Reuters in Caracas reported on January 5th that Venezuela\'s President Maduro is going ahead with his plan to issue 100 million Petros. The proposed new cryptocurrency will be backed up by the country\'s oil and gas reserves, as well as by gold and diamonds, and the President sees it as a way to sidestep the harmful economic sanctions imposed by the United States.

Each Petro is to have the value of one barrel of oil, although the report expressed scepticism as to whether investors would want to purchase Petros at this time. Venezuela, a member of OPEC, has the world\'s largest oil reserves, but is considered by critics to have wasted the profits from the first boom period, and is now suffering a severe economic crisis.

Venezuelan oil was valued at an average of $59.07 a barrel in the first week of the New Year, according to the country’s oil ministry. On this valuation, 100 million Petros should be worth slightly more than $5.9bn, although there is so far no clear mechanism or structure for how the cryptocurrency would work.

The economic plight of Venezuelans has already led to a great interest in Bitcoin, with starving people seeing it as a solution to the massive hyperinflation running in the country. However, authorities are already reacting by finding and shutting down private cryptocurrency mining facilities