Digital dollarization in Venezuela: Social meaning, inequalities and governance

This paper examines digital dollarization in Venezuela as a lived socio-cultural process rather than a purely economic one. Moving beyond macroeconomic accounts of dollarization, it analyses how Venezuelans interpret and practice two distinct digital forms of the US dollar: Zelle payments and stablecoins (cryptocurrencies pegged to the US dollar). Drawing on in-person fieldwork and analysis of social media, the paper explores how different forms of digital dollars acquire social meaning, reinforce inequalities, and mediate relations between citizens and the state. Zelle, a US domestic payment app, has been re-purposed as a payment method inside Venezuela. However, its usage is hierarchical, and it has become a symbol of social status and US affiliation, reflecting barriers to direct account ownership. Stablecoins, by contrast, are often narrated as accessible substitutes for ‘real’ dollars. However, they remain entangled with crypto-speculation, ideological narratives of libertarian financial freedom and the soft power of US cultural, political and economic imperialism. The paper employs a ‘bottom-up’ approach to conceptualize dollarization as both a category of analysis, a response to inflation and monetary collapse, and a category of practice actively constructed through everyday discourse and financial transactions. The paper concludes that digital dollarization in Venezuela exemplifies how new monetary forms (re)produce global asymmetries even as they enable citizens to respond to economic instability.