Cabudare Kids

The money that kept losing zeros

A story that really happened in Venezuela. Count the zeros with us: by the end you'll know how many were lost.

Hi! I'm Cardi, and this is Valentina. She lives in Barquisimeto.
Her grandpa Ramón saved coins in a jar for many years. "They're for when we need them," he said.
Imagine a toy shop where a red spinning top costs 10 bolívars on Monday, 15 on Wednesday and 20 on Friday.
It's the same top! So what changed?
When a government prints lots of banknotes to pay its bills and there aren't more things to buy, each banknote buys less.
If there are 10 candies and 10 banknotes, a candy costs 1 banknote. If there are 100 banknotes and the same 10 candies, it costs 10!
In Venezuela, much less money coming in from oil also played a part.
Shops had to write new prices again and again.
Grandpa's jar still had the same coins, but every week they bought fewer things: his savings were shrinking.
Prices got so many digits that in 2008 the bolívar lost 3 zeros: 1,000 bolívars became 1.
That's 3 zeros so far.
In 2018 prices rose enormously: something that cost 1 bolívar at the end of 2017 cost more than 1,300 a year later.
The central bank spoke of more than 130,000%, and other estimates are even higher.
That year the bolívar lost 5 more zeros. That's 8 so far!
In October 2021 it lost 6 more zeros: 3 + 5 + 6 = 14 zeros in 13 years!
But removing zeros only changes how prices are written.
If more banknotes keep being printed without more things to buy, prices keep rising.
Can it be fixed? Yes! In 1990 prices in Peru rose almost 7,500%. Peru stopped printing money to pay the government's bills and, at the end of 1992, made it law.
Prices calmed down little by little: in 1999 they rose only 3.5%.
Valentina smiles: if Peru could do it, Venezuela can too.
What did you learn?
- If lots of money is printed and there aren't more things to buy, each banknote buys less and prices go up.
- Removing zeros from banknotes changes how prices are written, but it doesn't fix the cause.
- A central bank that doesn't print money to pay the government's bills helps prices calm down, as happened in Peru.
This really happened
This is where we checked every fact in the story:
1. 1.MercoPress, In thirteen years Venezuela has eliminated 14 zeroes from the Bolivar currency, Aug 6, 2021.
2. 2.Gulf News (AFP), Venezuela claims 130,000% inflation, below international estimates, May 29, 2019.
3. 3.Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (A. M. Santacreu and H. Zhu), How Can Venezuela Address Its Hyperinflation?, January 2018.
4. 4.Central Reserve Bank of Peru (C. Martinelli and M. Vega), Working Paper 2018-007, Monetary and Fiscal History of Peru 1960-2010: Radical Policy Experiments, Inflation and Stabilization, November 2018.
5. 5.Gobierno del Perú (gob.pe), Decreto Ley N.° 26123: Ley Orgánica del Banco Central de Reserva del Perú, December 30, 1992.
6. 6.Banco Mundial, Inflation, consumer prices (annual %) - Peru, accessed September 28, 2026.
For grown-ups: notes and links to sources
For grown-ups: Venezuela's 2018 inflation figure depends on who calculates it. The central bank reported more than 130,000%; the IMF had estimated 1.37 million percent.

The story

What did you learn?

This really happened