Venezuela’s leader Nicolas Maduro has invited members of the regional ALBA-TCP bloc to join him in launching a new cryptocurrency.
**N. Maduro
Named petro, the cryptocurrency will be backed by the country’s oil, gas, gold and diamond riches.
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“I have a proposal for the economic teams of the ALBA: to assume jointly the creation of an oil-backed petro cryptocurrency, which will be supported with Venezuelan oil and that very soon we will sustain with the wealth of Venezuela’s gold and diamonds,” Maduro told the delegates of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) on Friday [12 January 2018].
Meeting the high-ranking officials from Antigua & Barbuda, Cuba, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Saint Vicente and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, the President of Venezuela invited them to join him in overcoming what he had previously called a “financial blockade” imposed by the United States.
US President Donald Trump has denied being “racist” in the wake of a scandal and wide condemnation triggered by his alleged reference to Haiti and African nations as “s***holes” amid attempts to reach a deal on immigrant children.
**Photo: Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. | Author: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
“I’m not a racist. I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed, that I can tell you,” Trump told reporters on Sunday [14 January] in Florida, where he was having dinner with Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.