No one is using or selling Venezuela’s alleged oil-backed cryptocurrency

Venezuela’s oil-backed cryptocurrency is hardly used, and the government has made no move to tap into its oil reserves as promised, a report from Reuters found last week.

The petro can’t be found on any major bitcoin exchange, including Coinbase or Bitfinex, and it isn’t accepted by retailers. Reuters found few buyers through online forums. Transactions of petro are kept anonymous, but their frequency and volume look low when matched up with the government’s claims.

Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro said that by the end of its initial coin offering on March 20th, petro sales raked in $5 billion, and the funds are paying for imported goods. But a cabinet minister involved in the project told Reuters that the coin’s technology was still in development, and nobody has been able to use the petro. The government agency in charge of the petro, the Superintendence of Cryptoassets, doesn’t have a physical office, and its website is also down.