According to Colmenares, Venezuela registered USD 44.6 billion in cryptocurrency operations this year.
For the businessman, Venezuela is, after Brazil, the second country with the highest adoption in the region.
Eleazar Colmenares, CEO of the payment gateway CryptoBuyer, assured in a recent interview that almost half of the operations with crypto assets in Venezuela are carried out with stable currencies such as USDT.
“In 2024, 47% of the transactions that were made in cryptocurrencies in the country, operations under $10,000, were made in stable cryptocurrencies,” he said. With this figure, Colmenares underlines the central role that stablecoins have assumed in the daily economic life of Venezuelans.
The prominence of USDT, as reported by CriptoNoticias, is reflected in its price within Venezuela. On the Binance P2P marketplace, The stablecoin already reaches 2025 highs in its pricewith values close to 370 bolivars per unit. This rebound, driven by the depreciation of the bolivar, shows that the stable currency has become the main reference for safeguarding value for millions of Venezuelans.
In this way, the CEO of CryptoBuyer pointed out that the adoption of cryptoassets is no longer an “elitist” phenomenon.
“It is becoming more and more common, more ordinary, for people to talk about the use of cryptocurrencies and not only from a level that can be interpreted as elitist from a socioeconomic point of view,” he stated.
The size of the market in Venezuela
Colmenares also provided a numerical context to dimension what the Caribbean country is experiencing. He stated that, in this last year, In Venezuela, USD 44.6 billion were moved in operations with digital assets.
This volume, he explained, responds to a particular reality: «We are one of the countries with the highest banking in bolivars – we are above 90% – but not all Venezuelans have access to a foreign currency account. So, cryptocurrencies become a vehicle that facilitates quality of life.
The CEO too placed Venezuela among the countries with the highest level of adoption. As indicated, the territory reached third place in 2020, among 154 nations. He added that, despite a decline in subsequent years, the jurisdiction continued to maintain a leadership position.
Then, he stated that, currently, his is “the second country in Latin America after Brazil” in terms of the use of digital currencies.
Speed and confidence in the digital economy
The high levels of adoption not only reflect a cultural change, but also advances in efficiency and financial accessibility. Colmenares exemplified the technological advantages by comparing the times and costs of traditional transfers with those based on cryptocurrency networks. He explained that an operation that could previously take days and cost tens of dollars is now completed in seconds and at a cost of pennies.
Finally, the specialist dedicated a few words to distributed ledger technology: «Blockchain is a digital order book in which all transactions are recorded. It is an accounting book that is visible to everyone, but that no one can modify. That is why it is said to be immutable. It is important to specify that possible modifications to the accounting of a cryptocurrency network will always depend on its level of decentralization.
The businessman emphasized that, beyond the practical use of the blockchain for payments, there is a key dimension of trust and transparency in it.