The cash-strapped country could default by next year when lots of debt payments are due. Venezuela's reserves, which are mostly made up of gold, have fallen sharply this year as the country needs cash to pay off debt and tries to maintain its social welfare programs.

Venezuela owes about $15.8 billion in debt payments between now and the end of 2016.

But it doesn't have enough to make good on its payments. Venezuela only has $15.2 billion in foreign reserves -- the lowest amount since 2003. A lot of those reserves are in gold.

Less than $1 billion of Venezuela's reserves are in cash, and it has a couple billion in reserves at the IMF.

Its government won't say how much gold it currently has. In May, Venezuela had $11.7 billion -- nearly 70% -- of its reserves in gold and it was fast dwindling. In February, it had $14 billion in gold reserves. Both these figures are from the most recent government data.

"It'll have to sell some of its gold reserves to make the debt payments," says Edward Glossop, emerging markets economist at Capital Economics. "[Cash] reserves are almost virtually zero."