Strength and Sovereignty
VEN113a, 2021, 500,000 VES

Slot Comment:

Bolivares Soberanos (Sovereign Bolivar)

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Note Details

  

Set Details
Note Description: Venezuela, Banco Central
500,000 Bolívares - Printer: CMV
Grade: 68 EPQ
Country: Venezuela
Note Number: VEN113a
Signatures/
Vignettes: 		- Wmk: S. Bolívar & BCV
Comment: Exceptional Paper Quality
Certification #: 8087733-085
Owner: Revenant
Set Category: World
Set Name: Strength and Sovereignty
Slot Name: VEN113a, 2021, 500,000 VES
Research: Currently not available

Owner's Description

The release of the three new 2021 banknotes was announced on Friday, 5 March 2021. At the time of the announcement, even according to official exchange rates, which are almost always better than black market rates, this note was only worth about US$0.26. While announced & released in 2021, the date was printed in 2020 and dated for September 3, 2020.

For the front the 2021 notes are essentially identical to the 2019 notes with the same portrait of Simon Bolivar but with different colors used to make it easier to tell the notes apart. The VEN112 and VEN113 also use the ““Mausoleum of the Liberator” reverse from the 2019 notes. However, the VEN114, the 1 Million Bolivar note, used a new design for the reverse.

Another interesting thing to come out of news articles dated around February and October 2020 is the fact that Venezuela’s economy - like Zimbabwe before it - had to varying degrees “dollarized.” The US dollar was being used increasingly in domestic transactions instead of the Bolivar Soberano. Unlike in Zimbabwe in 2009, Venezuela has not officially suspended or given up on issuing and using a national currency - yet. I’m wondering if this will ultimately happen – or if they’ll at least have to stop releasing physical paper currency - as they find it harder and harder to source paper and ink or operate their facility with unreliable power. In the mean time, as of 2021, Venezuela seems determined to keep trying a central bank digital currency (CBDC), using block-chain technology.

However, I do think this dollarization shows one of the greater ironies of the names of these currencies - “strong bolivar” and “sovereign bolivar” - an irony I tried to build into the name of this set. That irony being that these currencies were not strong, and their creation was not indicative of strength. Rather, their creation was an acknowledgement of the weakness of the currency and economy and presaged an important loss of sovereignty - the ability to issue a sovereign national currency and base your domestic economy on that.

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