Registered users with wallets in Criptolago have an announcement board to offer petros. Because of the oversupply and low interest in buying, some users choose to sell off their PTR funds.
Currently, hundreds of Venezuelans are seeking an alternative that allows them to exchange or sell their funds in Petro (PTR). The Venezuelan exchange Criptolago announced, last February 27th, that it had enabled the peer-to-peer (P2P) trading of the government’s cryptocurrency project.
However, it seems as though the initiative has not provided an effective solution, given the low interest in buying observed on the platform.
The registered and verified users that own wallets in Criptolago can now transfer their funds in PTR from PetroApp to their wallet on the Venezuelan platform. From there, they can offer them for sale or purchase, when an interested party accepts the offer, an agreement is reached.
This is a P2P market where people go to buy and trade or exchange the government’s cryptocurrency. It is observed on the billboard that some offers have been made starting from 0.1 PTR, the minimum amount allowed to trade. It should be noted that the transactions on the platform have a cost of 2%.
As soon as Criptolago announced that it had enabled the P2P trading of PTR, some offers began to arrive. According to the system, in less than 48 hours more than 260 offers, mostly for sale, have been uploaded. Due to the oversupply and low interest in buying, some users choose to sell off their PTR funds.
The average rate observed on the billboard is of about 1,800,000 bolivars (VES) per unit, even though the Patria (Homeland) system, the platform used by the Venezuelan government to provide subsidies, indicates that the value reached VES 4,043,700.42.
A user requested the exchange to minimize speculation and display the complete book of orders, in addition to the full volume for each pair of cryptocurrencies. He also wants the financial institution to accelerate the time of fiat funding and withdrawal of the wallet, and to expand the P2P exchange to more peers.
Several users also asked Criptolago administrators to restore the purchase of Bitcoin with Petro, which was active until recently and was canceled for unknown reasons. The option still can be seen on the platform, but it is active for the exchange of Bitcoin for Petro, which has created confusion among those interested in this option.
According to other comments, the new Criptolago’s P2P trading proves that Petro is not achieving the objective for which it was created since it cannot be used as a means of payment or exchange due to the few available options. Before reserving it as a long-term savings method, many Venezuelans prefer to exchange their PTR funds for the devalued VES, which implies losing more than 50% of its official value.
Last April 2018, President Nicolás Maduro announced the names of 16 exchanges in which transactions with PTR could be conducted, but not all of them are operational. However, there are still some options, such as Antwerp, where PTR can be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash and Ether.
Last January, several users registered on the LocalBitcoins and Hodl Hodl exchange platforms published P2P sale and purchase announcements with PTR. The emergence of exchanges with PTR in foreign crypto exchanges caught people’s attention as their trading, driven by the Maduro’s government, was theoretically limited to a handful of Venezuelan exchanges.
By Alexander Salazar
