[3][4] Announced in December 2017, it was supposed to be backed by the country's oil and mineral reserves, and was intended to supplement Venezuela's plummeting hard bolívar currency, as a means of circumventing U.S. sanctions and accessing international financing.

[5][6] As of January, 2020, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro decreed it mandatory to pay with petro for government document services and airplane fuel for planes flying international flights.

[8] Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro announced the petro in a televised address on 3 December 2017, stating that it would be backed by Venezuela's reserves of oil, gasoline, gold, and diamonds.

[9][10] Maduro stated that the petro would allow Venezuela to "advance in issues of monetary sovereignty",[11] and that it would make "new forms of international financing" available to the country.

[9] Opposition leaders, however, expressed doubt due to Venezuela's economic turmoil,[10] pointing to the falling value of the Venezuelan bolívar, its fiat currency, and $140 billion in foreign debt.

[12] On 5 January 2018, Maduro announced that Venezuela would issue 100 million tokens of the petro,[13] which would put the value of the entire issuance at just over $6 billion.

It also established a cryptocurrency government advisory group called VIBE to act as "an institutional, political and legal base" from which to launch the petro.

It also suggested that the government accept tax payments in petros as well as allow PDVSA, the country's state-owned oil company, to incorporate cryptocurrencies in its dealings with foreign companies.[14][when?]

[15][4][16] The government stated the pre-sale raised US$3.3 billion,[16] though according to Steve Hanke no independent audits were made to verify this claim.

Due to the unorganized launch by the Venezuelan government, scammers were able to establish their own "petro" currencies on various cryptocurrency platforms, though these schemes did not garner much success.

[16] On 21 February 2018, petro gold, a gold-backed cryptocurrency, was announced in a televised speech given by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

[28] As of 2018[update] Venezuela legally allowed the use of petro for virtually any payment including oil trade, taxes, fees, real estate, gasoline, flights and more.

[29] Weiss Cryptocurrency Ratings states that the white paper shows no method as to how the Venezuelan government will base the petro on oil prices, concluding that the currency "is a worthless token".