GOOD LUCK WITH THAT. Russia and Venezuela’s Plan to Sidestep Sanctions: Virtual Currencies.

In Venezuela, the idea has come from the top. President Nicolás Maduro laid out a plan last month to create a homegrown digital currency known as the Petro, which would be similar to Bitcoin but backed by the government’s oil and natural resources.

In Russia, officials under President Vladimir V. Putin have floated the idea of a Bitcoin-like crypto ruble.

“When it comes to state-sensitive types of activities, this instrument suits us very well,” one of Mr. Putin’s aides, Sergei Glazyev, said last month in a conversation about the crypto ruble, according to several Russian news outlets. “We can settle payments with our business partners all over the world regardless of sanctions.”

Economists and virtual currency experts have given Venezuela’s Petro and the crypto ruble from Russia low probabilities of working in the way the governments seem to anticipate. That’s because Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are decentralized systems with no one in charge, while the Russian and Venezuelan plans would give the leaders of both countries a measure of control over the new currencies.

Another hurdle: Both Russia and Venezuela are low-trust societies. One is a oligarchical kleptocracy, the other is a “democratic” socialist state on the verge of failure.

Putin and Maduro can put all the high-tech gloss on that they want, but their underlying structures are still rotten.