Companies in Bolivia and the dollar shortage: how stablecoins sustain foreign trade

A Bolivian company importing machinery needs to pay its overseas supplier and runs into the hardest part of its operation: obtaining the foreign currency. It is not a solvency problem or a price problem, it is an access problem. Meanwhile the supplier waits, the goods are not shipped and the commercial cycle stretches out.

At Soulbit Academy we handle this case with official data and without drama. Bolivia changed its framework in 2024 and the central bank itself publishes figures on what happened next. Those figures tell a story of real growth and, at the same time, reveal a nuance almost nobody mentions. Soulbit is a stablecoin payments and treasury rail for businesses, not a bank, and in Bolivia its scope has a clear limit you will see at the end.

The turn of June 2024

For nearly four years Bolivia maintained a restrictive regime. That ended with one concrete, dated decision.

The Central Bank of Bolivia reported that, through Board Resolution No. 082/2024 of 25 June 2024, it set aside Board Resolution No. 144/2020 of 15 December 2020, enabling the use of electronic payment channels and instruments for buying and selling virtual assets. The central bank explains the purpose itself: to provide a new option to encourage commercial activity and make transfers abroad at competitive cost, while modernising financial operations.

That is a notable formulation, because it comes not from a crypto industry player but from the issuer. The monetary authority acknowledges that an alternative was needed so that transactions in foreign currency could continue.

What the first-year figures say

A year later, the central bank published its assessment in a press statement dated 27 June 2025. The numbers are the central bank's own, not market estimates.

Indicator (source: BCB, June 2025)	Figure	Period
Volume transacted	46.5 million dollars	First half of 2024
Volume transacted	294 million dollars	First half of 2025
Year-on-year growth	More than 630%	Comparison between both halves
Accumulated since the resolution	430 million dollars	Twelve months from June 2024
Transactions in the financial system	10,193 operations, 611 million bolivianos	July 2024 to 31 May 2025, per ASFI
Frequency multiplier	12 times more transactions	Since July 2024, per ASFI

Two details in that table are worth separating. The dollar volumes describe activity on digital platforms, while the ASFI figures describe transactions that passed through the regulated financial system. They are different measurements of the same phenomenon, and quoting one as if it were the other is a common error in coverage of this market. Read together, they say that both the informal-facing channel and the supervised channel grew, which is a stronger signal than either number alone.

Growth of that magnitude from a low base is not surprising on its own. What matters is that it happens in a country where access to foreign currency through traditional channels became difficult, and that the authority reports it as policy delivered rather than as a phenomenon to contain.

The nuance almost nobody mentions

Here is the figure that changes the reading for a company.

The same central bank statement breaks volume down by type of person: natural persons account for 86% of transactions and legal entities just 14%. In other words, the vast majority of that growth is retail use, not corporate.

Why does that distinction matter?

Because it changes what a company can reasonably expect. The ecosystem that developed responds mostly to individual needs: remittances, small purchases, personal payments. A company wanting to move foreign trade volumes leans on infrastructure still largely oriented to retail, with everything that implies for market depth, available counterparties and verification processes.

It is not an argument against doing it. It is an argument for sizing the project realistically instead of assuming that reported growth equals a mature corporate market.

What it means in practice for an importer

For a foreign trade company, the appeal is direct and needs no jargon.

A traditional international payment depends on obtaining foreign currency and on a chain of correspondent banks that takes days and deducts along the way. A digital dollar payment settles in minutes, with an identifier both parties can verify, and needs no such chain. The rail-by-rail comparison is in SWIFT vs stablecoin for international payments, and how the asset works in what USDC is and how it works for companies.

What does not change is everything else. The import still has its commercial invoice, its shipping documents, its customs declaration and its tax treatment. And the company still has to explain the origin and destination of every movement, with a file assembled on the day of the transaction rather than when a review arrives.

What should a company check before moving its first payment?

Three concrete things, none of them technological. The first is the counterparty: who is on the other side, whether they can receive the asset, and whether their destination details were verified through a channel other than the one they arrived on. An on-chain payment is irreversible, so that control is worth more than any other measure. The second is the depth of the local market for the conversion leg, which in a mostly retail ecosystem can behave differently at business volumes than it does for an individual buying a few hundred dollars. The third is internal filing capacity: if the finance team cannot sustain a daily record of every transaction with its identifier, fix that before scaling rather than after.

It is also worth sizing the start properly. One narrow first transaction, with a known supplier and an amount the company can afford to review calmly, teaches more about the real circuit than any amount of prior analysis. And it leaves a trace that then serves as the template for the ones that follow.

There is a further point specific to a country coming out of a restrictive regime. Counterparties, banks and advisers may still be operating on the previous framework, simply because they have not updated their understanding. Arriving at that conversation with the dates and the official source in hand shortens it considerably, and it is one reason to cite the resolution and the central bank statement directly rather than paraphrasing what someone said about them.

The framework is still being built

The 2024 enabling decision was not the end point. The central bank notes that the government advanced Supreme Decree No. 5384, which regulates the incorporation and operation of Financial Technology Companies, defines tokenised assets, virtual assets, blockchain and tokens, and establishes the figure of the Virtual Asset Service Provider.

For a company that merely uses the asset in its own operation, that figure does not reach it directly, but it defines the ground its local counterparties will operate on. It is worth following the regulatory development before making structural decisions, because this framework is under construction and any summary ages. The regional picture is in the crypto asset regulatory landscape in Latin America, and country detail in the crypto payments guide for Bolivia.

What Soulbit V1 delivers in Bolivia and what it does not

Being explicit matters here, because in Bolivia the product boundary weighs more than in other countries.

Need of the Bolivian company	Covered by V1?	How it is resolved
Pay overseas suppliers in USDC or USDT	Yes	Individual or batch transfers from one balance
Collect from overseas clients	Yes	Payment links and QRs tied to each invoice
Hold treasury in digital dollars	Yes	Business account with institutional custody
Verification and compliance	Yes	KYB and on-chain AML/KYT monitoring
Deposit in bolivianos	No	The only local banking rail in V1 is Colombia
Cards, yield, token or native app	No	Outside the scope of V1

The central bank closes its statement with a warning worth repeating: while the use of these assets represents progress toward modernisation, the public should stay informed about their characteristics, risks and workings, and the issuer will keep monitoring the market permanently. Enabling is not the same as removing risk.

For a company, that translates into three minimum controls before operating: completing KYB verification, verifying every counterparty through a channel other than the one the request arrived on, and keeping the complete file for each transaction from day one.