Venezuela’s token El Petro, the world’s first state cryptocurrency, would have raised $ 5 billion in its initial money offer (ICO), according to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. However, upon a review of the claim CCN and Criptomoedas Fácil, the numbers announced by Maduro have great chances of being false given that the announced value is impossible to have been collected. According to the whitepaper on the official site of the initiative, exactly 38,400,000 tokens were on offer worth $ 60 each token (not counting the discount of 60% announced by the government during this phase). Crunching the numbers, the maximum the government could raise would be $ 2.304 billion, not counting the discount. If Maduro tells the truth in his announcement, he does not tell the truth in the official document of the project and in all previous announcements made by the president himself. After all, according to a new statement released, all tokens were sold at 46% off the officially amount announced (not counting the discounts). The news creates another contradiction in the Venezuelan initiative, which already faces innumerable biased views. The Venezuelan Congress has already declared that the currency is illegal and unconstitutional and that the country’s National Assembly has also recently condemned the petro as a fraud and a threat to its potential investors. On the other hand, major Chinese credit agency Dagong had better things to say about the petro. The Venezuelan president explained that after completing the 30 days of the pre-sale, there were two hundred thousand nine hundred and twenty seven( 200,927 )offers of intent to buy were received from Petro, by 133 countries. Russia and the PetroThe Russian Government has denied its involvement with the Venezuelan cryptocurrency “El Petro”. According to Russian publication TASS, Artyom Kozhin, deputy director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dismissed Time Magazine’s report as fake news and stressed that there is no involvement of Russian officials with the Venezuelan project.”During the meeting held on February 21, 2018, in Moscow, Venezuelan Minister of Economy and Finance, [Simon] Zerpa, delivered a booklet on the crypto-coins to Russia, exclusively for the purpose of informing Russian partners about this project, ” the official revealed, insisting that Russia was not involved in the petro while confirming that the Venezuelan official had shared details of the cryptocurrency. TASS also reported that Maduro sought a number of trading partners for the Petro, including the Russian ruble, Turkish lira, euros, and the yuan. Investors will be able to trade those currencies on Friday, he said, although it is unclear where they will be able to do so. Venezuela has also not ruled on the matter. The much-publicized Time article, now discredited by the Russian government, claimed Russian officials and Kremlin-connected entrepreneurs helped the Venezuelan government launch Petro, ”In other words, Petro was, in fact, a collaboration – a joint venture half-hidden between Venezuelan and Russian authorities and businessmen whose goal was to erode the power of US sanctions.”Featured image from Shutterstock