Venezuela Named Cheapest Place In The World To Mine Bitcoin Amid Petro Launch: Report

A new report indicates that Venezuela, due to the price of its electricity, is the cheapest place in the world to mine bitcoins, the most popular cryptocurrency today. The process costs roughly US$530, less than half the amount needed to produce the digital currency in the second-cheapest country on the list, Trinidad and Tobago, where it cost US$1,190 to produce one bitcoin, according to the International Business Times.

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The third cheapest country to mine a bitcoin is Uzbekistan, where it costs US$1,790. While the most expensive country to mine, a currency is South Korea, where it's valued at US$26,170. The cost is over twice the amount of the value of a bitcoin in today's market.

The report comes amid the launch of the "Petro", Venezuela's very own commodity-secured cryptocurrency, the first of its kind in the world.
The Venezuelan government announced the Petro's pre-launch yesterday.

“The Petro is born and we are going to have a total success for the welfare of Venezuela,” President Nicolas Maduro said. The President added that it will be a “very busy” day since the government will be working on forging strategic alliances.

The manual of acquisition and commercialization of the Petro will now be available and will begin the pre-sale of this digital currency with 82.4 million units available. The manual is available for download in several languages.

“The largest and most important companies and Blockchain in the world are with Venezuela, we are going to sign agreements,” Maduro expressed. “Six weeks ago I announced the creation of the Venezuelan cryptocurrency,” the president added stating the government had been working to launch the currency since then.

Maduro previously announced that the value of the entire Petro issuance of 100 million tokens would be just over US$6 billion.

The cryptocurrency, which will be backed by the oil resources of the country, aims to begin a new economic era in the nation.