



“Espero que próximamente el pueblo venezolano pueda tener libre acceso al petro y puedan invertir con ello en un viaje, una casa, un carro” expresó el Ejecutivo Nacional mediante cadena de radio y televisión.







Explicó que al anclar el salario mínimo al petro, los trabajadores adquieren ingresos de valor internacional.







Asimismo dijo que cuenta con un plan de ingreso en divisas para sostener la recuperación económica hasta el año 2019, afirmando que "la política cambiaria nueva es para derrotar y vencer el cambio falso y criminal" y afirmó que la primera subasta de Dicom realizada este miércoles y la ANC abolieron la Ley de Ilícitos Cambiarios para dar paso a un nuevo esquema cambiario.







Ratificó en este sentido que se van a dar tres subastas durante tres semanas, y luego por el mes de octubre y noviembre se van a estabilizar a cinco subastas.







En su alocución convocó a la clase obrera a un Congreso Constituyente, con el objetivo de buscar las acciones y definir los términos que permitan garantizar la recuperación económica del país







Enfatizó que de este congreso, que debe realizarse en los próximos 15 días, deben salir propuestas concretas que permita crear el camino del crecimiento y estabilidad económica.











El presidente de la República, Nicolás Maduro, propuso este miércoles a la Asamblea Nacional Constituyente (ANC) establecer las nuevas tablas salariales de los trabajadores en petros.</s>Nicolás Maduro anunció, en el congreso para la salud, que en Colombia el servicio médico es un lujo. El mandatario también indicó que se establecerá una nueva tabla salarial para trabajadores de la salud en Venezuela.

«En Colombia estudiar medicina imposible, los ricos nada más. En Venezuela hemos construido una base poderosa para el sistema público de salud integrado» explicó Maduro.

El mandatario comentó, durante la clausura del primer congreso revolucionario de la salud, que los salarios deberán estar anclados al petro.

Agregó que con el uso del carnet de la patria se podrá obtener el historial clínico de los pacientes y conocer lo que necesitan.

EN VIDEO | Maduro: «En Colombia nadie tiene derecho a la salud pública. En Colombia ir a un médico, es un lujo. En Colombia estudiar medicina imposible, los ricos nada más. En Venezuela hemos construido una base poderosa para el sistema público de salud integrado» pic.twitter.com/BWdd5XOTfc — Alberto Rodríguez (@AlbertoRodNews) 24 de agosto de 2018</s>Senator Dick Durban called for change Sunday after a trip to Venezuela and meeting with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.The Venezuelan government has had little interaction with the U.S. government and Durbin said he was surprised by the invitation. Durbin said he was able to meet with political leaders, opposition leaders, and locals.Durbin said Maduro's regime used government food rations to influence votes during a period of severe food shortages. Durbin condemned these undemocratic actions and called for free and fair elections.</s>For Jorge Farias, boss of Venezuelan startup Cryptobuyer, the Petro is personal. Anything in the crypto world is.

But it’s a special case with the Petro, the new cryptocurrency sanctioned by Venezuela’s government and designed to boost the bolivar, the country’s inflation-plagued national currency. International experts, however, have rather blunt words for the Petro: it’s a scam on top of another scam.

Farias, smartly dressed and with short stubble, launched Cryptobuyer three years ago, to help Latin Americans use cryptocurrencies to protect their salaries and savings. Cryptocurrencies may be highly volatile; bitcoin, for example, has plummeted from its peak value of $19,000 in January to around $6,000 now. For consumers in Venezuela, however, this probably counts as fairly stable, given the hyperinflation pushing their country close to the brink of economic collapse. Logically, then, launching a cryptocurrency like the state-created Petro is a clever move, right? Wrong.

The International Monetary Fund recently forecast that Venezuela’s economy will shrink about 18 per cent this year, while inflation is set to surge to one million per cent. Two months ago, the annual rate of inflation stood at 40,000 per cent. People are scared; more than 400,000 Venezuelans have already crossed the border into the neighbouring Ecuador, trying to escape their home’s crumbling economy. Brazil has also seen a surge in illegal immigration.

The government in Caracas, though, believes that it can get on top of the situation with some rather unusual economic measures. Cryptocurrency aside, the state relaunched its official paper-and-coins currency as the ‘sovereign bolivar,’ but only after devaluing the traditional bolívar by a whopping 95 per cent and then redenominating it, slashing five zeros from each banknote. For one US dollar, you’ll now get not 250,000 bolívars but about six million. The move is not without precedent: in 2008, former president Hugo Chavez replaced an earlier incarnation of the local currency with his Bolivar Fuerte, removing three zeros at the end.

“The same thing is happening again, but now with a smoke curtain saying they will be using blockchain technology and the Petro,” says Roger Benites, chief executive of BitInka, a crypto exchange based in Lima, Peru but operating in many Latin American countries (and until recently, in Venezuela, too).

The Petro was announced last December at the peak of the crypto bubble, emerging just when Venezuelans were trying to raise billions of dollars on the back of rather vague whitepapers outlining an Initial Coin Offering. The crypto world was bemused, but curious: this might be the first time that any government would issue its own digital money. “At least the Petro had some connection to the physical world. Compared to other things that were going on in crypto at the time, maybe it wasn't that absurd of a concept after all,” says Aaron Stanley from blockchain firm Sweetbridge.

Cryptocurrencies may be disruptive, but in the Venezuelan context, the Petro looks more like a folly. Venezuelans are crypto-savvy – they’ve been forced to become experts out of necessity, as they tried to survive in the midst of a crippled economy. For many months, Venezuelans have been putting their meagre savings into bitcoin, which allowed them to avoid the collapse of the bolivar.

Bitcoin mining in Venezuela is a dangerous trade, though, and has landed many in jail. Venezuela’s government subsidises electricity, so when miners use cryptocurrency to smuggle goods into the country, the government tracks and chases them by monitoring levels of electricity consumption. The outcome is either jail – or the need to pay a hefty bribe.

“And now the country is embracing cryptocurrency? Sounds like wonderland!” says Benites. He recalls how his company’s office in Venezuela was shut down, because, he says, it was a target for extortion by public employees and local law enforcement. “One of their high-ranked officials from the police intelligence agency was treating bitcoin miners as terrorists, and even came out saying miners where physically taking bitcoins to the border of Colombia to exchange them for US dollars. The national intelligence agency was saying there was a physical bitcoin! And now they have a national cryptocurrency – so who will mine it or sustain the network?”

One Petro is supposed to get you $60 or 3,600 sovereign bolívars. It’s supposedly backed by oil barrels produced by the national oil company PDVSA; the catch: PDVSA also has debts amounting to $45 billion. And in real life, the Petro – crypto or not – doesn’t exist at all. “We have not seen a single Petro circulating, nor its smart contracts, or rules of the token, and much less its blockchain,” says Farias.

In a way, introducing the Petro is a bit like a trick pulled by Germany’s government in the 1920s, when it invented the Rentenmark to end hyperinflation, and made it stable by backing it with a mortgage on all property used for agriculture and business. Back then, it worked, not least because property was something that Germans understood and could hold on to. This time, though, the situation “is just plain nonsense, backing up a fiat currency with a cryptocurrency tied to the barrels of oil from an entity that has an external debt they cannot pay,” says Benites.

And in contrast to Germany, the Petro is more of a fundraising stunt. Its ICO has already – allegedly – raised the equivalent of $3.3bn. “It may be a stunt, but a stunt that is working,” says Dickie Armour at ICO consultancy Corre Innovation. “The question is though – working for whom? President Nicholas Maduro and his cohorts? Or the people of Venezuela? Sadly, it’s more likely to be the former,” he sighs.

Farias’ Cryptobuyer has been helping many Venezuelans from the start, offering customers gift cards for online stores like Amazon that can be paid with cryptocurrencies, allowing people to buy medicine, food and other supplies priced in dollars that would otherwise be inaccessible in a country where the government has been keeping tight tabs on currency exchange for over a decade. “We are about to issue our own token through an ICO,” says Farias. But unlike Petro, it will be “a functional, tangible product” with real and demonstrable uses. “The Petro to this day has shown to be neither one thing nor another, and is banned in the international market.”

Dangling the prospect of a new digital currency may give Venezuelans a false hope. Once the initial excitement is gone, they may quickly realise what the Petro really is – or isn’t. “The government is probably hoping that Venezuelans will think Petro is the same as bitcoin, but it isn’t,” says Gartner blockchain technology analyst, Avivah Litan. “Petro is a currency issued and controlled by the same incompetent, corrupt and opaque Venezuelan government that manages their fiat currency. People aren’t stupid, and they won’t buy it.”

It’s ironic, though, that cryptocurrency – an inherently volatile, unstable and still relatively new concept – is supposed to rescue a fiat currency. “You could say that desperate times with a starving population result in desperate action,” says Jonathan Fry from Team Blockchain. “What is any fiat currency but a promise to pay its debts or at least to pay the interest on its debts.” Cryptocurrencies are not all good, but they most definitely have a place and are a new asset class, no way to get around that, says Fry.

If the government had pegged the bolivar to bitcoin, things might pan out differently, because bitcoin is decentralised, so hackers won’t be able to take it over that easily. Most crypto fans also argue that the essence of digital money is about not having a central authority and a central bank. With bitcoin, because of the decentralisation, the state can’t take it away. With a fiat currency or Petro, it very much can.

If the Petro is nothing but a smoke screen, then why does it matter? Now that Caracas has formally launched the Petro, lawmakers in Iran and Russia are also be considering the benefits of creating their very own fiat cryptocurrency. “All of these countries have three traits in common: they are authoritarian (or deeply undemocratic), they have a lot of oil, and they are under sanctions,” says Alex Tapscott, the head of Canadian VC firm NextBlock Global. Venezuela is a case in point, showing how rogue governments could use their cryptocurrencies to undermine international law, treaties, and sanctions and further destabilise their already weak economies.

Except there is no way that it will ever work. The Petro is likely to go the same way as the Venezuelan economy itself. Fast.</s>What is the way to defeat reaction and imperialism?

On the afternoon of Saturday 4 August, various explosions on Bolivar avenue in Caracas interrupted the speech of President Nicolas Maduro during a parade to commemorate the 81th anniversary of the Venezuelan national guard. The explosions led to panicked scenes and the immediate evacuation of Maduro together with his wife and military leaders. That night, the Information Minister, Jorge Rodriguez, announced that there had been a terrorist attack carried out by drones loaded with C4 explosives. He said that 7 soldiers had been injured and several people had been arrested, with the attack attributed to sections of the right and extreme-right.

Later, the opposition journalist Patricia Poleo confirmed this version of events, publishing a statement by a group calling itself “the soldiers of Franela” claiming responsibility for the attack. The group in question are followers of the military chief Oscar Perez linked to the far right who dies in a shootout with the National Guard on 15 January of this year, and author of the terrorist attack on the Supreme Court in June 2017. The statement said that this attack was part of “operation Phoenix” with the objective of killing Maduro and bringing down the Venezuelan government. The next day, Maduro accused the outgoing President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, who has recently called for the overthrow of the Venezuelan government, of being responsible.

The violent, coup-plotting character of the Venezuelan right-wing

The violent, terroristic character of the right wing in Venezuela is news to no one. The capitalist media, right-wing governments around the world and many sections of social democracy, present these elements as mere “opposition forces fighting for democracy”. The reality is that these forces have habitually resorted to violence and terror: from the fascist coup of 2002 when they tried to kill Hugo Chavez (democratically elected by the Venezuelan people) and arrest his supporters, to the so-called “guarimbas”, fascistic and terrorist actions stimulated by leaders of the “opposition” like Leopoldo Lopez or Henrique Capriles Radonski.

The last “guarimba” episode caused over 100 deaths between March and July 2017 and there were even cases of lynching and people burned alive for declaring themselves Chavistas. These terrorist methods were one of the reasons for the defeat of the opposition offensive and of the MUD’s attempt to take power.

Their objective of sowing fear, paralysing the country and impeding elections to the National Constituent Assembly (ANC) provoked the mobilisation of the masses which yet again frustrated the plans of the right wing and their mentors: US imperialism and the reactionary governments of Colombia, Brazil and Argentina.

One year after the ANC elections: from mobilisation and hope to frustration and disenchantment

The attack of 4 August took place exactly one year after the government’s victory in the ANC elections. In those elections, while millions of the poorest mobilised to defeat the coup strategy of the right, millions of chavista voters and activists also used them to express their discontent with the capitalist policies of the Maduro government, by organising and supporting critical candidates and demanding a shift to the Left.

Since then, the response of Maduro , the state apparatus and PSUV (ruling party) bureaucracy has been to divide, isolate and repress all critical Left movements and confirm its policy of agreements with sections of Venezuelan capitalism, following the advice of its international advisers (especially the Chinese government which finances a lot of Venezuela’s debt). Their objective is not to defend or deepen the revolution but to stabilise Venezuelan capitalism with themselves in the lead, and dismantle in practice the most Left measures taken by Chavez due to the pressure of the masses.

In practice, Maduro has executed a clear shift to the right in government. His economic policies have led to constant price rises and cuts to the wages and rights of workers. He has gifted mountains of cash and “aid” to the new capitalists born from the ranks of the bureaucracy due to its control over the state, and to sections of the traditional bourgeoisie who have made agreements with the government. He has allowed multinationals from China, Iran and Russia – so-called “friends” – to make juicy profits thanks to mixed companies and trade deals to exploit our natural resources.

While a section of the capitalists and US imperialism still favour an economic collapse to allow them to rebuild their social base and bring down Maduro in order to form a government like Brazil, Argentina or Colombia, another section is in favour of agreements, at least temporarily, with the government. They would like Maduro himself or sections of the military leadership or bureaucracy, armed with a “chavista” discourse, to lead a transition which liquidates the gains of the revolutionary process.

This shift to the right is in the context of a situation where the vast majority of the working class and poor are struggling hard to survive along with their families. The accumulated fall in GDP over the last 3 years is over 40% according to some – a situation only comparable with the impact of a war! Annual inflation is around 46,000% according to the IMF, which predicts it could reach and incredible 1,000,000%! It is difficult to know the real dimensions of the situation as the Bank of Venezuela has stopped publishing information.

Strengthening of bonapartist and bureaucratic tendencies in the government

The attempts by critical sectors within the chavista rank and file and the workers’ movement to struggle against this situation have been dispersed and limited for the time being given the difficulties which the economic collapse generates for the organisation and participation of the masses. The demoralisation and scepticism which has been generated among wide sectors of the population by the rightward turn and the lack of a united and independent organisation of the working class with a clear decisive programme, which unites the popular demands and the Left opposition to the bureaucracy, is also a grave difficulty.

As well as the aforementioned economic policies, the bureaucratic control over mass organisations which were built in the period of revolutionary growth such as the CSBT Trade Union Federation and the PSUV has been reinforced. The PSUV is more and more a bureaucratic machine in which all dissent is crushed.

The PSUV acts as an appendage of the state apparatus, in a similar way to the Communist parties of the former Stalinist states (the USSR etc), with the difference that Venezuela is not a deformed workers’ state based on a planned economy but a capitalist state based on capitalist relations of production and dependent on the world market to an extreme degree (due to the oil factor).

This development, of not leading a revolution to the end and transforming it into a genuine socialist revolution based on workers’ democracy, is not something new in history. Something similar happened in Nicaragua under the Sandinistas, the consequences of which are known. Maduro and his collaborators have a model to look up to: China, which is a clear promotor of state capitalism based on an authoritarian bonapartist regime which has broken any link with revolutionary traditions.

As in any bonapartist regime, they try to keep internal divisions within certain limits. Some sections which have gone too far in their corrupt practices, or who have demanded a more abrupt turn to the right have been purged for fear of provoking a social explosion. However, despite Maduro’s continuous pompous declarations about socialism and revolution, his policy consists in using the state and party apparatus, combined with some clientelist measures and selective repression and threats against critical voices, to manage capitalism and remain in power.

One of the possible consequences of the 4 August terrorist attack is that it can serve the bureaucracy to justify intensifying bonapartist and authoritarian measures and strengthening the tendency to criminalise protests and Left wing critics.

There is no way out under capitalism

After humiliating defeats in the regional and local elections in October and December 2017, the MUD was unable to mount a united challenge in the Presidential elections of May this year. Afraid of a new disaster, the majority of parties in the MUD decided not to stand. The MUD has eventually been dissolved and the new strategy of a section of the counter-revolutionary opposition is to take advantage of the terrible economic situation and social discontent to launch a so-called “Broad Front” (FA). They are attempting to leave behind (at least publicly) the discredited apparatus of the traditional right-wing parties, and present the FA as a coming together of social movements. For the time being they have had no success and their base remains passive and demoralised.

In the Presidential elections Maduro was re-elected with an abstention rate of over 50% and the support of less than 30% of the electorate. Imperialism and its Venezuelan puppets refused to recognise the results but their calls to protest on the streets were a failure. The bureaucracy tried to portray the result as a great victory, but this is easily seen through. Record abstention and the atmosphere of apathy during the campaign reflected the collapse in their authority, especially when compared with the enthusiasm provoked by Chavez’s electoral victories, Maduro’s first victory in 2013 and even with the mobilisation for the ANC elections only one year ago.

Popular discontent could become even sharper with the new measures announced by the government. Various economic policy chiefs have made declarations calling for the end of currency exchange controls, which instead of controlling inflation, as they predict, could aggravate it. The fundamental question remains the collapse of the productive economy and strike of investments, and the looting of oil wealth by the capitalists and bureaucracy. With or without currency controls, it will be very difficult for the masses to escape from generalised misery and scarcity.

Fight for a socialist, anti-capitalist, anti-bureaucratic policy. All power to the workers and poor

It would be a mistake to see the situation in Venezuela as separate from the political and economic processes taking place throughout Latin America and the world. In the current context, the space for a stable counter-revolution in Venezuela (be it led by the right wing or the bureaucracy itself) is not the same as in other historical moments. There is a sharpening of the class struggle throughout the continent – mass mobilisations in Brazil and Argentina, the historic victory of AMLO in Mexico, the growth of the Left in Colombia and the insurrectionary movement in Nicaragua.

The campaign launched by the PSUV bureaucracy to denigrate the mass uprising in Nicaragua, by comparing it to Venezuela’s ‘guarimbas’ is symptomatic. The reality is that it is the working class and popular base of the Sandinistas which is mobilising, developing organs of self-organisation and fighting against the savage repression and capitalist policies of the bourgeois bonapartist government of Daniel Ortega. Nicaragua is an example of what happens when a leadership which arises from a revolutionary movement goes over to the camp of the capitalist class and applies measures against the working class and poor.

Weak and parasitic Venezuelan capitalism cannot guarantee a dignified life to the masses. The international ruling class presents the paralysis of the Venezuelan economy as the result of “socilialism”. The reality is that the Bolivarian revolution was not completed. Chavez implemented progressive reforms which raised living standards. But the measures necessary to end capitalism were never taken. Not the expropriation of the banks, land estates, or big companies, or the destruction of the capitalist state with its bureaucracy, laws and institutions. A state really led by the workers and poor was never formed.

The only alternative, now more than ever, is a genuinely socialist programme which takes, once and for all, the economic and political power from the hands of the capitalists and bureaucrats and puts it in the hands of the workers and poor.

Join Izquierda Revolucionaria and fight for such a programme!
• Direct workers control in all public and private companies to struggle for a freeze in prices, local food production, and the satisfaction of all the needs of the people against capitalist and bureaucratic sabotage.
• Wage increases above inflation. Discussion and application of collective wage agreements. Incorporate all sub-contracted workers on permanent contracts. Re-employ all revolutionary class fighters sacked by bosses and bureaucrats. Unemployment pay for all the unemployed.
• Confiscation and nationalisation of all closed and under-utilised companies and barren lands, with the immediate hiring of workers, farmers and students to work on them, developing democratic workers’ control. Nationalise all businesses which sabotage the economy under democratic control.
• Create a state company with a monopoly on foreign trade. Workers’ and democratic control to fight against speculation, inflation and corruption and guarantee full food self-sufficiency.
• Nationalisation of the banks, land and industry under workers control, to democratically plan the whole economy in the interests of the people to satisfy social need
• Create a public health system which is free and universal and guarantees quality care. Expropriate private clinics and put them under democratic control to guarantee healthcare to all with no discrimination.
• Create a public construction company to build infrastructure, homes, universities etc, run under democratic control to commit to a plan of building 500,000 homes per year, and end the housing deficit in 3 years.
• Non-payment of the foreign debt! The imperialists are submitting us to misery via sanctions to pay through our misery for their massive wealth accumulation.
• Create a socialist state based on workers, farmers, and students’ councils, on a local, regional and national level. All representatives must be elected and re-callable at any time by assemblies of their sector. Representatives should dace the accountability of their base at least every 6 months and earn no more than the average wage of a skilled worker, to put an end to corrupt bureaucracy.

Neither capitalists nor bureaucrats! All power to the workers and poor!</s>CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela will begin holding foreign exchange auctions on Tuesday, President Nicolas Maduro said in a Monday evening broadcast, as part of a broad economic plan to help the struggling OPEC nation emerge from a hyperinflationary crisis.

Maduro on Friday announced a massive minimum wage hike, a 96 percent devaluation of the bolivar currency and a plan to peg prices, pensions and the bolivar currency’s exchange rate to the petro, an elusive state-backed cryptocurrency.

Opposition critics and business leaders called the plan “incoherent” and predicted it will fail like repeated economic reform efforts under Maduro that quickly stalled.

“We will have a new floating exchange rate... it will start tomorrow,” Maduro said, adding that the government as of next week plans to hold three auctions per week, which would later increase to five.

“The president of the Central Bank and the Finance Minister will explain the terms of the first auction,” he said.

Venezuela’s currency control system, first created 15 years ago, provided subsidized foreign exchange throughout the decade-long oil boom.

But the 2014 fall in oil prices left the system struggling to provide dollars to the economy, leaving businesses unable to import goods and services and spurring product shortages.

Venezuela’s annual inflation rate in July topped 80,000 percent, according to the opposition-run congress, and the International Monetary Fund estimates it will reach 1,000,000 percent by year-end.

Maduro says his government is the victim of an “economic war” led by his political adversaries, with the help of Washington.</s>City workers in wages protest: Members of the City Council staff yesterday protested the non-payment of their wages, salaries and National Insurance Scheme Contributions. (Terrence Thompson photo)</s>You know you're in trouble when your only hope for stability is something as notoriously unstable as cryptocurrency. And yes, Venezuela appears to be very much in trouble.

According to Bloomberg, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced on Friday that he intended to link a new national currency, the sovereign bolivar, to a cryptocurrency of his own government's making — the Petro. This is the first case of a government tying its economic fortunes so closely to that of any digital currency, and suggests a possible exit path for a country ravaged by hyperinflation.

That is, it would suggest an exit path ... if the plan had any hope of turning the country's messy economic situation around. Instead, the act devalues the bolivar by around 96 percent as it takes its new form while leaving many questions about Petro unanswered.

The changes supposedly went into effect today.

Hyperinflation expert and Johns Hopkins economics professor Steve Hanke cautioned to CNBC that the NEM blockchain-based Petro token likely won't be some magical cure-all for Venezuela's ills.

"This is a smoke-and-mirrors operation typical of Venezuela — I'll believe it when I see it," he told the publication. "The problem with the Petro is it's a scam, it doesn't even trade."

The Petro, meanwhile, is allegedly itself backed by oil — although that too has been called into question.

"They’re setting up a stand on the front porch of Venezuela to sell snake oil that’s essentially backed by nothing," managing partner Russ Dallen told McClatchy in March. "People believe it's backed by oil, but if you read the contract, it’s really not."

And while you may be itching to mortgage your future for an opportunity to score some Petro coins, those in the United States will have to wait. Back in March, President Donald Trump banned the purchase of the digital currency. It appears unlikely that the ban will be revised any time soon.

So, in summation, the 96 percent devalued Venezuelan bolivar — renamed the sovereign bolivar — is now linked to the Petro cryptocurrency. Petro, meanwhile, is a token that's supposedly backed by Venezuelan oil, yet has been called a scam.

Yeah, it sure looks like the people of Venezuela are still in trouble.</s>Venezeula has announced it will be pegging its economy to a national cryptocurrency as it looks to save itself from economic ruin.

The crisis-hit South American country, which recently saw its hyper-inflation grow to more than 1,000,000 per cent, has announced it will be tying the bolivar to the government's own petro cryptocurrency.

As part of the move, the bolivar will be devalued 96 per cent, from 285,000 to the dollar to six million. In addition, corporate tax rates will go up, as will the minimum wage. Overall, Venezuela hopes that wages, pensions and prices will all be pegged to the new currency.

Announcing the news, President Nicolas Maduro said that the new "sovereign bolivar" would help the country to bounce back from its recent hardships, which he has blamed on the United States.

"I want the country to recover and I have the formula. Trust me," Maduro said on state television. "They've dollarized our prices. I am petrolising salaries and petrolising prices.

"We are going to convert the petro into the reference that pegs the entire economy's movements."

Venezeula launched its cryptocurrenncy back in February as it looked to raise cash. At the launch, President Maduro said that around 100 million petro tokens would be issued, each of which would be backed by a barrel of the nation's vast oil reserves.

However many observers warned the scheme could be a scam, with US President Donald Trump quickly signing an executive order banning Americans from investing.
• What is blockchain? Everything you need to know
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro says that the wages for workers in Venezuela must be linked to the petro.