Venezuela P120 200 Bolivares Digitales (Bolivar Digital) 2023 UNC 200 million Sob

A striking vertical commemorative note marking the 200th anniversary of the Naval Battle of Lake Maracaibo — the decisive engagement that sealed Venezuela’s independence from Spain. Featuring three portraits of Simón Bolívar across the ages and the iconic Rafael Urdaneta Bridge, this is one of the most visually dramatic banknotes Venezuela has ever issued.

Front

• Colors: purple dominant, yellow and black accents
• Orientation: vertical design
• Portraits: three depictions of Simón Bolívar at different ages
• Background: Rafael Urdaneta Bridge (Puente General Rafael Urdaneta)
• Security features: red serial numbers with letter prefix (top right and lower left edges); perfect registry design (center left); horizontal windowed security strip (center); watermark area (top)
• Signatures: Calixto Ortega Sánchez (Gov. BCV) · Sohail Hernández (First Vice President BCV)
• Inscriptions: República Bolivariana de Venezuela · 200 · DOSCIENTOS BOLÍVARES · 17 DE AGOSTO DE 2023 · PAGADEROS AL PORTADOR EN LAS OFICINAS DEL BANCO · SIMÓN BOLÍVAR

Back

• Colors: blue and green tones with gold accents
• Scene: naval Battle of Lake Maracaibo (right side)
• Architecture: Rafael Urdaneta Bridge (left side)
• Emblems: Venezuelan coat of arms (center left)
• Inscriptions: Banco Central de Venezuela · PUENTE RAFAEL URDANETA – BATALLA NAVAL EN EL LAGO DE MARACAIBO · 200 AÑOS · 1823–2023 · DOSCIENTOS BOLÍVARES 200
• Printer imprint: CASA DE LA MONEDA – VENEZUELA (lower right edge)

Other Characteristics

• Varieties: TBB B390az (Prefix Z replacement) · TBB B390a — this note (Signatures: Calixto Ortega Sánchez, Sohail Hernández) · TBB B390b (Signatures: Guerra, Pérez; dated 2025-Jun-12)
• Catalog numbers: P-120a · TBB B390a · Numista N#429703
• Watermark: Simón Bolívar with electrotype “BCV”
• Composition: Paper
• Size: 159 × 69 mm
• Issuing entity: Central Bank of Venezuela (Banco Central de Venezuela)
• Printer: Casa de la Moneda de Venezuela, Maracay, Venezuela (1989–date)
• Demonetized: No — still legal tender
• Signatures: Calixto Ortega Sánchez (Gov. BCV) · Sohail Hernández (First Vice President BCV)
• Currency: Bolívar Digital (2021–date)
• Official language: Spanish

About Venezuela

• Origin of name: “Venezuela” means “Little Venice” in Spanish — named by Amerigo Vespucci in 1499 after seeing indigenous stilt houses over Lake Maracaibo, which reminded him of Venice, Italy
• Capital: Caracas — city population ~3 million; metro population ~5 million
  • Origin of name: Named after the Caracas indigenous people who inhabited the valley; the name’s deeper etymology is disputed but may derive from a local plant or tribal name
• Population: ~28 million (UN 2024) — comparable to Texas
• Area: 916,445 km² (353,841 mi²) — slightly larger than Texas and California combined
• GDP per capita (PPP): ~$17,000 (IMF 2024 est.) — severely depressed from a peak above $30,000 in the early 2010s
• Main exports: crude oil and petroleum products (~95% of export revenue historically), gold, aluminum, steel, chemicals
• Borders: Colombia (west), Brazil (south), Guyana (east); Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean (north)
• Official/spoken language: Spanish; numerous indigenous languages also recognized
• Ethnicities: Mestizo (~51%), White Venezuelan (~43%), Afro-Venezuelan (~4%), Indigenous (~2%)
• Memberships: United Nations (founding member, 1945); OAS (founding member, 1948); OPEC (founding member, 1960 — Venezuela was instrumental in OPEC’s creation); ALBA (2004); Mercosur (suspended since 2017);
• Sovereignty:
  • Pre-colonial — home to Timoto-Cuica, Arawak, and Carib peoples
  • Spanish colonization (1522–1811)
  • Wars of Independence (1811–1823) — Battle of Carabobo (1821) secured the land; Battle of Lake Maracaibo (1823) ended the war at sea
  • Gran Colombia (1819–1830) — Venezuela united with Colombia and Ecuador under Bolívar
  • Republic of Venezuela (1830–1999)
  • Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (1999–date) — this note issued during this period

Venezuela Unfiltered

• Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves — yet by the 2020s, output had collapsed by over 80% from its peak
• Hyperinflation reached an estimated 1,000,000% in 2018 — the bolívar has been redenominated three times since 2008, lopping off 14 zeros in total
• An estimated 7–8 million Venezuelans — roughly 25% of the population — have emigrated since 2015
• Lake Maracaibo, depicted on this note’s reverse, is one of the oldest lakes on Earth (estimated 20–36 million years old) and produces more lightning strikes than anywhere else on the planet — the “Catatumbo Lightning” fires up to 280 times per hour
• Venezuela has won more Miss Universe and Miss World titles than any other country
• The country has the world’s highest waterfall: Angel Falls (Salto Ángel), at 979 meters — nearly 20 times the height of Niagara Falls
• Despite its oil wealth, Venezuela imports gasoline — domestic refining capacity collapsed so severely that fuel shortages became routine in the world’s largest oil-reserve nation

The Note That Closes a 200-Year Circle

On August 17, 2023, Venezuela issued this note on the exact 200th anniversary of the Battle of Lake Maracaibo — the naval engagement that ended Spain’s last realistic hope of reconquering its former colony. The choice of a vertical format is itself a statement: most Venezuelan banknotes are horizontal, making this commemorative issue immediately distinctive in any collection. The three portraits of Bolívar — young, middle-aged, and elder — compress an entire revolutionary life onto a single face of currency, while the Urdaneta Bridge on the reverse links the 19th-century victory to the 20th-century infrastructure that bears the general’s name.

Bolívar, the Bridge, and the Battle

Simón Bolívar is inseparable from the idea of Venezuela as a sovereign nation. The Battle of Lake Maracaibo, fought on July 24, 1823, was the decisive naval engagement that shattered Spain’s last realistic hope of reasserting control. Republican forces under Admiral José Prudencio Padilla cornered the Spanish fleet in the confined waters of the lake and destroyed it. General Rafael Urdaneta, whose bridge dominates the reverse, was one of Bolívar’s most trusted commanders. The bridge named for him, completed in 1962, was for decades the longest prestressed concrete bridge in the world.

The Bolívar That Keeps Shrinking

This note is denominated in bolívares digitales — Venezuela’s third currency redenomination since 2008. The 200 bolívares digital equals 200,000,000,000,000 (200 trillion) of the original bolívares fuertes. Owning this note is owning a document of one of the most dramatic monetary collapses in modern history — printed by the same government mint that has watched its currency lose virtually all meaning within a single generation.

Own this note and hold two centuries of Venezuelan history in your hands — the triumph of independence, the ambition of a liberator, and the strange, resilient pride of a nation that keeps issuing beautiful currency even as the numbers on it spiral toward infinity.