Venezuela

he bolivar is probably one of my favorite currencies. It's beautiful. There are elaborate well done portraits on the front field and often exquisite illustrations on the back. 

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I was burning this 2018 50-bolivar note the same way I always do—watching the edges curl, waiting for the surface to soften, expecting the familiar choreography of flame and collapse. But the polymer threads lifted first. They rose slowly, almost carefully, and settled across José de Sucre’s face. By the time the fire had finished, he was still there—recognizable, intact—but unable to see.

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That felt right in a way I didn’t know how to explain.

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Venezuela’s hyperinflation didn’t arrive as a single event. It unfolded over years. By 2014, inflation had crossed 60%. By 2016, it exceeded 800%. In 2018, prices were rising at an annual rate of more than 1,000,000%, one of the highest ever recorded. Money didn’t vanish—it multiplied, accelerated, and hollowed itself out.  The bolívar remained printed, counted, stacked. Wages were paid in bundles that looked impressive and meant nothing. People carried backpacks of cash to buy a meal. By 2019, a monthly minimum wage could fail to cover a kilogram of rice. Bills were weighed instead of counted.

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Sucre was a general, a revolutionary, a builder of nations. His portrait was meant to signal permanence, authority, continuity. But the material beneath him told a different story. The same security features designed to preserve trust—threads, polymers, anti-counterfeiting layers—became the thing that interrupted his gaze. The system folded in on itself. By 2021, Venezuela had re-denominated its currency three times, cutting a total of 14 zeros from the bolívar. Trillions became ones. Nothing was fixed. The numbers changed; the reality didn’t. In Venezuela, hyperinflation forced people to look past money entirely. They burned bills for heat. They wove them into crafts. Not as protest—out of necessity. When currency stops reminding you what it’s worth, it becomes raw material. 

 

This piece isn’t about blaming a single policy or a single leader. It’s about what happens when belief outpaces reality, and reality finally asserts itself. The fire didn’t target Sucre. The threads weren’t placed by hand. The materials simply behaved the way they do when trust is exposed to heat.

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In a way, this portrait is more accurate. Sucre was a revolutionary, but his image on currency isn’t asking us to revolt—it’s asking us to believe. To accept value, stability, continuity. To take a blind leap of faith.