New way to send & receive cryptocurrency without internet developed in Venezuela

In Venezuela, poor Internet services are a serious impediment to people using cryptocurrency transactions, at least until now. Cryptoalgo, a local virtual asset exchange platform, has just announced the launch of a service for processing cryptocurrency transactions via text messages, which would not require an internet connection.

A few months ago Nicolas Maduro, president of Venezuela, called on technology companies to collaborate with the development of alternative payment methods to the use of the traditional banking system, specifying that these methods should be compatible with the newly created Petro cryptocurrency.

Cryptoalgo maintainers enabled offline transactions for any token supported by the platform, so Venezuelans will also be able to transact that involve Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dash, in addition to Petro, without using an Internet connection. Cryptoalgo also has a module to make transactions with the Bolivar, the traditional Venezuelan currency.

The service is now available, although for now only some of the users registered on the platform will be able to access it, although this is only the first of the drawbacks, as Venezuela has yet to set an exchange rate for Petro. 

Due to its low stability, Petro is still seen as an inefficient method of exchange. While project managers (Venezuelan government officials) say Petro is worth about $58 per token, he has been seen on various exchange platforms for sale for $11. Its current price in Criptoalgo is 20 dollars per token.

Cryptolago is Venezuela’s most popular trading platform, and has on several occasions demonstrated its ability to diversify. Some time ago this platform partnered with virtual assets payment processing company Glufco to develop a kind of payment card that supported transactions with various cryptocurrencies.

However, this is not the first project related to virtual transactions without an Internet connection in Venezuela. A couple of years ago Dash Text service was launched; an offline cryptocurrency wallet that became very popular in the South American virtual asset community. Since its launch, almost 7,000 offline transactions have been recorded via Dash Text, although it is worth noting that most are made in Venezuelan territory.

On average, 30 conventional Dash transactions are performed, while between 3 and 4 offline transactions are recorded. While its popularity is still relatively low, it could be a matter of time before it increases the use of this kind of transactions.