Venezuelan Exchanges Start to Trade State Sponsored Petro (PTR) Cryptocurrency

There were many stories in 2018 that had condemned Petro to be a currency by Maduro that might be illegitimate. However, during times of extreme financial difficulties that Venezuela is facing right now, it looks like it started to find acceptance.

Maduro originated Petro as an explicit means of circumventing sanctions forced by Donald Trump’s administration against Venezuela’s government, and so the buying and trading of Petros will likely always remain deeply and inescapably political. There were many reasons for the credibility of Petro to go down, some of them being sudden changes to the whitepaper and unexplained shutdowns of the platform.

Venezuelans are gradually starting to trade petros. They’re doing it on state-sanctioned exchanges and informally among themselves, for reasons ranging from the practical to the political.

Last year BitcoinExchangeGuide had reported that Venezuelan national government accredited 6 cryptocurrency exchanges and gave them the go-ahead to start trading Petro. The exchanges that can sell the crypto include Afx Trade, Bancar, Cave Blockchain, Cryptia, Amberes Coin, and Criptolago.

One of these exchanges Amberes is state-sanctioned. A spokeswoman for Amberes has said that the exchange is currently the only one that has “enabled the PTR/BTC [trading] pair,” although she did not reveal the trading volume.

Crypto trading, in general, has been increasing in Venezuela, which has opened a door in this field to Venezuelans seeking new alternatives to generate income. And trading is definitely one of them. One of the exchange’s users says:

“Someone comes in, buys and that’s it—almost all buyers are takers,” he says. “Any purchase order that they put below the sale order is immediately grabbed. But [the transaction history] cannot be seen. I sold a portion [of PTR] and have no way to see it.”

Maduro’s government isn’t yet making use of the crypto or buying the token back from its citizens. This is providing logical traders an opening—the ability to “invest” in the petro, just as they would on any other shitcoin with low volume. Some of the others are just buying petro for novelty.