Venezuela Forcibly Converts Pensions into Petro | Hacker News Reader

Venezuela Forcibly Converts Pensions into Petro

bitcoinerx.com

47 pointsdoener32 comments

Does anyone have a mainstream news link to this? I don't trust coin-related news sites not to be involved in hyping things.

I have Venezuelan news sources [1] - it's not breaking news. I think it was announced a few months ago. A lot of benefits/incentives/government wages have been making this weird transition to a digital wallet of sorts. I have a final exam tomorrow so I cannot translate at the moment.

http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/economia/maduro-pago-las...

Side note, this is the same newspaper that was trending earlier this week for shutting down.

Official announcement from presidential press office:

https://twitter.com/PresidencialVen/status/10338222224677150...

"Starting now, we will pay pensions through a digital wallet on a monthly basis. This is so senior citizens can rest easy and have more freedom in their spending habits."

Imperfect translation, but functional I hope. I'm not 100% sure if the digital wallet is in Petro, I do think it's through a sort of citizenship card though. I can ask my parents tomorrow morning to clarify. I think the crypto news/media is confounding the gov. digital wallet with the Petro? Things happen so fast nowadays I can barely keep up with the mess.

I cant find one, the Fiancial Times have covered Venezuela and petro in the past and they have no mention of it. Looks like BS to me based on one line in what appears to be a financial statement/email.

They've reported on the switch to the 'new Bolivar' [1], which has an official conversion to the Petro. So the Venezuelan government might well just now be switching to issuing new Bolivars, and reporting their value in Petros (I can't say why this would make any particular sense, except perhaps to make the distinction from old Bolivars clear).

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/7e19a908-a48c-11e8-8ecf-a7ae1beff...

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/venezuelan-government-forcing...

All stories reference the same Caracas Chronicle blog, it seems

Can’t find any either. Surprising...

Living in Venezuela: After more than a year of official announcements about the petro, nobody knows what it is, nobody has ever bought, sold, owned nor seen one. Some people have sent other crypto to some sort of pre-sale, but never got anything back. I don't know what is the petro, but it hardly exists and it is certainly not a cryptocurrency.

Is petro in exchanges outside VZ? This just seems like a move to put the blame for the inevitable crash of this fiat cryptocurrency to "the bad bitcoin market".

It was Maduro who launched the currency and if it fails, it will be his failure. More likely, they are trying to recreate the URV[1] that Brazil used to get inflation under control.

1. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-...

But the URV was only part of the Real plan, though it was the most visible part. There were other equally important measures, Wikipedia has a summary (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plano_Real#Principais_medidas):

  - Limiting price adjustments to once a year;
  - Privatizations;
  - Reducing government spending and increasing taxes;
  - Reducing import taxes and making imports easier;
  - Interventions in the exchange rate;
  - Increasing the central bank interest rate.

In a world where you work your whole life in exchange for promised lifetime income and all you get is Venezuelan Crypto Kitties

A government backed crypto currency is essentially just a different type of digital currency. If petro is more stable than bolivar, i would think people would prefer it, as long as conversions are simple.

Conversion rates precisely controlled by the government?

I think some people have great (and not fond) memories of that in Poland since 50s till 1993... Only the final phase worked somewhat.

Yes, bring back the gold standard.

what's the alternative ? venezuela paper napkins

Wow, I don't think this was the cyberpunk crypto distopia that anyone predicted.

A crypto news site, talking against crypto.

Centralized crypto is no different from any kind of fiat. Obviously the website is not about fiats.

I am pretty sure a crypto news website is all about generating real money from nothing.

like all investing websites

This is going to be fun! From what I can pick up as (sometimes less than) subtle signalling from the crypto crowd, they tend towards a worldview somewhere between libertarian and alt-right on the spectrum, and Venezuela occupies that sweet spot of placing itself squarely opposite, and being terrible at, well, everything.

Matt Levine has sporadically covered this particularly folly, and it's well worth it: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=matt+le... (spoiler alert: he reveals everything up and including next year's season finale "Nope, that didn't work. Why did we ever think it would? Now, what shall we do about that Brazilian army trying to 'liberate' us?")

This spiteful article is probably part of the US war campaign against Venezuela.

Leftist Debunks John Oliver's Venezuela Episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fV-C1Ag5sI

A Brief History of U.S. Dirty Wars in Central America That Set the Stage for the Refugee Crisis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBJpykHbbYI

US Senator Rubio pushes for Venezuela to be placed on US state terrorism sponsors list – report https://www.rt.com/usa/444420-us-venezuela-terror-sponsor/

‘Bolton is preparing plan for my assassination, with help from Bogota’ – Venezuela’s Maduro https://www.rt.com/news/446316-maduro-assassination-bolton-v...

Besides US agents are involved in the media secretly and openly (CNN, Fox News,... promoting the conspiracy and lie that should justify the publically well known war e.g. Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria).

What western media company is outraged regarding the situation of journalist Julian Assange ?

The Guardian/Politico Psyop Against WikiLeaks https://consortiumnews.com/2018/12/01/the-guardian-politico-...

Besides: This comment might be my last comment on HN because I can not create replies because I am posting too fast according to HN.

> This article is probably part of the US war campaign against Venezuela.

What is that even supposed to mean?

Besides the tin-foily nature of the baseless assertion, not to mention the hefty dose of weasel words, has the Maduro regime forced the conversion or not?

posts links to russian propaganda site

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