Bolivia’s dollar shortage is no longer just a problem at bank counters. For small and mid-sized importers that need to pay overseas suppliers, the real bottleneck is getting money out of the country through channels that counterparties will accept. According to a Forbes report by Boaz Sobrado, El Dorado is stepping into that gap by using stablecoins in the back end while offering businesses a more conventional front end: cross-border transfer capability.
The company’s founder and CEO, Guillermo Goncalvez, described a business built less around consumer fintech and more around B2B payments that banks tend to ignore. His focus, as cited in the report, is not another app for day-to-day personal finance, but helping importers move supplier payments abroad when banks ration dollars or make SWIFT transfers expensive and hard to access.
A fixed exchange rate held for years, then the dollar supply dried up
Bolivia kept its official exchange rate at roughly 6.86 bolivianos per U.S. dollar on the buy side and 6.96 on the sell side from 2011 for fifteen years. After natural gas exports declined, foreign-exchange reserves came under pressure. The report says net international reserves fell to about $30 million at one point in mid-2025.
As banks ran short of dollars, the parallel market expanded. Street rates at one stage approached 20 bolivianos per dollar. The report also says stablecoins traded at a 70.5% premium to the official rate in an index reading from the fourth quarter of 2025. In that setting, demand for digital dollars reflected access constraints in the formal system rather than speculation alone.
On June 26, 2026, Bolivia abandoned the peg and moved to a floating exchange rate. The central bank later updated the official rate to about 9.73, which represented roughly a 30% devaluation against the earlier 6.86 buy rate. Market reference pricing soon moved close to 9.90. Even so, a more flexible exchange rate did not suddenly restore cash dollar availability at bank counters, and cross-border payments, trade finance, and syndicated lending remained under strain.
The report adds that regulators later allowed banks to partially link fees for inbound international remittances to parallel-market pricing. In April 2026, financial regulator ASFI set commissions for large outbound foreign transfers in a 5% to 10% range, while other large foreign-currency transfers could reach as high as 20%. Goncalvez said at an industry event that only a small number of banks were still handling SWIFT transactions for these use cases, and that even then, a single wire could cost 5%.
Importers do not need a quote on paper. They need a payment that clears.
The report frames the problem in practical terms. What importers need is not a theoretical exchange rate, but money that can actually be sent to a supplier. If banks cannot do that, shipments stall.
One example cited in the piece involved Dana’s Brazilian subsidiary. A Bolivian customer could not pay in U.S. dollars, and switching to euros did not solve the issue. The payment was ultimately routed through a licensed exchange house into USDC, and then converted by a bank into dollars for settlement. In that setup, the stablecoin was not the final product. It was the transmission layer that allowed value denominated in bolivianos to move abroad, while the recipient still ended up with dollars.
El Dorado is selling transfer access, not physical cash dollars
El Dorado was built by Latin American founders shaped by high-inflation environments. It started as a peer-to-peer stablecoin marketplace and later expanded into what the company presents as a super app, with a smart wallet, P2P trading, and local payment rails. Users can exchange bolivianos, Argentine pesos, Brazilian reais, and Colombian pesos into USDT or USDC, then spend those balances or send them to family members.
Goncalvez describes the architecture as a “stablecoin sandwich”: local instant payment systems on both ends, with stablecoins used as the bridge in the middle, allowing transfers to complete in minutes. To users, the interface looks closer to Wise or Western Union, while the on-chain liquidity remains out of sight.
On the consumer side, the company says it has already gained traction in Bolivia. It says the app ranks in the country’s top five to top ten financial app downloads, competing with long-established local banks. In April 2026, Goncalvez went to Santa Cruz to promote the product and planned to open an office in May. His stated goal for the market was to let people “earn dollars, save dollars, and spend bolivianos.”
$9 million round and a business product aimed at trade payments
Forbes places greater emphasis on the company’s enterprise leg. In June 2026, El Dorado announced a $9 million Series A led by Paradigm, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, and introduced El Dorado Business.
Under the new product, businesses can open U.S. dollar accounts in their own company names and use them to send and receive SWIFT, ACH, and wire transfers. Official materials say wires can reach more than 120 countries. The structure also mentions multisig accounts, a self-custody-style experience, and virtual U.S. dollar accounts.
Goncalvez made the use case plain: treasury balances can sit in stablecoins, but when suppliers get paid, most of them still want to receive funds through SWIFT or ordinary wires. Direct stablecoin acceptance by suppliers may become more common over the next year or two, he said, but that is not yet the baseline.
That is the central point of the report. In a country where dollars are hard to buy, El Dorado is effectively selling the ability to transmit payments abroad, not stacks of banknotes. For importers, the key question is not whether a wallet holds one more token, but whether a payment can leave Bolivia under the company’s own name and land in a Chinese factory’s bank account.
Why Goncalvez thinks B2B is the better opening
Goncalvez estimates the Latin American cross-border payments market at close to $1 trillion a year, with around 60% tied to business import-export flows. He is less interested in crowded U.S.-to-Latin America corridors and more focused on intra-regional routes, especially Brazil-to-Bolivia and Argentina-to-Bolivia.
His view is that Nubank and Wise do not go deep into markets such as Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, and Peru. Large banks, meanwhile, reserve SWIFT access for a narrow group of corporate clients, leaving mid-sized importers with few options. That gap is where El Dorado is trying to build.
The company says it operates across about 12 countries, has more than 100,000 active users, and has processed more than 5 million transactions, with roughly half involving cross-border activity. Other public descriptions point to a larger regional user base. The framing may vary, but the strategy stays consistent: first connect local currencies to digital dollars through P2P channels, then connect business accounts to the traditional wire system.
Consumer neobanks compete for payroll deposits, QR-code payments, and savings balances. In Bolivia, the shortage is different. Businesses need a dollar payment rail that reaches foreign suppliers. By keeping stablecoins in the background and putting SWIFT in front of the customer, El Dorado is trying to package a service that banks have little interest in serving at the long tail of trade.
Policy has turned, but the pipes are still tight
The report notes that Bolivia had largely closed off crypto activity in earlier years, then changed course as the foreign-exchange crisis intensified. Crypto ATMs appeared on the street, some merchants accepted BTC or USDT, and Binance peer-to-peer trading became one of the routes people used to exchange value. In 2025, Bolivia also tightened reporting requirements for physical foreign currency moving in and out of the country.
In that context, stablecoins are filling the gap left by the banking system. They are not replacing the central bank, and they are not making the boliviano broadly attractive again. Their role is narrower: keeping import payments moving when official channels fail.
The risks are equally clear in the report. A dual exchange-rate structure does not disappear because another app enters the market. Capital controls, anti-money-laundering rules, and correspondent banking policies can all tighten. What looks like ordinary banking service on the surface still depends on stablecoin liquidity and offshore accounts underneath. What the user buys is payment capacity, not cash dollars at a central bank window.
Companies that keep treasury balances in stablecoins also take on conversion spreads, counterparty risk, and compliance review. Ordinary importers may not have full visibility into who is reviewing onboarding, which chain funds leave on, or which correspondent bank receives the final transfer.
Goncalvez’s own description of the company’s role is narrow. He is not trying to compete for the same payroll card as the biggest consumer neobanks. He is trying to handle import-export payments that banks prefer not to touch. When an official exchange rate can no longer hold and cash dollars remain scarce, the valuable product is not another argument about dollarization. It is the ability to send money abroad and have the receiving bank recognize it.