CoinDeskPolicyPublished on 2024-04-22Last updated on 2024-04-23

Abstract

Venezuela's state-run oil company started experimenting with Tether in 2023

  • Venezuela is using USDT to bypass sanctions, Reuters reported.
  • This is the country's second experiment with crypto as a means to bypass sanctions.

Venezuela's state-owned oil company, PDVSA, is looking to Tether (USDT) as a means to bypass new sanctions placed on it by the United States, Reuters reported.

Reuters reported that PDVSA is trying to integrate more usage of USDT as a hedge against having foreign bank accounts frozen. Tether is the world's largest dollar-pegged stablecoin.

Tether did not respond to a request for comment by CoinDesk by press time.

Advertisement
Advertisement

Reuters reported that PDVSA uses intermediaries when trading crypto in order to obfuscate the on-chain trail.

Venezuela launched its first experiment with crypto in 2018 as a way to bypass the dollar, but it never really took off, with no major exchanges accepting it and the government sunsetting the program in early 2024.

Edited by Omkar Godbole.

Related Reads

Yao Shunyu's 88 Days

Yao Shunyu, a 27-year-old AI expert with a background from Princeton and OpenAI, joined Tencent in September 2025. Within 88 days, he led a major overhaul of Tencent’s AI strategy and organization, resulting in the release of Hunyuan Hy3 preview—a MoE model with 295B total parameters and 21B active parameters, supporting up to 256K context length. The launch came after Tencent leadership, including CEO Ma Huateng and President Martin Lau, openly criticized Hunyuan's earlier underperformance—citing slow development, over-reliance on superficial benchmark optimization, and poor generalization in real-world applications. Internal adoption was low, with key business units like WeChat and gaming seeking external AI solutions. Yao reshaped Tencent’s AI approach by integrating previously siloed teams, dissolving the ten-year-old Tencent AI Lab, and establishing new units focused on AI infrastructure and data. Hy3 preview was developed using co-design principles, closely aligned with product teams to ensure practical usability from the start. It has already been integrated into core products like Yuanbao, QQ, and enterprise tools. The release signals a shift from chasing rankings to building usable, scalable AI grounded in Tencent’s ecosystem. While external partnerships (like with DeepSeek and OpenClaw) helped retain users temporarily, the focus is now on making Hunyuan a reliable internal foundation. The real test lies in sustaining this new organizational momentum amid fierce competition from Alibaba, DeepSeek, and others.

marsbit17m ago

Yao Shunyu's 88 Days

marsbit17m ago

a16z: How Blockchain Fills the Gaps in AI Agent Identity, Payments, and Trust?

AI Agents are rapidly evolving from tools into autonomous economic participants, but they lack standardized ways to prove identity, authorization, and payment across environments. Blockchain infrastructure addresses these gaps by providing portable identities via wallets, programmable payments through stablecoins, and auditable transaction records on public ledgers. Key challenges include the absence of a universal identity layer (like "KYA" – Know Your Agent) for non-human entities, governance risks when AI systems control critical resources, and the need for trustless payment systems for agent-to-agent commerce. Emerging solutions include on-chain agent registries, encrypted credentials, and crypto-native toolkits that enable delegated authority and verifiable execution. Stablecoins and embedded payment protocols (e.g., x402) are enabling a new class of "headless merchants" where agents transact without human intervention. Trust shifts from manual oversight to cryptographic verification, as scalability demands automated accountability. Ultimately, blockchain allows agents to operate as permissionless economic actors while preserving user control through programmable constraints and transparent governance.

marsbit51m ago

a16z: How Blockchain Fills the Gaps in AI Agent Identity, Payments, and Trust?

marsbit51m ago

Exploring Physical World AGI with "Visual Reasoning", ElorianAI Raises $55 Million

ElorianAI, co-founded by ex-Google AI expert Andrew Dai and former AI specialist Yinfei Yang, has raised $55 million in early funding to develop next-generation AI systems with advanced visual reasoning capabilities. While current large models excel in text-based tasks like programming and math, they perform poorly in visual reasoning—even top models like Gemini only match a 3-year-old’s ability in basic visual benchmarks. The key limitation lies in the architecture of current vision-language models (VLMs), which first convert visual inputs into text before reasoning, losing critical spatial and structural information. ElorianAI aims to build a native multimodal model that processes and reasons directly in visual space, enabling deeper understanding of physical relationships, constraints, and environments. The company plans to release a state-of-the-art visual reasoning model by 2026, with potential applications in robotics, disaster management, engineering, healthcare, and AI hardware. By using high-quality, diverse, and synthetically generated data, ElorianAI intends to create models that don’t just perceive but truly understand and reason about the physical world—bringing us closer to visual AGI.

marsbit1h ago

Exploring Physical World AGI with "Visual Reasoning", ElorianAI Raises $55 Million

marsbit1h ago

This Time, OpenAI Eliminated 90% of Human Designers

OpenAI's latest release, GPT-Image 2, marks a paradigm shift in AI-generated imagery, moving beyond aesthetic quality to logical reasoning and contextual understanding. The model introduces a "thinking mode," where it performs background reasoning—such as mathematical calculations and geographic knowledge—before generating images. This enables highly accurate and context-aware outputs, like a livestream overlay showing precise distance metrics or a brand-aligned poster design. The model excels in rendering Chinese text with remarkable accuracy and aesthetic quality, a significant improvement over previous versions. It supports multi-turn conversational editing via the new Responses API, allowing iterative refinements similar to chatting with a large language model. While GPT-Image 2 demonstrates unprecedented capabilities in commercial applications like marketing material and illustration—potentially displacing many human designers due to its cost efficiency—it still has limitations. Minor artifacts in fine text details persist, and complex prompts can cause extended processing times. Additionally, the technology raises ethical concerns around deepfakes and digital trust. Overall, GPT-Image 2 transitions AI image generation from a novelty to a powerful production-ready tool, redefining industry standards and pushing the boundary of what’s possible in visual AI.

marsbit1h ago

This Time, OpenAI Eliminated 90% of Human Designers

marsbit1h ago

20 Billion Valuation, Alibaba and Tencent Competing to Invest, Whose Money Will Liang Wenfeng Take?

DeepSeek, an AI startup founded by Liang Wenfeng, is reportedly in talks with Alibaba and Tencent for an external funding round that could value the company at over $20 billion. This marks a significant shift, as DeepSeek had previously relied solely on funding from its parent company,幻方量化 (Huanfang Quantitative), and had resisted external investment. The potential valuation would place DeepSeek among the top-tier AI model companies in China, comparable to competitors like MoonDark (valued at ~$18 billion) and ahead of recently listed firms like MiniMax and Zhipu. The funding—which could range from $600 million (for a 3% stake) to $2 billion (for 10%)—is seen as a move to secure resources for model development, retain talent, and support infrastructure needs, particularly as competition in inference models and AI agents intensifies. Both Alibaba and Tencent are eager to invest, not only for financial returns but also to integrate DeepSeek into their broader AI ecosystems. However, DeepSeek’s leadership is cautious about maintaining independence and may prefer financial investors over strategic ones to avoid being locked into a specific tech ecosystem. Alternative options, such as state-backed funds, offer longer-term capital and policy support but may come with slower decision-making and potential constraints on global expansion. With competing AI firms accelerating their IPO plans, DeepSeek’s window for securing optimal terms may be narrowing. The final decision will reflect a trade-off between capital, resources, and strategic independence.

marsbit1h ago

20 Billion Valuation, Alibaba and Tencent Competing to Invest, Whose Money Will Liang Wenfeng Take?

marsbit1h ago

Trading

Spot
Futures
活动图片