Venezuela’s cryptocurrency is one of the worst investments ever - The Washington Post

First sentence of the article: "There are two types of countries, just as there are two types of companies: ones that are doing well, and ones that are pivoting to blockchain." On a related note, ICOs delivered at least 3.5x more capital to blockchain startups than VC since 2017 (TechCrunch)

"Which is why Venezuela's government has just launched the petro, its own cryptocurrency backed by oil. Well, at least that's what the regime is saying. In reality, the petro isn't a crypto, it isn't a currency, and it isn't backed by oil in any meaningful sense. It's just a way for Caracas to try to get around the sanctions against it while raising money from the only people more clueless than itself.

It isn't an exaggeration to say that the petro might be the most obviously horrible investment ever. There isn't even a story you can tell yourself about why it might work. That's clear enough if you just try to answer what it is exactly. It's not, as we said before, a crypto. You can't “mine” new petros by solving complicated math problems on your computer like you can with bitcoin. You can only buy them from the Venezuelan government. And while it's true that it says it's going to set up a system to change this, it can't even keep its story straight about how that would work."

Venezuela’s cryptocurrency is one of the worst investments ever - The Washington Post