Venezuela Curated

DeFi Intel Research Desk2026-07-14Americas

Is crypto legal in Venezuela? (2026)

Yes — cryptocurrency is legal in Venezuela. Current status: Legal but state-controlled; regulator in flux. Oversight sits with SUNACRIP — Superintendencia Nacional de Criptoactivos y Actividades Conexas. Full details — governing law, licensing, tax and dated enforcement history — follow below (last reviewed 2026-07-14).

Framework: Decreto Constituyente sobre el Sistema Integral de Criptoactivos (Constituent Decree on the Integral System of Cryptoassets), Gaceta Oficial No. 41.575, 30 January 2019; earlier Constituent Decree on Cryptoassets and the Petro, Gaceta Oficial No. 6.370/6.371, 9 April 2018; AML/CFT under the Organic Law Against Organized Crime and Financing of Terrorism (LOCDOFT).

Crypto is legal in Venezuela and, unusually, was actively promoted by the state — but the licensing machinery built to control it has been broken since 2023. The governing statute is the Constituent Decree on the Integral System of Cryptoassets, a 64-article instrument dated 20 November 2018 and published in Gaceta Oficial No. 41.575 on 30 January 2019. It created the Superintendencia Nacional de Criptoactivos y Actividades Conexas (SUNACRIP) — the National Superintendency of Crypto Assets and Related Activities — and tasked it, working jointly with the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV), with registering and licensing miners, exchange houses and other service providers, and with controlling the creation, issuance and exchange of cryptoassets in the country. That decree superseded the earlier framework created around the Petro (the Constituent Decree on Cryptoassets and the Petro Sovereign Cryptocurrency, Gaceta Oficial No. 6.370/6.371 of 9 April 2018, which had established a predecessor superintendency, SUPCACVEN).

On paper the regime is comprehensive and permission-based: cryptoasset activity — exchange brokerage, custody, mining, remittances — requires SUNACRIP authorisation, and users and operators are meant to be enrolled through the Registro Integral de Servicios de Criptoactivos (RISEC), SUNACRIP's registry of cryptoasset-service participants. Mining was legalised but forced through a state-controlled national pool, with a suite of mining permits (import, hosting and use, commercialisation, manufacture and assembly, and technical-service certificates). Exchange-brokerage licences were issued under SUNACRIP rulings such as Providencia No. 012-2019. In practice, however, the framework now operates in name only: the regulator that is supposed to grant and police these authorisations has been under intervention since 2023 (see below), leaving a large gap between the letter of the decree and any functioning supervision.

The state's flagship crypto project, the Petro (PTR) — announced by President Nicolás Maduro in 2017 and intended to circumvent US financial sanctions — never gained traction and became the centre of a corruption scandal. It was wound down on 15 January 2024, when its only trading venue, the government's Plataforma Patria, closed crypto wallets and converted remaining petro balances into bolívars. With the Petro deprecated, day-to-day "crypto" in Venezuela means dollar-pegged stablecoins — overwhelmingly Tether (USDT) — used as a hedge against a bolívar that has endured years of hyperinflation, and for remittances and cross-border trade under sanctions.

The SUNACRIP collapse and regulatory vacuum

Venezuela's distinguishing feature is not a ban or a tight rulebook but the near-total incapacitation of its regulator. In March 2023 SUNACRIP was placed under intervention and its founding superintendent, Joselit Ramírez Camacho, was removed and subsequently arrested as part of the "PDVSA-Cripto" investigation — a corruption case centred on state oil company PDVSA routing crude-export proceeds through cryptoassets, with sums that Venezuelan authorities have variously estimated in the range of US$3 billion to US$20 billion. President Maduro ordered SUNACRIP restructured within six months and appointed Anabel Pereira Fernández, formerly head of the state deposit-insurance agency, to lead the overhaul; in September 2023 the reorganisation was extended by a further six months. The intervention has repeatedly been prolonged, and reporting through 2025 describes SUNACRIP as effectively paralysed and the sector as operating in a supervisory vacuum.

Two features define the resulting landscape. First, enforcement of the licensing decree is inconsistent at best: with the authorising body in limbo, some exchanges and wallet operators suspended activity awaiting direction, while much real-world usage runs through informal peer-to-peer and offshore channels outside any register. Second, the state simultaneously depends on the very tools it struggles to regulate — the government has openly leaned on USDT to move value around sanctions, even as it seizes mining hardware and prosecutes officials. During the 2023 crackdown authorities disconnected mining farms from the grid and seized thousands of ASIC machines. A private-sector body, CAVEMCRIP, was reportedly formed around March 2024 to give industry a nominal role in the reorganisation, and secondary reporting indicates SUNACRIP granted fresh authorisations to some exchange and custody operators in September 2025 — but the scope and durability of any renewed licensing regime remain unclear. Treat all references to "SUNACRIP-licensed" providers with caution until the register is republished; several specifics here are pending verification against primary regulator communications, which SUNACRIP has not consistently published since the intervention.

Tax treatment

The correction to note first: earlier versions of this profile cited a flat "15% capital-gains" rate for crypto. DeFi Intel could not verify any bespoke crypto capital-gains rate in Venezuelan law, and that figure has been removed. Two taxes actually bear on crypto. The first is ordinary income tax (Impuesto Sobre la Renta, ISLR): gains from selling cryptoassets, and income from mining or from receiving crypto in payment, are treated as taxable income at market value under the general ISLR rules — there is no crypto-specific capital-gains schedule, and the precise ISLR characterisation of individual crypto disposals is pending verification against official SENIAT guidance.

The second, and the crypto-specific levy that matters most in practice, is the IGTF — the Impuesto a las Grandes Transacciones Financieras (Tax on Large Financial Transactions). A 2022 reform extended the IGTF to payments made in foreign currency, cryptocurrencies or cryptoassets other than those issued by Venezuela (i.e. other than the bolívar and the Petro). Per current PwC guidance, the statutory ranges are 2%–8% for such payments made through the national financial system and 2%–20% for direct payments to designated "special taxpayers" without a financial intermediary; the rate applied in both cases is currently 3%. "Special taxpayers" were designated as IGTF collection agents by SENIAT Administrative Ruling SNAT/2022/000013 (17 March 2022). The policy tilt is deliberate: from July 2024 the IGTF on bolívar transactions was reduced to 0% for special taxpayers, sharpening the incentive to transact in the local currency rather than in dollars or stablecoins.

• IGTF (crypto / foreign-currency payments): 3% currently applied — statutory range 2%–8% via the financial system, 2%–20% for direct payments to special taxpayers (payments in bolívar or Petro are exempt / 0%).
• Income tax (ISLR): crypto gains, mining and crypto received in payment fall under ordinary income tax at market value; no crypto-specific rate — exact treatment pending official SENIAT guidance.
• Holding-period relief: none identified.

Travel rule applicability

Status: not implemented for cryptoassets. DeFi Intel found no evidence that Venezuela has adopted FATF Recommendation 16 (the "travel rule") for virtual-asset service providers. Venezuela was added to the FATF grey list — the list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring — in June 2024, and its 2023 Mutual Evaluation Report recorded a near-total absence of an effective AML/CFT system, with zero of the 40 FATF Recommendations rated "Compliant." FATF has also identified Venezuela as one of the jurisdictions with materially significant virtual-asset activity, which heightens the exposure. International counterparties applying the travel rule to Venezuela-linked crypto transfers should expect missing, incomplete or non-standard originator/beneficiary data and should risk-assess accordingly; VASP-level travel-rule obligations and supervision remain pending verification.

Notable enforcement and regulatory events

• March 2023. SUNACRIP is placed under intervention amid the PDVSA-Cripto corruption scandal; founding superintendent Joselit Ramírez is removed and later arrested. President Maduro orders a restructuring within six months and appoints Anabel Pereira Fernández to lead it.
• 2023 crackdown. Authorities disconnect crypto-mining farms from the national grid and seize thousands of ASIC miners; several exchanges and wallets suspend operations awaiting direction.
• September 2023. The SUNACRIP reorganisation period is extended by a further six months, to March 2024.
• 15 January 2024. The Petro is shut down; the state's Plataforma Patria closes crypto wallets and converts remaining petro balances into bolívars.
• March 2024. CAVEMCRIP, a private-sector cryptoasset body, is reportedly formed to give industry a nominal role in the SUNACRIP reorganisation.
• 9 April 2024. Former oil minister and vice-president Tareck El Aissami is arrested in the PDVSA-Cripto probe, alongside ex-economy minister Simón Zerpa and businessman Samark López; dozens of officials, including former SUNACRIP managers, are detained on charges including treason, embezzlement and money laundering. The US had offered a reward of up to US$10 million for El Aissami.
• June 2024. The FATF adds Venezuela to its grey list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring.
• July 2024. The IGTF on bolívar transactions is cut to 0% for special taxpayers, leaving the 3% charge on foreign-currency and crypto payments and reinforcing a "de-dollarisation" incentive.
• September 2025 (reported). SUNACRIP is reported to have granted new authorisations to operate as cryptoasset exchangers and custodians under the Integral System decree — scope and durability unverified.

Public licensed CASP list

Venezuela does not currently publish an authoritative, machine-readable register of licensed cryptoasset service providers. The Integral System decree contemplates enrolment through SUNACRIP's RISEC registry, but that registry is not published as an open public list, and the regulator's licensing function has been under intervention since 2023, so any "SUNACRIP-authorised" status should be independently verified rather than assumed. Where a jurisdiction's regulator publishes an official public register (for example the ESMA MiCA registers in the EU, the FSCA in South Africa or MAS in Singapore), DeFi Intel mirrors it on a quarterly basis; for Venezuela there is no such feed to mirror at this time. If you can point us to primary SUNACRIP licensing records, submit them to [email protected].

Comparison to neighbours

Compare Venezuela crypto regulation with three geographically adjacent jurisdictions:

Doing business in Venezuela — practical notes

The gap between de jure and de facto is the whole story. De jure, SUNACRIP authorisation is required to run an exchange, custody, mining or remittance business, and users are meant to be registered through RISEC — but with the regulator under intervention, obtaining or relying on a Venezuelan crypto licence is uncertain, and any authorisation should be verified against primary records before it is trusted in counterparty diligence. De facto, USDT functions as a widely used dollar substitute for savings, salaries, remittances and trade under hyperinflation and sanctions, moving largely through peer-to-peer and offshore rails. Two friction points dominate compliance: the IGTF (currently 3%) on payments made in foreign currency or crypto, which creates a standing incentive to price and settle in bolívars, and Venezuela's FATF grey-listing plus US and other sanctions, which sharply constrain banking access and correspondent relationships and raise the AML/CFT bar for any counterparty with Venezuela exposure. Firms should also weigh legal-risk overhang from the ongoing PDVSA-Cripto prosecutions. Monitor SUNACRIP communications and SENIAT tax rulings for any restoration of a functioning licensing and supervision regime; until then, treat the market as legal in principle but weakly and unevenly supervised in practice.

Methodology and sources

This profile was researched and updated by DeFi Intel's research desk on 2026-07-14 from the primary and secondary sources listed below. Claims that could not be verified against a source are omitted or marked "pending verification" — including any bespoke crypto capital-gains rate, VASP-level travel-rule obligations, and the scope of any post-intervention SUNACRIP licensing. We do not republish unverified third-party datasets. Submit corrections and primary-source links to [email protected].

Sources

• Travieso Evans — Constituent Decree on the Integral System of Cryptoassets (Gaceta Oficial 41.575, 30 Jan 2019; creates SUNACRIP)
• Norton Rose Fulbright — Venezuela's general legal framework on cryptoassets and the Petro (Gaceta Oficial 6.370/6.371, 9 Apr 2018)
• Lightspark — Is crypto legal in Venezuela? Regulations & compliance (2025); SUNACRIP paralysed since 2023, LOCDOFT AML
• CoinGeek — Venezuela extends SUNACRIP reorganisation by six months (Mar 2023 intervention; Anabel Pereira Fernández)
• Decrypt — Venezuela's crypto regulator Joselit Ramírez removed and arrested
• CoinDesk — Venezuela ends the Petro cryptocurrency (Plataforma Patria closure, 15 Jan 2024)
• France 24 — Venezuela arrests ex-oil minister Tareck El Aissami in PDVSA-Cripto graft probe (9 Apr 2024)
• PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries — Venezuela IGTF on foreign-currency/crypto payments (2%–8% / 2%–20%, currently 3%; SNAT/2022/000013)
• AInvest — Venezuela tightens crypto tax enforcement; IGTF cut to 0% on bolívar transactions (Jul 2024)
• FATF — Venezuela country page (grey-listed June 2024; 2023 Mutual Evaluation deficiencies)
• InScope-AML — Monaco and Venezuela added to the FATF grey list (June 2024)
• Venfort — Legal framework for cryptoassets in Venezuela (RISEC, CAVEMCRIP, Sept 2025 authorisations)