Written by: Deep Tide TechFlow
On January 3, 2026, the U.S. military launched a "massive" strike against Venezuela, leading to the swift arrest and transfer of President Maduro.
Some commented, "A Memecoin issuer arrested a RWA Token issuer."
This is indeed the case.
On February 20, 2018, Venezuelan President Maduro announced the issuance of the world's first digital currency backed by a sovereign nation, the Petro.
At that time, Venezuela was mired in its worst economic crisis in history, with inflation soaring to nearly 1,000,000% (you read that right), and the national currency, the bolívar, depreciating to the point of being worthless. The severe sanctions imposed by the U.S. further exacerbated the plight of this South American oil giant.
Maduro hoped that this digital currency would be the last straw to save the nation.
However, in early 2024, when the Venezuelan government quietly terminated the operation of the Petro, the world hardly batted an eye.
This digital symbol, once hailed as "the world's first sovereign cryptocurrency," had almost never truly "lived" during its brief existence. Its end was like a silent curtain falling on a noisy drama, marking the conclusion of a magical realism story surrounding cryptocurrency, national sovereignty, and economic collapse.
The fate of the Petro reflects the complete collapse of a national governance system.
Born from the Ruins: The Petro
To understand the Petro, one must first understand Venezuela before its birth.
It was a country scorched by hyperinflation, where the value of the old currency, the bolívar, evaporated by the hour, and people's life savings were wiped out overnight. Meanwhile, severe financial sanctions from the U.S. acted like an invisible noose, tightening around Venezuela's economic lifeline, isolating it almost entirely from the global financial system.
It was against this economic ruin that the Petro emerged, carrying an almost impossible "national salvation" mission.
Its blueprint was grand and enticing.
First, the Petro aimed to bypass the dollar-dominated international financial system through blockchain technology, opening a new channel for financing and payments; second, it claimed that each Petro was linked to a barrel of real oil reserves, with a total of 100 million Petros valued at $60 billion.
In August 2018, Venezuela officially established the Petro as its second official currency, circulating alongside the already battered bolívar.
The Maduro government promoted the Petro with unprecedented vigor.
Pensions for retirees were distributed in Petros, and Christmas bonuses for civil servants and military personnel were also converted to this digital currency. Maduro even "airdropped" 0.5 Petros as a Christmas gift to retirees nationwide via a televised broadcast at the end of 2019.
In addition to promoting it domestically, Venezuela also sought to entice more countries to use the Petro.
Time magazine reported that the Petro received personal approval from Putin, with Russia sending two advisors to participate in the project design. The Russian side promised to invest in the Petro and considered using this digital currency for settlements in bilateral trade to jointly combat dollar hegemony.
Venezuela also attempted to promote the Petro to members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), hoping to create a dollar-free oil trading system. Oil Minister Quevedo publicly stated, "The Petro will become a settlement method accepted by all OPEC member countries."
To encourage more people to use the Petro, the Maduro government transformed into a cryptocurrency project team, establishing a complete infrastructure, providing detailed purchasing tutorials on its official website, and even developing four ecological apps, authorizing six exchanges, including Cave Blockchain and Bancar, to publicly sell the Petro.
But reality soon dealt a heavy blow to the Maduro government.
Public Apathy and Doubts
The Venezuelan government's enthusiastic promotion met with collective indifference from the public.
Under Maduro's Facebook post announcing the issuance of the Petro, the most liked comment read: "It's hard to believe that anyone still supports this terrible government… They are destroying the entire country." Another popular comment stated: "The government has become accustomed to letting every foolish thing end in failure and then blaming other countries."
Venezuelan journalist Gonzalo's remarks on Twitter were even sharper: "The Petro is a sedative for this failed country."
The disastrous user experience further exacerbated public distrust. The registration process for the Petro was extremely strict, requiring the upload of ID cards, detailed addresses, phone numbers, and other information, but applications were often inexplicably rejected. Even if one was lucky enough to register successfully, the "Patria Wallet" system frequently malfunctioned, often failing to work properly.
Worse still was the payment experience. Many merchants reported issues with Petro payments failing, forcing the government to admit system flaws and provide compensation.
A Venezuelan woman stated, "Here, we can't feel the presence of the Petro."
Externally, the U.S. government also targeted the Petro with precision.
In March 2018, just a month after the Petro's issuance, Trump signed an executive order prohibiting U.S. citizens from purchasing, holding, or trading the Petro. The Treasury Department explicitly stated that any transactions involving the Petro would be considered a violation of sanctions against Venezuela.
The scope of sanctions quickly expanded. In 2019, the U.S. placed Evrofinance Mosnarbank, headquartered in Moscow, on the sanctions list, citing that the bank provided financing services for the Petro. The U.S. Treasury bluntly stated, "The Petro is a failed project attempting to help Venezuela evade U.S. economic sanctions."
An Air Coin Dressed in Oil
The most fatal problem with the Petro is that it is untenable both technically and economically.
True cryptocurrencies derive their essence from the trust brought by decentralization. The Petro, however, is a centralized database completely controlled by the government.
For an ordinary Venezuelan, this means that the value of the Petros in their digital wallet is not determined by the market but can be arbitrarily changed by a decree from the president.
The Venezuelan government claims that each Petro is backed by a barrel of oil, sourced from the town of Atapirire in the Ayacucho region, with reserves of 5.3 billion barrels. However, a Reuters reporter found that the roads were in disrepair, oil well equipment was rusty, and the entire area was overgrown with weeds, showing no signs of large-scale oil extraction.
In exile, former Venezuelan oil minister Rafael Ramírez estimated that extracting the 5.3 billion barrels of oil promised by the government would require at least $20 billion in investment, which is a fantasy for a Venezuelan government that needs to import even basic food supplies.
Ramírez bluntly pointed out: "The Petro is set at an arbitrary value; it only exists in the government's imagination."
Even more absurdly, the Venezuelan government later quietly modified the backing assets of the Petro, changing from 100% oil backing to a mix of oil, gold, iron, and diamonds in proportions of 50%, 20%, 20%, and 10%.
This arbitrary modification of the "white paper" is notorious even within the cryptocurrency community.
Technical issues are equally severe. The Petro claims to be based on blockchain technology, but the data displayed on its block explorer is extremely abnormal. The white paper states that the Petro should generate a block every minute like Dash, but the actual block interval is 15 minutes, and on-chain transaction records are almost nonexistent.
Unlike the price fluctuations of truly decentralized digital currencies like Bitcoin, the price of the Petro is entirely controlled by the government. The exchange rate was initially set at 1 Petro for 3,600 bolívars, then arbitrarily adjusted to 6,000, and later changed to 9,000.
Although the government announced the official price of the Petro as $60, on the black market in the capital Caracas, people could only exchange it for goods worth less than $10 or U.S. cash, if they were lucky enough to find someone willing to accept it.
The Petro is essentially a control tool dressed in blockchain clothing.
The Final Blow: Internal Corruption
If the Petro's life was slowly heading towards exhaustion, the final straw that broke its back was a shocking internal corruption scandal.
On March 20, 2023, a "quake" erupted in Venezuelan politics.
A core member of Maduro's government, Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami, suddenly announced his resignation.
Days earlier, Venezuelan anti-corruption police had arrested his right-hand man, Joselit Ramírez Camacho, head of the national digital currency regulatory agency SUNACRIP, which was responsible for the regulation and operation of the Petro.
As the investigation deepened, a shocking scam involving billions of dollars came to light.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab revealed that some government officials exploited the cryptocurrency regulatory agency to operate in parallel with oil companies, signing oil loading contracts "without any administrative control or guarantees," with the corresponding payments from oil sales not going to the state oil company but being transferred into private pockets via cryptocurrency.
Investigations showed that this corruption network involved amounts ranging from $3 billion to $20 billion, with the embezzled funds used to purchase real estate, digital currencies, and cryptocurrency mining farms.
In April 2024, Oil Minister El Aissami was arrested, facing multiple charges including treason, money laundering, and organized crime, with over 54 people prosecuted for their involvement in this corruption scheme.
This corruption scandal dealt a devastating blow to Venezuela's cryptocurrency industry. SUNACRIP was forced to suspend operations, and the government immediately launched a nationwide anti-mining campaign, confiscating over 11,000 ASIC mining machines and disconnecting all cryptocurrency mining farms from the national power grid.
By 2024, the government halted trading of the Petro, ordered a nationwide cessation of cryptocurrency mining, and closed all authorized cryptocurrency exchanges. An industry once vigorously promoted by the government collapsed entirely under the impact of a corruption scandal.
The Petro experiment failed not due to Washington's bans but due to its own decay.
A tool intended to combat external sanctions ultimately became a means for corrupt officials to launder money.
A Microcosm of National Failure
The trajectory of the Petro's failure almost replicates the failed logic of Venezuela's national governance.
It is a "headache for a foot" type of policy. Faced with deep-seated economic structural issues, the government chose to create a flashy gimmick, attempting to cover up real economic decay with a digital illusion. It’s like a manager painting a beautiful coat on a building that is leaning due to a crumbling foundation.
The Maduro government attempted to solve institutional problems through technological means, which is itself a flawed approach. The value foundation of digital currency still relies on the credibility of the issuing entity; in a country with an inflation rate reaching millions and where basic living supplies cannot be guaranteed, what credibility does the government have? If the public does not trust the traditional currency issued by the government, how could they possibly accept a completely new digital currency concept?
The Petro instead drained the last remnants of government credibility.
Imagine this scene: a retired teacher, whose life savings have been consumed by inflation, now has her monthly pension forcibly converted into Petros. She walks into one store after another, only to be met with responses like "We don't accept this," or "The system is down."
The root of Venezuela's economic problems lies in the fundamental flaws of its economic structure. Venezuela suffers from a typical case of "Dutch disease," with excessive reliance on oil exports leading to the decline of manufacturing and an extremely singular economic structure. When oil prices fall, the entire national economy collapses. The Petro attempted to anchor itself to oil, but this only exacerbated the economy's dependence on oil without addressing structural issues.
In practice, the Venezuelan government lacked the basic technical and operational capabilities to implement blockchain projects, and the project was riddled with flaws from the start. From abnormal blockchain data to payment system failures, and to the arbitrariness of the pricing mechanism, every detail exposed a level of incompetence that was even worse than a Shenzhen outsourcing studio.
Today, the Petro has completely vanished into the dust of history, and Maduro's "national salvation experiment" ended in a disastrous failure. Venezuela remains mired in the quagmire, with the public continuing to suffer in the flames of inflation.
The true way out for this country clearly does not lie in seeking the next "Petro"-like digital shortcut, but in whether it can muster the courage to face reality, return to common sense, and embark on the real transformation that should have taken place but is incredibly difficult.
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