Named after the hero of South American independence Simón Bolívar, it was introduced by President Guzman Blanco via the monetary reform of 1879, before which the venezolano was circulating.

Due to its decades-long reliance on silver and gold standards, and then on a peg to the United States dollar, it was long considered among the most stable currencies.

Since 1983, the currency has experienced a prolonged period of high inflation, losing value almost 500-fold against the US dollar in the process.

The value of the hard bolívar, pegged to the US dollar, did not stay stable for long despite attempts to institute capital controls.

Venezuela entered another period of abnormally high inflation in 2012, which the country has not exited as of April 2023[update].

Until 18 February 1983 (now called Viernes Negro, Spanish for Black Friday, by many Venezuelans),[15] the bolívar had been the region's most stable and internationally accepted currency.

[21] The alternate meaning of "strong" was also used by the government in promotional material[22][23] The official exchange rate is restricted to individuals by CADIVI, which imposes an annual limit on the amount available for travel.Since the government of Hugo Chávez established strict currency controls in 2003, there have been a series of five currency devaluations, disrupting the economy.

[26] On 18 February 2016, President Maduro used his newly granted economic powers to devalue the official exchange rate of the hard bolívar from Bs.F 6.30 per US$1 to Bs.F 10 per US$1, which is a 37% depreciation against the US dollar.

[28] On January 26, 2018, the government retired the protected and subsidized Bs.F 10 per US$1 exchange rate that was highly overvalued as a result of rampant inflation.

This made the hard bolívar the second-least-valued circulating currency in the world based on the official exchange rate, behind only the Iranian rial, and between September 2017 and August 2018, according to the informal exchange rate, the hard bolívar was the least-valued circulating currency unit in the world.

[32] On 22 March 2018, President Nicolás Maduro announced a new monetary reform program, with a planned revaluation of the currency at a ratio of 1,000 to 1.

Prices expressed in the new currency were rounded to the nearest 50 céntimos as that was expected to be the lowest denomination in circulation at launch.

The rounding created difficulties because some items and sales qualities were priced at significantly less than Bs.S 0.50; for example a litre of gasoline and a Caracas Metro ticket typically cost Bs.S 0.06 and Bs.S 0.04, respectively.

The President delayed the planned June launch date of the sovereign bolívar, citing from Aristides Maza, "the period established to carry out the conversion is not enough".

[43] Under the country's official fixed exchange rate to the US dollar the new currency was devalued by roughly 95% compared to the old hard bolívar.

), an abbreviation for the word referencia, representing a price in U.S. dollars, which customers can pay in digital and/or sovereign bolívars at the current rate of exchange.

[70] This table shows a condensed history of the parallel foreign exchange rate of the Venezuelan bolívar (hard and sovereign) to one United States dollar between 2012 and 2021, according to DolarToday.

On the reverse the coat of arms is depicted, circled by the official name of the country, with the date and the denomination below.

In 2001, the reverse design was changed, putting the denomination of the coin at the right of the shield of the coat of arms, surrounded in a semicircle by the official name of the country and the year of its issue below.

In 1940, the Banco Central de Venezuela began issuing paper money, introducing denominations of Bs.

50,000 were updated in April 2006 after the National Assembly approved changes to the coat of arms, which were made official on March 12, 2006.

[73] High inflation, which was a part of Venezuela's economic collapse, caused the hard bolívar's value to plummet.

[72][76] Days later on 11 December, President Nicolás Maduro who had been ruling by decree wrote into law that the Bs.F 100 would be pulled from circulation within 72 hours because "mafias" were allegedly storing those particular notes to drive inflation.

[79] On 14 February 2017, Paraguayan authorities uncovered a 30-tonne stash of Bs.F 50 and Bs.F 100 notes totaling Bs.F 1.5 billion on its Brazilian border that had not yet been circulated.

[80] According to a United States Department of Defense adviser linked to The Pentagon, the Bs.F 1.5 billion was printed by Venezuela and destined for Bolivia, since unlike the implied exchange rate of thousands of hard bolívares equaling one United States dollar, the exchange rate was approximately 10 hard bolívares per dollar, making the value of the stash 419 times stronger, from US$358,000 to US$150 million.

New banknotes of the 2016–17 series with values of Bs.F 500 to Bs.F 100,000 were issued from 7 December 2016 until 20 August 2018, the day when the sovereign bolívar was introduced.

On 30 November 2018, it was announced that the remaining denominations of the old currency will be withdrawn from circulation and cease to be legal tender on 5 December 2018.

[88] Four months after entry into circulation, shops and state banks began refusing the Bs.S 2, as its value had significantly declined since the redenomination.

[100] According to a July 2021 Bloomberg article, Venezuela plans to redenominate the bolívar at a ratio of 1,000,000:1 in August 2021, effectively removing six zeros from the denominations.

It is therefore likely that the bank intends to retain the bolívar currency name while reusing the existing note designs.