Originally Posted by
Wraith
I'd like to thank Loki, whose continued interest in cryptocurrency got this thread bumped, which in turn reminded me of the whole Venezuelan Petro thing. I'd forgotten about it, and this inspired me to catch up. The story's a bit predictable, but still managed to entertain me, so let me share the short version:
Venezuela announced that the Petro sold $3.3 billion in tokens during the pre-sale. Maduro personally conducted the independent audit to verify that he had the money. Seeing as blockchains are publicly inspectable, everybody ran to check to see which idiots the tokens had sold to, and found that they were just sitting there. Claims about the amount sold and the popularity of the token continued to be made, and Maduro promised to start sharing the ample wealth with the citizens. Venezuelan citizens would only have to wait a couple more months for distributions to start. Presumably this process was slowed down by the election Maduro was running at the time. Anyone who asked where these sales were happening was put on a list. Companies were awarded contracts, agencies were created and staffed, Russians were consulted, it was all very exciting.
Meanwhile, back on the blockchain, no tokens were moving. They never would. At the time of this post, not a single token has ever been traded or used or done anything except sit there. The Petro is a real thing, it had some updates after first release, and the code wasn't just a straight copy & paste. Not just that. Clearly somebody was working on the Petro, but they were just as clearly in over their heads. I don't know if Maduro even realized that blockchains, by their nature, can be verified. My guess is he heard about this crypto thing and came up with his genius scam, then told some flunky to make it happen. They probably realized at some point that nothing they built would ever fool people outside Venezuela, and they didn't need to build anything to fool the people inside Venezuela. I can't even be totally sure Maduro knew he was lying; he seems like the type of person who wouldn't react well to being told his idea was dumb.
As soon as Maduro "won" the election they just stopped talking about the Petro, and that was it. Those companies and agencies that sprung up turned out to be cardboard facades with nothing behind them. Nobody's really sure if any part of the whole show was real, but it's obvious that the majority was not.