Pensioners of the Venezuelan state-owned oil company PDVSA have begun to receive Christmas bonuses for the first national cryptocurrency petrocoin (PTR) launched in 2018. Petrocoins backed by Venezuelan oil and other resources can be traded by these pensioners on local exchanges to obtain legal tender, because according to local reports, the scope of the currency as a means of exchange is still limited.

Venezuelan pensioners will receive 2 petrocoins this Christmas

A group of Venezuelan pensioners from the state-owned oil company PDVSA will receive Bonuses paid in petrocoins (PTR), the national cryptocurrency launched by Venezuela in 2018. Pensioners will receive this bonus as a Christmas gift through the Motherland platform, where they will be able to manage the two Petros (worth approximately US$120) they started using for delivery on December 23.

Pensioners destined to receive this bonus will receive alerts through the platform so that they can move their two PTRs off the platform. Although there are a large number of petro-related activities in the national exchange, its scope as a means of exchange is currently very limited, because many pensioners indicate that they intend to use petro to purchase goods and pay for services.

Petro’s history and price changes

Launched in 2018, Petro was the first state-backed cryptocurrency network, a few years before the adoption of Bitcoin in El Salvador (Bitcoin) As legal tender. Initially, Petro’s goal was to maintain a stable price of $60 with the support of a basket of oil and other resources available in Venezuela. However, the market did not absorb this well, and due to the limited utility of the currency, its transaction price was only a small part of the expected price.

Recently, when petrocoins reached record prices on national exchanges, this trend was reversed.Local cryptocurrency portal Moroccan currency It means that the trading price of encrypted assets on some exchanges exceeds 50 US dollars, and in some cases reaches 56 US dollars. This is not the first time the Venezuelan government has used petrocoins to issue bonuses to Venezuelan citizens in December.

In fact, in 2019, two years ago, the government did the same thing. give Half an oil unit (30 U.S. dollars) was given as a Christmas gift to all pensioners and state workers. At that time, the government distributed petro-coin payments through the POS system of state-owned banks so that workers could use it more easily, and merchants could automatically convert petro-coins into legal tender.

What do you think about using Petro to pay Venezuelan pensioners? Tell us in the comments section below.

Sergio Goshenko

Sergio is a cryptocurrency journalist based in Venezuela. He described himself late and entered the crypto space when prices rose in December 2017. With a background in computer engineering, living in Venezuela, and socially affected by the cryptocurrency boom, he offers a different perspective on the success of cryptography and how it can help the unbanked and underserved people.

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