Venezuela Planning to Build Villas for the Homeless with Petro Token

Venezuela, the financially distressed yet oil-rich Latin American nation led by a far-left government for decades, is taking on a new initiative as it aims to prop up demand for its own cryptocurrency, the petro.

The new villas that are to be built are part of housing project in the country that aims to give “homeless families a decent and accessible housing solution,” the local news service Telesur reported.

According to the report, President Nicolas Maduro has approved funding for the project amounting to 75 billion bolivars (USD 750,000) and 909,000 petros. A Venezuelan official added that the controversial cryptocurrency will “represent a protective shield for housing construction,” possibly hinting to the fact that the inflation-plagued national fiat currency would be unable to do the same.

The petro, which has been deemed a scam by several rating sites, raised more than USD 5 billion through an initial coin offering (ICO), according to the Venezuelan president.

Despite coming from the leader of a country, the claim is impossible to verify, and even Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin has voiced his concern on Twitter, saying about the token:

“This is why the crypto community needs to move away from “yay, blockchain” and zoom in specifically on what is the trust model of each project. This one is definitely quite centralized, and dependent in multiple ways on a central party (venez gov) that seems not very trustworthy.”