17 May Venezuela Appears to Have Hard Forked The Petro
On May 5, Venezuela’s government announced that its controversial oil-backed cryptocurrency, El Petro, would go offline for maintenance until May 10.
However, observers have since identified that the official Petro block explorer now lists May 5, 2020, as the date that its genesis block was mined.
Other block explorers record Oct.13, 2018, as the date for Petro’s genesis block — suggesting that there is more than one Petro chain currently in existence.
Petro suspected of quietly forking
After the maintenance was completed, the National Superintendency of Cryptoassets announced it had completed major infrastructure upgrades necessitating that PetroApp users update their Petro wallet addresses in order to continue using the platform.
The extreme hyperinflation suffered in Venezuela has long driven demand for Bitcoin (BTC) in the country — with Venezuela hosting among the strongest peer-to-peer trading volumes worldwide.
Crypto adoption grows among Venezuelan merchants
Earlier this…