room for growth.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Are you saying a fake currency with no value backed by non-existent resources is a farce?
Next thing, you'll tell me my South Sea shares are worthless and my tulip futures are at best 1 peso a bulb!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Are we now waking up to the realities of socialism, kiddies?
Wages in the US are now going up after 8 years of Obama "recovery".
Black unemployment is at an all-time low - a mere year after Obama's "recovery" ended and a real recovery started.
But, hey, you can always tout the Socialist weight-loss program! Venezuelans have lost an average of 20 lbs each under Chavez and Maduro! Yeah, if you're a kid under 20 lbs, you probably starved to death, but PROGRESS!!!!
There is reason to doubt anything said by ANY government.
Fixed that for you....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
you can't pull your oil reserves out of the ground if the folks working the wells have no food
What the fuck are you trying to do, distract from the "progressive" Socialist government of Venezuela running the country with the largest oil reserves on Earth into a poverty-stricken hell-hole with massive starvation?
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelans reported losing on average 11 kilograms (24 lbs) in body weight last year and almost 90 percent now live in poverty, according to a new university study on the impact of a devastating economic crisis and food shortages.
The annual survey, published on Wednesday by three universities, is one of the most closely-followed assessments of Venezuelans’ well being amid a government information vacuum and shows a steady rise in poverty and hunger in recent years.
Over 60 percent of Venezuelans surveyed said that during the previous three months they had woken up hungry because they did not have enough money to buy food. About a quarter of the population was eating two or less meals a day, the study showed.
Last year, the three universities found that Venezuelans said they had lost an average of 8 kilograms during 2016. This time, the study’s dozen investigators surveyed 6,168 Venezuelans between the ages of 20 and 65 across the country of 30 million people.
...
Bitcoin is backed by hopes and dreams and hype.
This is a significant improvement over being backed by Venezuela.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They say blockchain currencies are based on trust, but can you trust anything Maduro says? Venezuela is another proof point as to why Communism and Nepotism are usually found together. Maduro will undoubtedly funnel what's left of the treasury to his family as they exit the country, just as Chavez did.
Organization? You must be joking..
The US, where you can send your daughter to UNC Chapel Hill and she gets killed by scum who rode the bus over from Durham.
You see, things are not much different in REAL LIFE, son.
Sure, I believe them--but there was an error in transcription.
It wasn't actually 735M USD, but 735M Venezuelan.
The dictator tried to buy lunch with it, but had to settle for a small soda . . . :)
hawk
Bottom-feeding fucktard. Sigh.
The US, where you can send your daughter to UNC Chapel Hill and she gets killed by scum who rode the bus over from Durham.
You see, things are not much different in REAL LIFE, son.
Bad things happen everywhere and the USA is no exception. All senseless killing is to be condemned.. However..
In Venezuela, senseless killing is a lot more common these days, as is politically motivated shooting of opposition candidates. Venezuela has never been the paragon of safety, but there isn't a place in the USA which is as dangerous as walking down the street in Caracas these days. These people have NO food, medical care or prospects for finding any. The government is literally controlling EVERYTHING and is likely getting set to default on their latest loan payments so they will have nothing to give to the population. Desperate hungry people are fighting to survive, bloody violence is the way this kind of thing goes, if history is any indicator.
RDU isn't a perfect place but it's a lot less risky than Caracas as RDU isn't full of hungry desperate people with no prospects.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The idea itself *almost* has merit.
Ween OPEC countries off the US dollar as a trading currency, reinvest the profits in new industries that help diversify oil-state economies when electric vehicles become the norm thus helping fight climate change by reducing the global demand for petrol.
Alas, it's Venezuela, where the cult of Hugo seems to have spiralled out of control in Mugabean proportions.
Ween OPEC countries off the US dollar as a trading currency [...]
Actually, as an aside, that's one of those things that can easily put you on the US list of "evil" countries.
Iraq accepting euros instead of dollars? They're evil and we must invade!
Iran accepting euros instead of dollars? They're evil and we must have sanctions!
Venezuela accepting euros or yuan (or trade) instead of dollars? They must be stopped!
Meanwhile, if you trade your oil in dollars, you can pretty much do whatever the heck you want.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
i don't like venezuela because the news tells me its bad and its failures are due to its leader not to the crippling sanctions placed on it for being a sovereign nation independent of most western influence
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
No need for a deep dive here, anyone who knows anything that has been happening in Venezuela for the past decade or so would know this petro thing is just another scam bullshit.
If people are not aware of this, the Maduro proto-dictatorship already "nationalized" (read stolen) a whole bunch of stuff:
Petroleum companies that had a whole ton of American investment:
https://www.nytimes.com/1975/0...
https://venezuelanalysis.com/n...
Toys from private business:
https://edition.cnn.com/2016/1...
General Motors factory:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
It's just a continuation of Chavez sociodictatorship running the entire country to the ground. Brazil, with some stupid socialist politicians, also lent money for some business there which was promptly stolen and their government already announced they are giving nothing back.
The only hope I have left is that all the people behind those decisions end up in jail, because most of them are likely to receive a corruption sentence in the wave of revelations that have been happening for a good part of the past half decade or so.
And unfortunately, venezuelans are likely to keep receiving the short end of the stick until they can get rid of their so called socialist president who's actually a dictator and his entire ilk, party and everything else.
Because they will keep abusing their power... 'till half the population is dead from famine, mark my words. It's the populist plague that infected a whole bunch of south american countries, including mine. Huge swaths of the respective populations were all swayed into their discourse, with some bullshit talk about humble origins and fighting against the mid to upper class, and we're all now in deep deep shit with huge corruption schemes, and organized crime running the countries. It'll be an entire lost decade or more for several south american countries.
I don't think Her Majesty's Government would do anything that was in any way underhand or less than honourable.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
There is reason to doubt anything said by ANY government.
Fixed that for you....
No there's not. Many governments around the world some level of accountability that makes them trustworthy in a lot of things they say. Now there's no reason to trust any government universally on every topic, but that's a big separation from doubting every(any)thing.
Yeah, the only difference being that the odds of anything like that occurring to an individual in the US are miniscule in comparison to Venezuela, so when it does happen here, it's all over the media because it's so rare, unlike the 650 people who were murdered in Chicago last year...that's not newsworthy. CLUE: Stay outta shitholes, and you don't have much to concern yourself with.
Just another day in Paradise
Yup, 57 murders per 100,000 people in Venezuela last year. The US rate?...4.88
Stick it troll.
Just another day in Paradise
There is reason to be skeptical of ANY government. But you can't just paint them all with the same broad brush. There's a big difference between that shithole and it's "leadership", and the vast majority of others.
Just another day in Paradise
Nice strawman, when's the movie come out?
Just another day in Paradise