Venezuelans Are Selling Petro On LocalBitcoins For Half The Price

New reports in the altcoin news and rumors show that more and more Venezuelans are selling the Petro cryptocurrency which was recently airdropped to them at half the official price. Even though the government claims to have fixed the value of one PTR at $60, many people are apparently selling the cryptocurrency on LocalBitcoins at around $30 to $40.

A new Reddit thread shows that Venezuelans are turning to LocalBitcoins to sell their airdropped Petro amid the disastrous economic conditions. This follows a major airdrop which, as reported, was carried out by the government to more than 6 million people in December 2019.

The Reddit user claims that Venezuelans are selling Petro online because the government initially allowed the usage of PTR for buying products through an app – but later shut it down as people flooded to the few stores supporting it.

There are government exchanges which are reported to support PTR too, however, their exchange rate deviated too much from the “official” price of the cryptocurrency. Therefore, the only options for Venezuelans now appears to be LocalBitcoins.

At press time, we can see several listings which accept Petro in exchange for Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. Still, all of them appear to be inactive right now. These listings were still shown on the main page on LocalBitcoins on January 20.

As some of the sellers told the cryptonews media, buying Bitcoin (BTC) for their Petro (PTR) holdings seems to be the rational move that Venezuelans have right now. They explained that the price is down because it was referenced from a local exchange, Amberescoin, which supported PTR. However, the rate at which they Venezuelans are selling Petro now is 1 PTR for 0.0036 BTC, which is close to $30.

The logic now is simple – most of the people in Venezuela want to get either Bolivars (the national currency) or BTC. When they get Bolivars, they can actually spend the money while when getting BTC, they can use it as a store of value.

There is apparently a Telegram group too where Venezuelans discuss and try to exchange Petros between themselves. The main things that people buy with PTR include food, rice, flour and sugar.