The Venezuelan Housing Ministry is to initiate a fund to support the country’s homeless by constructing homes for them using the national cryptocurrency, the Petro, according to Cointelegraph.
Minister of Housing Ildemaro Villarroel has called the project the ‘Great Mission for Venezuela Housing (GMVV)’, and to be initiated in the second quarter and financed by Petro. He announced that 33 companies have started logistics, financial and technical testing in preparation for starting the project. Minister Villarroel explained:
“Together with the governors, we are reviewing the plans that we will begin in the second quarter, in this second quarter GMVV will have an injection of financial resources, which this year will be protected and established with [the] Petro.”
According to GMVV, the government has finished building more than 2 million houses but it is unclear if these are all for allocation to the country’s homeless population, which stands at the same number, according to recent figures.
New source Criptotendencia has cited a government official who claimed that the Petro would create a “protective shield” for house construction. Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro authorized a budget of 75 billion bolivars (approximately USD 750,000) and 909,000 Petros for the new homes.
This is the second social support project proposed by the Maduro government this year. In May, President Maduro announced a government plan to initiate a bank for students and young people in his country starting with a state donation of 20 million Petros.
According to local news source Noticas24, Maduro’s student plan is to promote the mining of cryptocurrency by high school children, with each school having its own mining operation, using school IT departments’ computers to mine cryptocurrencies.
This move, along with the USD 1.2 billion startups for his planned student bank, is designed to raise funds for young people currently enlisted on the state-issued ‘Chamba Juvenil Plan’, an initiative to combat youth unemployment. Its goal is 100% youth unemployment in Venezuela. Currently, over a million young people are part of the Chamba Juvenil Plan, and the government expects that half a million more will be added in the coming months.
Bitcoin trading has increased significantly this year, with Venezuelan Bolivar to Bitcoin exchange increasing by 138% from March to April. The country still awaits the launch of the Petro Gold, a national cryptocurrency backed by precious metals, announced back in February 2018.
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