What is the blue dollar
What is the blue dollar
The blue dollar is the dollar of Argentina's informal market: bought and sold for cash outside the banking system, at a free price. It trades today at ARS 1,540, +0.7% against the official rate.
Where the name comes from
Nobody knows for sure, hence three versions. The most quoted: in financial slang "blue" was a polite way of saying "black" without saying it. Another: from blue chip, the safe asset. The third, the most Buenos Aires one: the colour of the ink street dealers used to mark verified notes. The term spread through the newspapers in the second half of 2011, when exchange controls split the street dollar from the bank dollar.
How the price forms
Nobody sets the blue: every cueva (an unlicensed exchange house) and every arbolito (the street seller on Florida street and around it) prices according to what they hold and what is being asked. The press surveys several cuevas downtown and publishes a reference rate, the one shown on our front page. It is a small cash market, very sensitive to the day's demand: a political headline, an expected devaluation or simply a month-end with bonus pay moves it.
Underneath, the price anchors on the financial dollars: the MEP and the CCL, which are legal, have volume and show what a dollar is worth without the central bank in between. The blue oscillates around them; when it strays too far, someone buys in one and sells in the other until they converge.
The exchange-rate gap
The gap (brecha) is the percentage distance between the blue and the official rate. It exists because the official rate is regulated (who may buy, how much, at what price) and the blue is not. When the state restricts dollar purchases, the demand that cannot go through the bank goes through the cueva and the gap widens; when the market is freed, the gap shrinks to almost nothing. It is the most-read thermometer of the Argentine economy: a 100% gap says the market expects a devaluation of the official rate; a 5% gap says it does not.
Timeline, with the rate on each day
The figures are the closes in our archive on each date (or the first trading day after), not numbers from memory. The archive keeps the early years in whole pesos, so the gap cannot be read from it before 2013.
- Monday 31 October 2011
- Exchange controls arrive: the tax agency starts authorising every dollar purchase. The parallel market is born, and with it the word "blue".
- Friday 24 January 2014
- The January 2014 devaluation of the official rate; the blue already trades far above it.
- Thursday 17 December 2015
- Controls are lifted. The official rate jumps and the gap vanishes: for three years the blue is barely mentioned.
- Monday 2 September 2019
- Controls return after the August 2019 run on the peso, first with a 10,000-dollar quota and from October 200 a month. The blue detaches again.
- Friday 23 October 2020
- The pandemic peak of the gap: the blue more than doubles the official rate.
- Friday 22 July 2022
- The July 2022 political crisis (economy minister Guzmán resigns): a new nominal record for the blue.
- Tuesday 10 October 2023
- Weeks before the 2023 election the blue crosses 1,000 pesos.
- Wednesday 13 December 2023
- The new government devalues the official rate in one go; the gap collapses in a day.
- Monday 14 April 2025
- Controls are lifted for individuals: the official rate floats within bands and the blue settles next to it.
Legality
Holding dollars is legal and always was. What is not authorised is exchanging them outside the regulated market: the cueva operates outside the law, and so does whoever buys there. In practice enforcement targets large operators, not someone changing a hundred dollars, but it is worth knowing. This site reports the reference rate, as the newspapers do; it does not buy, sell or recommend where to.
The other rates
"Dollar" in Argentina means several prices at once: the bank's official, the foreign-trade wholesale, the stock market's MEP and CCL, the card rate for spending abroad, the crypto rate of stablecoins. Each has its own page, and the calculator converts at any of them.