Dollarizing Venezuela: How Feasible Is Formal Adoption —and Could the Earthquake Speed It Up?
Venezuela is already dollarized de facto —over half the population backs the dollar— but the bolívar remains the sole legal tender and banks cannot lend in hard currency. Formalizing it clashes with Article 318 of the Constitution and would require National Assembly reform. Washington is pushing —Bessent: invoice trade in dollars; the Pentagon: the dollar as legal tender— and the earthquake makes defending the bolívar costlier. The verdict: de facto dollarization accelerates; the de jure kind remains a deliberate political decision, not an emergency trigger.
Venezuela already runs on dollars: most transactions are in hard currency and more than half the population backs adopting the dollar. The question has shifted from whether the economy is dollarized —it is, de facto— to whether the state will recognize it de jure. Washington is pushing in that direction, the earthquake makes defending the bolívar more expensive, and the debate is no longer taboo even within chavismo. But between de facto use and formal dollarization there is a legal and political distance worth measuring carefully.
The starting point is not in dispute: Venezuela lives an almost complete currency substitution. The bolívar's chronic depreciation —close to 100% so far in 2026, to around Bs 623 per dollar— pushed prices, imports and much of commerce to be set and paid in hard currency. More than half the population backs adopting the dollar to tame inflation. But that de facto dollarization has a binding limit: the bolívar remains the sole legal tender, and the financial system cannot offer savings or credit in dollars. The economy transacts in dollars but cannot finance itself in dollars —and that is precisely the missing piece to underpin a recovery.
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