Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro has urged 10 other countries to adopt his planned oil-backed cryptocurrency, the Petro, Bitcoin.com reported.
Maduro made the call during the meeting of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Treaty of Commerce of the Peoples (Alba – TCP), which consists of Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, and Venezuela.
“I put on the table, brother governments of the ALBA, the proposal of the cryptocurrency, the Petro, so that we assume it as one of the projects of the integration of the 21st century in a bold way, but also in a creative way, Maduro was quoted as saying.
The Petro is expected to launch in 6 weeks and will be pre-mined, Superintendent of Cryptocurrencies Carlos Vargas announced this week.
However, just one day before Vargas’ announcement, the Venezuelan Constituent National Assembly declared the cryptocurrency illegal. Parliamentarians unanimously voted “absolute nullity on the issuance of the Petro cryptocurrency.”