4 ms·

That was called the petro or something, i think it was only meant to be for oil trading and not a national currency.

qwerty456127 9y ago
It was meant to be backed by oil and to back the paper bolívars in its turn and I believe they really should start this ASAP. The only alternative is switching to Brazilian Reals, US Dollars or something like that but who is going to give those to them? A cryptocurrency done right can create worldwide-tradeable, hard-to-constrain value and liquidity immediately from nothing but the potential and I can hardly understand what are they waiting for. Is the ruling establishment there just so power-mad they won't give up the printer even in face of ultimate economic collapse?
- freeone3000 9y ago
  They don't need actual dollars, just issue a currency with the exchange rate pegged to another one.
  - qwerty456127 9y ago
    ... and screw it again a week later.
  - gus_massa 9y ago
    Hi from Argentina! We tried that too almost at the same time that Brazil tried the Real. If you are lucky and it is well done, you can convince people that "1 (ARG)Peso = 1 (USA)Dollar". It worked for 10 years ... (1991-2002) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convertibility_plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convertibility_plan The main problem is that you must reduce the government deficit (that is usually not popular) or get external credit (but you must not be angry with the international banks).
    - qwerty456127 9y ago
      A relatively reasonable government like that of Argentina or Brazil can indeed implement a monetary policy and play with deficit and the rate for good but if it consistently fails to it ought to at least provide the people with a usable trading token so they can take care of themselves. It's hard to say what it actually is but given the news we get outside the Venezuelan government is little but useless (not completely perhaps, maybe it keeps drug cartels away or something), they should just issue a reasonably limited amount of relatively valuable currency, halt all but some essential regulations and leave the people alone. Budget deficit cuttig is not popular? I believe the result Venezuelans are getting now are even less popular.

It was meant to be backed by oil and to back the paper bolívars in its turn and I believe they really should start this ASAP. The only alternative is switching to Brazilian Reals, US Dollars or something like that but who is going to give those to them? A cryptocurrency done right can create worldwide-tradeable, hard-to-constrain value and liquidity immediately from nothing but the potential and I can hardly understand what are they waiting for. Is the ruling establishment there just so power-mad they won't give up the printer even in face of ultimate economic collapse?

freeone3000 9y ago
They don't need actual dollars, just issue a currency with the exchange rate pegged to another one.
- qwerty456127 9y ago
  ... and screw it again a week later.
- gus_massa 9y ago
  Hi from Argentina! We tried that too almost at the same time that Brazil tried the Real. If you are lucky and it is well done, you can convince people that "1 (ARG)Peso = 1 (USA)Dollar". It worked for 10 years ... (1991-2002) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convertibility_plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convertibility_plan The main problem is that you must reduce the government deficit (that is usually not popular) or get external credit (but you must not be angry with the international banks).
  - qwerty456127 9y ago
    A relatively reasonable government like that of Argentina or Brazil can indeed implement a monetary policy and play with deficit and the rate for good but if it consistently fails to it ought to at least provide the people with a usable trading token so they can take care of themselves. It's hard to say what it actually is but given the news we get outside the Venezuelan government is little but useless (not completely perhaps, maybe it keeps drug cartels away or something), they should just issue a reasonably limited amount of relatively valuable currency, halt all but some essential regulations and leave the people alone. Budget deficit cuttig is not popular? I believe the result Venezuelans are getting now are even less popular.