VEF meaning in Country Currency ?

The Venezuelan bolívar is the official currency of Venezuela. Named after the hero of Latin American independence Simón Bolívar, it was introduced following the monetary reform in 1879, before which the venezolano was circulating. Due to its decade-long reliance on silver and gold standards, and then on a peg to the United States dollar, it was considered among the most stable currencies and was internationally accepted until 1983, when the government decided to adopt a floating exchange rate instead.

Since 1983, the currency experienced a prolonged period of high inflation, losing value almost 500-fold against the US dollar in the process, the depreciation became manageable in mid-2000s (it still stayed in double digits, however). It was then, on 1 January 2008, that the bolívar fuerte (strong bolívar, sign: Bs.F, code: VEF) replaced the original bolívar (sign: Bs.; code: VEB) at a rate of 1 Bs.F to 1000 Bs. (the abbreviation Bs. is due to the first and the final letters plural form of the currency's name, bolívares).

The value of bolívar fuerte, pegged to the US dollar, did not stay stable for long despite attempts to institute capital controls. Venezuela entered another period of abnormally high inflation in 2012, which the country hasn't exited since. The central bank stuck to the pegged subsidised exchange rate until January 2018, which was overpriced so people began using parallel exchange rates despite a ban on publishing them. According to Steve Hanke, in 2016-2019 and again in 2020, the currency experienced hyperinflation for a total period of 38 months. The rampant inflation prompted two denominations. The first occurred in August 2018, when 100,000 bolívar fuerte were exchanged for 1 bolívar soberano (sovereign bolívar, sign: Bs.S, code: VES), and another one happened on 1 October 2021, bolívar digital (digital bolívar, sign: Bs.D or Bs.; code: VED) was introduced at a rate of 1,000,000 Bs.S = 1 Bs.D, thus making 1 Bs.D worth 100,000,000,000,000 (1014, or 100 trillion in short scale) Bs.

Sovereign and digital bolívares are currently both in circulation, though the economy has undergone extensive currency substitution, so the majority of transactions happen in US dollars, or, to a lesser extent, the Colombian peso.