In Keys | El Petro: the new oil-backed cryptocurrency

The President of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro, announced on December 4 the creation of a cryptocurrency called "Petro", which will be backed by Venezuela's oil, gold and diamond reserves.

"I have studied this issue in depth and Venezuela is going to implement a new cryptocurrency system based on petroleum reserves: the petro," the president announced in his program Sundays with Maduro.
Subsequently, the Head of State explained that the Petro aims to allow new forms of international financing. These are the key points that must be taken into account to understand how the Petro will work:

• On December 8, presidential decree N °. 3.196 published in the Official Gazette N °. 41.296, document that specifies the creation of the Superintendence of Cryptocurrency and Related Activities, whose function will be the control and monitoring of the behavior and evolution of the "Petro".

• The Superintendency for the Cryptocurrency and Related Activities of Venezuela is under the command of Carlos Vargas.

• From December 22 to January 21, 2018, a register of miners of the Cryptocurrency will be kept open, called the "Digital Mining Single Registry". - The Blockchain Observatory will be in charge of advising the creation, development and maintenance of Petro. This will be composed of all the Economics schools of Venezuelan universities, the national and international scientific community, computer schools, public and private banks and the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV), in total 50 people, according to what was explained by the superintendent Carlos Vargas.

• President Nicolás Maduro stressed that "the BlockChain technology is 'perfectly auditable', totally transparent", and a "significant guarantee of the birth in confidence of this instrument".

• The Minister of Economy, Jorge Rodríguez, indicated that the Petro "will allow investors to acquire this cryptocurrency with the guarantee of support with natural resources such as gas, diamond and oil".

• The national chief executive announced that the cryptocurrency will be supported in relation 1-1, that is, "a Petro, a barrel of oil". - "We want in 2018 Venezuela to be the first country that does not manage cash, which is only managed with cryptocurrencies," said the president of the National Association of Cryptocurrency (Asonacrip), José Ángel Álvarez.
  Keys to cryptocurrencies

• Unlike the dollar or the euro, cryptocurrencies are not issued by central banks but are created in a decentralized manner by computers that use complex algorithms. - BlockChain technology arose in parallel with the most famous cryptocurrency so far, Bitcoin, in which all operations and transactions that are made with these digital currencies are recorded.

• Bitcoin has fluctuated in value during December 2017, exceeding $ 19,000 for each digital unit. At the beginning of the year its value was 1,000 dollars.

• Two stock markets of Chicago (USA) launched financial products based on these cryptocurrencies, which provides greater legitimacy to the digital currency.

• The largest "farms" or "mines" of cryptocurrencies are in China, but the best places to have this instrument -according to the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom- are: Canada, Iceland, Switzerland, China and Russia. - At the beginning of December there was a hack to the base of the NiceHash crypto currency.

• It is important to take into account some actions to be able to keep the cryptocurrencies safe, such as: check which web protocol is involved, protect against theft and attacks with several private keys to transfer or spend bitcoins on the account, hide the IP address, have access to the private keys of the bitcoins wallet, among others.