Venezuelans will receive Petro airdrops if they register for the coin’s wallet

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Updated on Mar 11, 2020

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Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, recently announced an airdrop involving the country's oil-backed cryptocurrency, Petro.
The airdrop will deliver 0.5 Petro to anyone who registers with PetroApp, a Petro-friendly wallet created by the government.
While Petro was created as a way for the country to bypass sanctions and deal with inflation, it was never as accepted as the president had hoped.

Recent reports from Venezuela state that the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, recently made a new announcement involving the country’s national cryptocurrency, Petro. According to him, the country will organize a Petro airdrop, where everyone who registers for PetroApp — the coin’s wallet — will receive 0.5 Petros.

Venezuela’s authorities launched Petro in February last week, hoping that the coin would be accepted by the country’s population and that it might help battle severe inflation. However, the oil-backed coin was not nearly as successful as Maduro had expected it to be.

Meanwhile, the government also developed PetroApp, which allows people to pay for goods and services via cryptocurrency. Further, PetroApp users can even send and receive coins on their phones by using the app.

In other words, this is more than just a traditional crypto wallet. Apart from Petro, the app also supports three other cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), and Dash (DASH).

Did Petro fail as a cryptocurrency?

As many are likely aware, Venezuela’s national fiat currency, the bolivar, lost most of its value in the last few years. Since then, the country started working on a plan to shift towards digital currency use. While many did turn to crypto for help, they did not show much interest in Petro itself.

The country’s new move seems to be an attempt to change that.

Venezuela also faced a lot of political problems after its president, Nicolas Maduro, was not recognized as the nation’s true leader by the international community. This is what led to the sanctions and inflation that has been damaging the country ever since.

Due to the cryptocurrency’s borderless nature, Venezuela’s authorities saw it as a valid method of bypassing sanctions. However, the plan backfired when Petro failed to get adopted, and the number of firms that are accepting Petro payments is still rather low.