Venezuela's New Cryptocurrency Is 'Dead on Arrival'
*By Amanda Weston*
Faced with a financial crisis, Venezuela has turned to cryptocurrency to fight rising inflation. But Eduardo Gómez, head of support at [Purse](https://purse.io/shop), said it may not be the best solution.
"The Venezuelan government is really now in a desperate situation," Gómez said Tuesday in an interview on Cheddar. "They're trying to get cash. They're trying to get money from international markets, and due to the U.S. sanctions, they're not able to do so."
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro outlined policies for the new digital currency, the petro, last Friday. One unit would equal the price of one barrel of oil, about $60 dollars, effectively devaluing the nation's existing currency, the bolivar, [by 96 percent](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-currency/maduro-orders-96-percent-devaluation-in-hyperinflation-stricken-venezuela-idUSKBN1L22EZ).
Gómez said the government is trying to minimize the impact of economic sanctions from the U.S. It's an understandable priority ー The International Monetary Fund [estimates](https://blogs.imf.org/2018/07/23/outlook-for-the-americas-a-tougher-recovery/) inflation in Venezuela will reach 1 million percent this year. But Gómez said success for the latest petro strategy is highly unlikely.
"So far it has been a total failure," he said. "There's no real token out there. There's no real system in place. The technology has not been created yet. As, of now, it looks very bad for the government."
Venezuela's own parliament [believes](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/20/venezuela-is-pegging-its-economic-recovery-to-a-cryptocurrency--thats-widely-considered-a-scam.html) petro is being used illegally, and ICOindex has [labeled the currency a scam](https://icoindex.com/profile/petro-ptr).
Among the other moves announced by Maduro: raising the corporate tax rate, increasing previously-subsidized gas prices, and hiking the minimum wage by 3,000 percent.
Gómez pointed out that the current minimum wage, on which 70 percent of Venezuelans live, is about $1 per month. Such a low salary is the biggest hurdle for cryptocurrency adoption, Gómez said, since so many residents have barely any savings.
"Pretty much, petro is dead on arrival, as of now," Gómez said.
For full interview, [click here] (https://cheddar.com/videos/venezuela-looks-to-cryptocurrency-amid-financial-crisis).
Tesla reported a surprise increase in sales in the third quarter as the electric car maker likely benefited from a rush by consumers to take advantage of a $7,500 credit before it expired on Sept. 30. The company reported Thursday that sales in the three months through September rose 7% compared to the same period a year ago. The gain follows two quarters of steep declines as people turned off by CEO Elon Musk’s foray into right-wing politics avoided buying his company’s cars and even protested at some dealerships. Sales rose to 497,099 vehicles, compared with 462,890 in the same period last year.
OpenAI could now be the world’s most valuable startup, ahead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and TikTok parent company ByteDance, after a secondary stock sale designed to retain employees at the ChatGPT maker. Current and former OpenAI employees sold $6.6 billion in shares to a group of investors, pushing the privately held artificial intelligence company’s valuation to $500 billion, according to a source with knowledge of the deal who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. The valuation reflects high expectations for the future of AI technology and continues OpenAI’s remarkable trajectory from its start as a nonprofit research lab in 2015.
Tom’s Guide Editor-in-Chief Mark Spoonauer breaks down Apple & Amazon's latest product drops—what's hot, what's hype, and what really matters for users.
Police in Northern California pulled over a self-driving Waymo taxi after it made an illegal U-turn. But without a driver behind the wheel, they could not issue a moving violation ticket.
With satellites already in orbit, defense contractor L3Harris is standing by to accelerate Trump's executive order. We take an inside look at the technology
Electronic Arts, the video game maker of “Madden NFL,” “The Sims,” and other popular titles, is being acquired and taken private for about $52.5 billion in what could become the largest-ever buyout funded by private-equity firms.
YouTube will offer creators a way to rejoin the streaming platform if they were banned for violating COVID-19 and election misinformation policies that are no longer in effect.
Ben Lamm, founder of Colossal Biosciences, is leading a bold mission to resurrect the extinct dodo via gene editing, avian breakthroughs, and rewilding plans.
