Venezuela to Sell Oil Using Government Cryptocurrency in 2019

Venezuela is a country so riddled with hyperinflation that its economy has almost halved in size over the past five years, many people have starved to death, and approximately 5,000 people leave the country every day just looking for food.

Instead of ceasing to be a group of corrupt, inept thieves, the government has decided that the best way to get things moving in the country again is by introducing a cryptocurrency called Petro.

The name comes from Venezuela’s famous oil industry, an industry that has at its disposal the world’s largest oil reserves. Despite having such large reserves of oil, and despite being unable to feed its own people, the government of Venezuela still gives Cuba, another awesome country run by great people, 55,000 barrels of oil - for free - every single day.

The great Venezuela Petro scam

Petro is supposedly being used to buy and sell oil products that the Venezuelan government is trying to hock. Launched in February of this year, it was described by Matt O’Brien, The Washington Post’s Economic Reporter, as “the most horrible investment ever.”

[embed]https://twitter.com/NicolasMaduro/status/1070369878618468352[/embed]

This Friday, Venezuela’s loony leader, Nicolas Maduro, who looks like the love-child of Saddam Hussein and Mr. Potato Head, said that the government would begin using Petro to sell oil in the first quarter of next year.

"In 2019 we have a schedule for [oil] to be sold in Petros and in this way continue to free us from a currency that the elite of Washington uses," said President Maduro. “Russia is buying and selling oil and derivatives in yuan (...) We are progressively going to sell all our oil production in Petros.”

The irony of Maduro’s comments is that Petro was designed by the Venezuelan government as a means of raising its foreign currency holdings and navigating around US sanctions on the country.

It is, to quote the great Lao Yang, “all so tiresome.” Venezuelans would probably - and I am not joking - be better off with a toy Mr. Potato Head running the country. Instead they have to put up with a real-life one who just wants to continue plundering their homeland for all its worth.