Petro though was a complete scam, if I'm not mistaken, it was supposedly back up by oil and by the Russian, however, they debunked it already and all the money that was raised was nowhere to be found. So this is a case of CBCD failure in my opinion. And maybe other countries that follow learn by Maduro's mistakes that's why countries like China (Digital Yuan) can be considered as success because they are very careful on their decision to roll out. There was a time that they just roll it out to some small provinces in China just to test the viability of it.
Although there were a lot of fake propaganda about Petro but it was more like an ICO rather than a digital currency and Venezuela used it to mainly raise money which is probably why it would be considered a failure.
On the other hand, I am afraid it will lead to unprecedented surveillance and censorship, with no benefit at all to us, common people.
Isn't it already happening each time you use a centralized service (credit cards, debit cards, bank transfer, PayPal, SWIFT, VISA,...) to make a payment? I wouldn't say "more" censorship and surveillance, it would be pretty much the same as before.
I don't have a very good opinion of stablecoins, but I'm not too thrilled to replace them with CBDC - because the question is which is less evil than the two, shady private companies or corrupt governments and their centralized anti-private digital fiat. I agree that this would simplify the matter, but at what cost when it comes to privacy?
The way I see it is that people don't have or care about privacy already. Majority of trades are taking place on centralized exchanges that have already enforced KYC. Majority of purchases using fiat is done through the same CEXes using banks and again a lot of KYC. Using CBDCs isn't changing anything about their privacy but will provide them with a lot of security because they no longer worry about when FBI is going to raid Bitfinex headquarters and shut down Tether.
I think it's only China so far that's made developments this far?
Chin is just ahead, there are other countries that were serious about it but the news was swept under the rug for some reason. For example Russia claimed they have finished research and testing and will release the working solution in 2022. Iran also announced the CryptoRial is ready for launch soon.
It is interesting to know that all 3 are are members of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and have been moving away from using USD.