Lolly, Lolly, Lolly Get Your Petros Here!

He expects you to buy each petro for $60, because “that's the price of a barrel of oil”. Except Venezuelan extra-heavy crude isn't worth that much when loaded on a tanker, much less on the ground, and certainly not in Ayacucho 1, the completely undeveloped oil field that Maduro chose for the “backing”.

Wait, wait, wait, the dictator says. He can give you a discount, say 60%, so you feel better about your investment. Let's say you bought one – did you really buy a claim over a barrel of oil? Oh no, you did read the fine print of that backing promise, didn't you? It's BS. Don't take it from me, Vitalik called it first. Read page 14 of the whitepaper closely: Maduro's promise is to accept petros at a rate he himself sets – a barrel of oil's worth minus a discretionary discount that will be at least 10%, but – get this – without an upper bound!

The cons don't end there. Maduro will accept petros at his arbitrary rate and give you back... bolívares. Yes, the currency that you can't buy anywhere in the world except Venezuela, the currency he hyperinflated and keeps printing like there's no tomorrow. While you've been reading this, the bolívar has probably gone down like a few percent. It's the currency that stopped working.

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