Jorge Rodríguez, Vice President of Communication, Tourism and Culture, explained on Monday the importance of the system announced on Sunday by the Head of State, Nicolás Maduro, as a mechanism for commercial and economic exchange through a crypto-currency called «Petro».
«This will be a crypto-currency that will not be involved in the international financial system, such as Euroclear among others, which currently has (retained) 1.25 billion dollars that are from Venezuela and which they do not want to release for the payment of food and medicines», he said.
During the broadcast of the space «90 Millas de Maduro» (90 miles of Maduro), he referred that this special currency will allow to acquire goods, and to exchange virtual money between people, being a process to which the citizenship must be adapted as it happened when the paper money came out for the first time.
«A crypto-currency is the creation of a currency that only exists in networks, derived from the creation of a series of algorithms that are shared by users, it is the exchange of money without any financial institution», he said.
Rodriguez added that the first time a crypto-currency appeared in 2009, it was worth 35 cents of a dollar, today the same is in the order of 11,400 dollars, «after the announcement of President Maduro, the Bitcoin price rose».
«The great advantage we have with the Petro-coin is that it will be a crypto-currency that will be backed with the guarantees of the immense wealth that Venezuela has», he added.
The virtual currency that Venezuela will create, called Petro, will give the country freedom for its transactions and, with it, it will overcome obstacles placed in the international financial market.
