Venezuela, one of the countries with the world’s most oil, but which has been locked out of trade due to years of US sanctions and has seen a huge economic crisis and hyperinflation, has started to need cryptocurrencies more for trade.

Customers of PDVSA, the Venezuelan state-owned oil company, are required to terminate transactions with the general license provided by the US by May 31. After that, these customers will have to individually obtain special permission from the US government to trade with Venezuela. The US had announced that the sanctions were imposed due to the lack of electoral reforms.

They started to switch to USDT

According to Reuters, one of the largest global news agencies, Venezuela has already seen the impending US sanctions and has been slowly switching to USDT in oil trade since last year… Reuters sources also said that with the return of US sanctions, Venezuelan officials are considering accelerating and increasing the use of USDT.

The oil minister also gave the signal
Speaking to Reuters last week, Venezuelan Oil Minister Pedro Tellechea said, “There are many currency options in contracts. The use of cryptocurrency in some contracts is also acceptable,” he said, signaling that the sanctions would actually be responded to in this way. It is known that the most widely used currency in oil trade in the world is the US dollar. In fact, for many years, the US has been imposing the dollar to be the main currency for oil, especially in the Middle East region.

They even asked for USDT as a prepayment

In the detailed news of Reuters, another important information was given and it was also stated that PDVSA demands the price corresponding to half of the cargo as a prepayment and in USDT in many deals. It was also stated that PDVSA requires the counterparty to hold cryptocurrency in its digital wallet and demands this as a prerequisite.

In the news, it was stated that the lack of regulatory compliance of many countries in trading with cryptocurrencies posed difficulties in oil trade with Venezuela, it was written that the parties made transactions through intermediary institutions and the South American country earned less revenue than expected due to the commissions paid.