Venezuela said it had generated US$735 million from the pre-sale of its cryptocurrency backed by crude oil. President Nicolas Maduro saw cryptocurrency sales as a way around Venezuela’s severe cash shortage resulting from U.S. sanctions and dropping crude oil production and prices. The government has issued a buyer’s manual for El Petro, confirming those willing to buy some of the oil-backed cryptocurrency can use either hard currency or other cryptocurrencies. Both Venezuelan nationals and foreigners are welcome to buy Petros. Bitcoin.com, however, notes that no prices were displayed on the Etherdelta platform that Caracas is using for order placements and no orders have been matched. This, the website points out, could be the result of a technical glitch. The pre-sale offering involved 82.4 million Petro tokens, and according to Venezuela’s Minister for University Education, Science, and Technology, traffic to the website where the tokens are sold jumped fivefold shortly […]