India rejects Venezuelan cryptography despite a 30% discount.

The government of India has formally rejected the cryptocurrency backed by the state of Venezuela, the petro, despite an attempt to attract India at a 30% discount. Depending on the oil of the Latin American country, a constant and uninterrupted supply is key for the growth of one of the most populated nations in the world.

Venezuela is in the middle of a dramatically bad economic crisis, aggravated by US sanctions, forcing its government to devise increasingly creative ways to stay afloat.

The Indian foreign minister, Sushma Swaraj, explained: "We can not have any trade in cryptocurrencies since it is prohibited by the Reserve Bank of India. We will see what means we can use for trade. " She spoke during a conference designed to highlight the links between her country, Venezuela and Iran.

The two countries that court India are the focus of economic anger in the United States and tougher sanctions. Iran also supplies oil to India, and has also been subject to more bellicose attitudes on the part of the current US administration. Rumors have long revolved around the Islamic Republic flirting with its own version of a state-backed cryptography.

So far, only Venezuela has officially launched a currency designed specifically to thwart sanctions, the petro.

At the end of April of this year, the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, proposed a double strategy to maintain the flow of oil for more than one billion people in the subcontinent, while at the same time increasing the adoption of the petroleum. Essentially, if India makes the payment in petros, Mr. Maduro promised substantial discounts in prices of up to 30%. It was not as long as he imagined: Iran and India agreed to give up using US dollars in the future oil trade.

India has its own lukewarm relationship with the cryptocurrency, as its central bank has mobilized strongly against adoption, employing legal measures and law enforcement to combat the national interest. Its Central Bank, barely a month ago, prohibited all institutions under the regulatory domain from trading with cryptocurrencies and insisted that they must prohibit their use and purchase.

Nor can banks reach an agreement with decentralized money. The government has used recurring themes of terrorism and crime to get rid of low-level fiduciary denominations popular in terms of circulation. Due to the clumsy intervention and the resulting instability, the cryptocurrency has gained popularity in the country.

On the broader strategy of avoiding countries such as Iran and Venezuela due to fears of reprisals from the United States, "we do not make our foreign policy pressured by other countries," Swaraj emphasized. "India follows only the sanctions of the UN, and not the unilateral sanctions of any country."