Aníbal Garrido, founder of the BTC Academy at Andrés Bello Catholic University, said in episode 46 of Separating Money and State that USDT trading in Venezuela has grown to 44 million tokens a day on an exchange’s peer-to-peer market.

Garrido framed the rise in USDT use around how dollars circulate in Venezuela. He said foreign currency entering the country is often confined to electronic accounts, while USDT can be moved more quickly, giving users a more flexible settlement tool.

He said the activity is taking place despite an influx of foreign currency and the easing of OFAC sanctions. In his account, that suggests stablecoin demand is not only tied to acute shortages of cash dollars, but also to transfer speed and practical usability in day-to-day financial activity.

Garrido also described signs of larger-ticket participation on P2P venues, citing Binance P2P orders of 50,000, 100,000 and 200,000 USDT. He added that some companies in Venezuela are using cryptocurrencies in their treasuries, with some adopting multi-party computation, or MPC, schemes for custody and control.

Beyond payments and treasury use, Garrido said tokenized real-world assets could be the next frontier in Venezuela, particularly in oil and gold. He said effective regulation would be needed for that market to develop. He also referenced interest in the country’s oil sector from Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam and said Bitfinex Securities has published a report on tokenization in Venezuela.

Available background context supports the broader theme that Venezuela has relied on digital dollars as access to traditional dollar channels has remained constrained. But the reported 44 million daily figure, the exact exchange referenced and the methodology behind the calculation were not detailed in the remarks provided.

Why It Matters

The report adds to the case that stablecoins are serving as functional financial infrastructure in economies where access to conventional dollar banking is limited or uneven. That use case matters because it is driven by settlement utility rather than by speculative trading alone.

It also shows why stablecoin adoption and tokenization discussions are increasingly overlapping. If businesses are already using crypto for treasury operations, the jump to tokenized claims on local strategic assets becomes easier to imagine, even if regulation, issuer credibility and market structure remain unresolved.