Venezuela reportedly to redenominate bolívar in August 2021

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According to a Bloomberg article dated 1 July 2021, Venezuela plans to redenominate its currency at a rate of 1,000,000:1 (effectively removing six zeroes) as early as August 2021. The country previously redenominated at a rate of 100,000:1 on 20 August 2018, and at a rate of 1,000:1 on 1 January 2008. The current largest denomination banknote is 1,000,000 bolívares, expressed on the note (B384a) with a predominant 1 followed by the descriptive millón de bolívares. It’s therefore likely that the bank intends to retain the bolívar currency name while reusing the existing note designs.

Courtesy of Dennis Zammit.

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  2. This is a reality, the upcoming currency will be named “bolívar digital” (digital bolívar). The official announcement is published in Venezuela’s Central Bank (Banco Central de Venezuela) website.

    About the banknotes of the new currency (Bs. 5, Bs. 10, Bs. 20, Bs. 50 and Bs. 100), it is obvious that the design budget was short of funds, as the design team opted to recycle the design of the “conmemorative” 1,000,000 sovereign bolivar (VES) banknote, changing only the colour. And, judging from the images, looks like that the banknotes of the new currency were printed by Goznak, the same security printing company behind some of the newer sovereign bolivar banknotes (second issue of 10,000 , 20,000 and 50,000 VES notes as well as 500,000 and 1,000,000 VES notes).

    1. Just saw the new note designs at the BCV (get the video presentation to look them at more detail, as they haven’t uploaded the usual hi-res PDFs/slides yet), and… well, they DO look like the usual Goznak notes (thin security thread, large serials), but the designs on the released material so far are mockups (the security thread is clearly fake, and the dates are placeholders: “XX DE XXXXXXX DE 202X”).

      Most likely the new notes are going to be printed there (maaaaaaaaaaybe if they still have enough stock of supplies, our mint will print a few issues of the highest-value ones), considering that all bridges with De La Rue and friends are pretty much burned at this stage, but our central bank isn’t exactly the most transparent organization ever…

      BTW: there are now confirmations on other catalogs that the VES 1-million notes have both Venezuelan and Russian-printed varieties, but I guess the Venezuelan-printed one is circulating in VERY limited numbers, as I’ve yet to find one of those in the local banks (all you can find is C/E-series notes by Goznak – the Venezuelan ones are under A-series so far, so I suspect we’re skipping entire series again, just like it happened with VES 2, 200 and 50000 notes).

      1. So there are 1M bolivare notes with a serial number starting with A? Guess I’ll have to look out for one. Mine starts with C, which is apparently Russian printed?

        Is there a more comprehensive guide for the Venezuelan notes?

        1. Venezuelan-printed 1M notes: A, Z(replacements) <= these are VERY rare, but they do exist!
          Russian-printed 1M notes: C, E, H, X(replacements) <= quite common, except for H-prefix.

          Look for Numismatic Catalog of Venezuela for the most in-depth guidance to Venezuelan notes and coins:
          https://www.numismatica.info.ve/en/

          1. Excellent, thank you very much.

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