This phenomenon is truly outrageous.

The official exchange rate set by the Central Bank of Venezuela is 1 USD to 270,789 Bolívares, which looks neat. But in the P2P market of a certain major exchange? 1 USDT can be exchanged for at least 421,000 Bolívares. The difference is nearly 55%.

This is not a calculation error. These are dialogues from two parallel worlds: one is the number prescribed by policy, and the other is where real transactions happen.

What does the official exchange rate look like? Like the "theoretically available" cheap fuel price in state-run supermarkets — used by big banks, recorded in government ledgers, but completely inaccessible to ordinary people on the streets. It’s just a frozen snapshot, a number nailed down by policy, not a price that real people can exchange for real money.

But stablecoins are different.

When someone is willing to exchange 42 million Bolívares for 1 USDT, it’s a real-life escape demand. People pay such a premium because: it can be directly deposited into local bank accounts, Bolívares are shrinking daily but stablecoins are not, there are no trading limit restrictions, and it can bypass various administrative approvals. In short, in a place where fiat currency has failed, digital dollars have become the most trustworthy "real money."

What’s behind this actually reflects something profound — when the country's credit collapses, decentralized credit systems find room to survive. People vote with every transaction, and the results of these votes are changing the real landscape of finance.