It is a cryptocurrency or Venezuelan digital currency based on the technology of the block chain backed by the reserves of various natural resources of Venezuela such as oil, gold, diamonds and gas. So far, each petro would be backed by a barrel of oil from the Venezuelan crude oil basket. It would be a partially preminated currency with future mineable emissions.
Among the basic features are:
• State support for reserves of natural resources such as oil, gas, gold and diamonds
• Possibility of international transactions
• Registration of digital transactions through the Blockchain Observatory of Venezuela
• Maintains encrypted mathematical algorithms that do not allow interception of agents external to yours
• Electronic transactions without intermediaries
• Immediate transactions without commissions
• Possibility of being exchanged through virtual exchange houses
• It is a partially pre-matched currency, so the following issues will be mineable in order to have control of all currencies under an initial auction-style currency (ICO) offer. The petro may be mined by Venezuelan citizens with the use of common computers without special features.
Legal context
• In the current Organic Hydrocarbons Law, in its article 9, it specifies that the primary activities (exploration, extraction, collection, transport and initial storage -all this in Venezuelan territory, including the works that are required-) are reserved to the State, all according to article 302 of the current National Constitution. According to article 8 (Chapter II, Section II) the "Ministry of Energy and Mines", as it was called this entity at the time of the enactment of the law, has competence in everything related to and related to the administration of hydrocarbons, including future oil sales contracts, considered a commodity worldwide by all countries and kingdoms.
• However, the property in itself of the oil fields can not be included in such future sales and are expressly prohibited by article 3 of the law of yore:
• "OF THE PROPERTY OF THE DEPOSITS
• Article 3: The existing hydrocarbon deposits in the national territory, whatever their nature, including those that lie under the bed of the territorial sea, on the continental shelf, in the exclusive economic zone and within national borders, belong to the Republic and are assets of the public domain, therefore inalienable and imprescriptible. "
• The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, according to its Constitution and its Laws, is the owner and sovereign of extracting, trading today and also in the future -always according to WTO rules of which Venezuela is a full member since 1995-, and exporting all its hydrocarbons as appropriate to their interests, making the reservation that the territory, works and mills (everything that is not hydrocarbon) that are expressly prohibited in their alienation both to present and in time to come.