The US smelled blood and decided to help speed up the inevitable by adding sanctions. This increased the cost of their debt. Maduro is attempting to avoid further economic harm with the petro coin.

The "exchange rates" never could have made the government's pilfering of PDVSA revenues sustainable. Any properly-run business would save money for the possibility of a change in commodity prices. PDVSA under Chavez did not.

Exchange rates did not cause the collapse of Venezuela. Hugo Chavez's decision to ignore economic reality and substitute his own is what caused the collapse of Venezuela. No other oil-based economy got hit as hard as Venezuela by the oil price collapse because they maintained sustainable business practices.

>The US smelled blood and decided to help speed up the inevitable by adding sanctions

This is a joke, right? The US did not even sanction Venezuelan businesses, only the officials involved in looting the oil industry revenues. From Wiki:

>On March 9, 2015, the United States President, Barack Obama, signed and issued a presidential order declaring Venezuela a "threat to its national security" and ordered sanctions against seven Venezuelan officials. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro denounced the sanctions as an attempt to topple his socialist government. Washington said that the sanctions targeted individuals who were involved in the violation of Venezuelans' human rights, saying that "we are deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government's efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents".

The notion that US sanctions played any role in the collapse of Venezuela is an utter fantasy promulgated by the Venezuelan government and perpetuated by credulous Western champagne socialists.

In short: price controls, nationalization, high taxation, corruption, Cuban economic influence (read socialism/marxism), economic malinvestment, overspending, debt, and then printing money...

Essentially they believed the oil price surge of the 70s would continue and failed the diversify the economy. This allowed Chavez to come along and take over in the late 90's on a socialist platform with promises to restore the economy. Chavez ignorant to production of oil and fighting to stay in power, gutted the state run PDVSA and severely inhibited production by diverting profits to fund his social programs. Eventually production and profits dipped, with the government deciding to print more money to keep social programs running.