Currency of Venezuela Currency of Venezuela This article provides a historical summary of the currency used in Venezuela since the end of the 18th century. For the present currency of Venezuela, see Venezuelan bolívar. Peso = 8 Reales (silver) Escudo = 2 Pesos (gold) History Venezuela shared the common Spanish-American monetary system, based on the silver peso and the gold escudo, current throughout Spanish America. Trade, especially in cacao, brought money to the colony in the late 17th century in the form of coin from the Mexico money supply increased significantly after the Compañía Guipuzcoana de Caracas obtained a trade monopoly in 1729,
Gold standard Congress on March 3, 1903. Around the same time Mexico and Japan pegged their currencies to the dollar. When Siam adopted a gold exchange standard in 1908, only China and Hong Kong remained on the silver standard. When adopting the gold standard, many European nations changed the name of their currency, for instance from Daler (Sweden and Denmark) or Gulden (Austria-Hungary) to Crown, since the former names were traditionally associated with silver coins and the latter with gold coins. Governments with insufficient tax revenue suspended convertibility repeatedly in the 19th century. The real test, however, came in the form of