President Maduro of Venezuela is creating new incentives and structures to increase usage of the Petro as its pre-sale ends.

Maduro has certified 16 exchanges that he hopes will list the Petro, although there is yet to be any confirmation that any of the exchanges have agreed to actually list the Petro. Despite this fact, Maduro claims that “certification of these 16 exchanges is a demonstration of confidence in the system of the Petro, as a cryptocurrency, and will allow liquidity and solid transactional volume”. One of the listed exchanges, Coinsecure, said that “Venezuela wanted to add Petro as a cryptocurrency on Coinseure, so they can trade Petro against bitcoin and the rupee”. The significance arises from additional reports that proclaim Venezuela will give India a 30% discount on oil if they purchase said oil with the Petro.

Maduro has claimed to have raised the equivalent of over $3.3 Billion USD in the Petro pre-sale. However, the validity of those numbers have not only been called into question by other world governments, but also by the crypto community who highlighted that much of the coin’s ownership reside within a few addresses that are believed to be government related. Nevertheless, Maduro promised to sell oil to “all national and international airlines for Petro” and “to create an Industrial and Economic Investment Fund in Petro”.

Currency Alternatives

The hyperinflation of Venezuela, which some predict will increase to 13,000% this year, has created the need for alternative currency. The Petro is the Venezuelan President’s solution, but its legality has also been called into question by the Venezuelan legislative body. The intra-governmental indecision along with the shady statistics surrounding the Petro does beg the question about the legitimacy of the code base backing the cryptocurrency. In addition, to trust the Petro also requires to trust the government that created the hyperinflation of the Bolivar in the first place.

These problems have lead to skepticism by Venezuelans who are looking for alternative solutions to both the Bolivar and the Petro that can maintain their earnings long enough to purchase goods and services. This has lead to Venezuela becoming a hot bed for cryptocurrencies that attempt to provide this solution with stability through its code base. Dash has quickly filled this role within Venezuela.

Dash is providing solutions for regular Venezuelan citizens

The uniqueness of Dash’s governance and treasury system combined with its consistently low transaction fees and confirmation times, security, soundness, and privacy gives Dash the upper hand of establishing trust in Venezuela. The comparative advantage of Dash is where many citizens cannot trust their government to issue sound money, they can, however, trust a trustless distributed network where they are able to have confidence in the code and the development rather than any specific central organization.

Dash has been able to spread knowledge of its advantages through the many conferences that are organized by teams funded by the Dash treasury system. The funding gives the teams more resources to educate people while also demonstrating the ability of Dash to coordinate development through a decentralized method. In addition, the conferences and resources allows for Dash teams to increase adoption rates by lowering the switching costs of using Dash when switching from paper money. Throughout these conferences, Dash Cities have emerged and rapidly grew for local entrepreneurs and consumers to sell and buy goods with Dash, including charitable organizations.

Dash has provided many Venezuelans the tools to find their own solutions to the problems that their country is facing. While the Petro is being pushed by the President of Venezuela with various incentives, Dash continues to be adopted by Venezuelans because of the immediate and reliable solutions that Dash provides.