President Nicolas Maduro announced via television that the Venezuelan government will begin to use the their Petro cryptocurrency, which was first introduced this past December, as an official accounting unit.
The development includes their state oil and gas company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), using the Petro as a mandatory accounting unit, as well as tying the country’s salary and pension system to the Petro. The Venezuelan government also plans to stabilize their failing Bolivar by creating a “sovereign Bolivar”, which will have prices published by the central bank relative to the Petro. The Petro will then be priced in terms of international currencies.
The Petro has not had a smooth introduction since its legality has been called into question by Venezuela’s own national assembly, while others have simply called it an oil future to get around U.S. trade embargoes. It has also been made illegal for U.S. citizens to trade in the Petro due to those same embargoes.
Searching for solutions with cryptocurrency
The Venezuelan Bolivar is suffering from massive inflation, as some predict it could reach one million percent by the end of the year. This is causing utter devastation in the country since the Bolivar is essentially broken and useless as currency. Previously, Venezuelans were force to trade in underground currency markets to get illegal dollars just to buy everyday items. Now, with inflation even worse, cryptocurrency is providing a solution as a reliable and trusted source of accounting and stability, relative to the Bolivar.
Many have questioned the Petro in terms of its decentralization since much of it is held in a few wallet addresses, however, the government’s focus on the Petro has allowed them to create a very friendly environment for cryptocurrencies. In an interview with the Dash Text founders, at minute 47:30, they highlighted a section of an official degree, “that the Venezuelan state will promote, protect, and guarantee the use of cryptocurrency as payment method in public institutions, private enterprises, and other type of businesses”. They emphasized that is an official law in the state.
Now with the development of salaries and pensions being priced in the Petro, this will lead to easier adoption of the Petro. Then once consumers start to be paid in the Petro this will allow consumers to seamlessly move between their salaries and other more independent cryptocurrencies. The overall relatively friendly atmosphere has allowed independent cryptocurrency communities to develop and evolve to provide solutions to the problems that Venezuelans are suffering from. Venezuelan merchants and consumers can now adopt and use cryptocurrency with less fear of repercussions from their government.
Dash provides merchants and consumers with solutions
Dash is able to provide consumers with a viable alternative to the Bolivar and other currencies because of its focus on being a payments system for everyday transactions. Dash is able to facilitate transactions for everyday purchase because of its extremely low transaction fees and extremely fast confirmation times. Dash has an regular average block time of 2.5 minutes and a median transaction fee of $0.0005 USD. If consumers and merchants are in a hurry and need confirmation, they can use InstantSend for secure confirmation in 1.3 seconds for $0.018 USD, which will soon be even lower with the Evolution upgrades. This allows Dash to be used by merchants that do not want to make their consumers pay larger fees, which they will then have to absorb in lower product/service costs, nor do they want to make their customers wait for a confirmation or risk a double spend.
These attributes have allowed Dash to be adopted by over 800 merchants in Venezuela. A recent documentary demonstrated how Dash is widely spread throughout the country and how Dash is providing solutions to individuals suffering from inflation caused by their government. Dash can be used at restaurants, appliance stores, a tow truck business, clothing stores, and even a motorcycle merchant. This is not to even mention the plethora of merchants at the Dash Cities, which are held at Dash Venezuela’s conferences. The rapid rise has partially been enabled by the Dash DAO Treasury and the Dash community for funding Dash Venezuela, Dash Help, and others to educate locate individuals about Dash, how to use Dash, and how Dash provides solutions to their problems. Dash is providing a currency that gives individuals confidence that they can have similar purchasing power from one day to the next, which is not possible via the Bolivar.
