Venezuela - 2000 Bolivares - P-NEW - 2016 dated Foreign Paper Money

2,000 Bolivares, P-New. Security strip!

The Venezuelan bolívar is the official currency of Venezuela. Named after the hero of Latin American independence Simón Bolívar, it was introduced following the monetary reform in 1879, before which the venezolano was circulating. Due to its decade-long reliance on silver and gold standards, and then on a peg to the United States dollar, it was considered among the most stable currencies and was internationally accepted until 1983, when the government decided to adopt a floating exchange rate instead.

Since 1983, the currency has experienced a prolonged period of high inflation, losing value almost 500-fold against the US dollar in the process. The depreciation became manageable in mid-2000s, but it still stayed in double digits. It was then, on 1 January 2008, that the hard bolívar (bolívar fuerte in Spanish, sign: Bs.F, code: VEF) replaced the original bolívar (sign: Bs.; code: VEB) at a rate of Bs.F 1 to Bs. 1,000 (the abbreviation Bs. is due to the first and the final letters plural form of the currency's name, bolívares).

The value of the hard bolívar, pegged to the US dollar, did not stay stable for long despite attempts to institute capital controls. Venezuela entered another period of abnormally high inflation in 2012, which the country hasn't exited since. The central bank stuck to the pegged subsidised exchange rate until January 2018, which was overpriced so people began using parallel exchange rates despite a ban on publishing them. According to Steve Hanke, in 2016-2019 and again in 2020, the currency experienced hyperinflation for a total period of 38 months. The rampant inflation prompted two redenominations. The first occurred in August 2018, when Bs.F 100,000 were exchanged for 1 sovereign bolívar (bolívar soberano in Spanish, sign: Bs.S, code: VES), and another one happened on 1 October 2021, but called "Nueva expresión monetaria" or new monetary expression, which removes 6 zeros from the currency without affecting its denomination but have a new ISO code at a rate of Bs.S 1,000,000 = Bs.D 1 , thus making Bs.D 1 worth Bs. 100,000,000,000,000 (10¹⁴, or Bs. 100 trillion in short scale)

Both monetary cone are in circulation, though the economy has undergone extensive currency substitution, so the majority of transactions happen in US dollars, or, to a lesser extent, the Colombian peso.

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