Cash Dollars Arrive in Venezuela, but Access is Limited

• The General License 57° from OFAC enabled the sending of cash dollars to the Caribbean country.
• For now, access to these funds is available for legal entities.

Venezuela received its first formal and direct shipment of physical dollars from the United States in several years on Friday, July 3, 2026. However, the availability of these monetary resources at bank counters is restricted, with initial access primarily allowed for legal entities through a select group of financial institutions.

This movement, which had not been recorded since 2017, was legally enabled by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States through the issuance of General License Number 57, dated April 14, 2026.

This regulation reopened financial operations with the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) and key public banks, specifically the Bank of Venezuela (BDV), the Treasury Bank, and the Digital Workers' Bank; covering remittances, payments, accounts, and services in U.S. dollars, as reported by CriptoNoticias.

After years of sanctions that froze formal banking routes due to correspondent fears of violating international sanctions, transactions are returning to institutional channels directly.

This movement was not casual. Although the legal license had been in effect since April, the physical transfer had not been executed. It was the two devastating earthquakes on June 24, 2026, that accelerated the transfer process to inject currency supply and prevent a destabilizing impact on the exchange rate due to the lack of cash in the nation, according to the media outlet Bitácora Económica.

It was revealed that among the banks offering the sale of physical dollars are BDV, Banesco, Mercantil, BBVA Provincial, and Banco Nacional de Crédito (BNC). However, it is expected that the rest of the banking entities will join in the coming days to sell cash currencies, while the legal reserve scheme ---of 73%--- continues to be under review.

In practice, the entry of this batch of banknotes aims to reduce the scarcity of physical currency in the national economy. According to Asdrúbal Oliveros, a Venezuelan economist and consultant, the total allocation of currencies for the month of July would remain around 1.8 billion dollars, a similar amount to that observed during the month of June.

Despite these formal cash shipments and the positive expectations they generate for the economy and the exchange market, the temporary exclusion of ordinary citizens from bank counters highlights the current controversy.

This is because the process began under a restricted distribution scheme focused on corporations, leaving out hundreds of thousands of individual clients eager to acquire physical dollars.

In fact, it has been the lack of physical currencies in the national territory that has strongly driven the rise of the stablecoin USD Tether (USDT) since last year and up to now.

CriptoNoticias has documented how this digital currency has become the de facto refuge of the population in the face of cash shortages and growing devaluation, reaching the point of being used as a reference rate for the unofficial dollar.

The expectation now centers on the compliance with the timelines for private banking and individuals to access the physical flow, alleviating the pressure on the exchange market, whose current gap stands at 13% between the official dollar price ---arbitrated by the BCV and which is at 674.93 bolívares--- and the USDT quotation in peer-to-peer (P2P) markets, which hovers around 760 bolívares.

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