Welcome to Latam Insights, a compendium of Latin America’s most relevant crypto and economic news from the past week. In this issue, Chainalysis states Venezuela was the country where cryptocurrency markets grew most last year, Brazilian giants team to launch a real-pegged stablecoin, and Littio leveraged Avalanche to offer yield-bearing dollar-based savings accounts.
Latam Insights: Venezuela Reaches Crypto Milestone, Consortium Announces Real Stablecoin
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Chainalysis Latam Report Highlights Major Crypto Growth Milestone in Surprising Nation
Chainalysis has released its 2024 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report, disclosing several insights about the state of crypto in Latin America. The company highlighted the relevance of stablecoins, tokens pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar, as one of the most relevant crypto asset classes, mostly in Argentina, Venezuela, and Brazilian local exchanges.
While Brazil maintains its status as one of the largest crypto economies, having received $90.3 billion in cryptocurrency value from July 2023 to June 2024, Argentina took the lead, receiving an estimate of $91.1 during the same period. This is very relevant because Brazil has a gross domestic product of nearly $2.2 trillion, one of the top ten economies in the world, dwarfing Argentine economic numbers.
Nonetheless, neither Argentina nor Brazil managed to equal Venezuela, which registered a 110% growth of the cryptocurrency value received, even with all the political and economic circumstances surrounding the country. Venezuelans often take refuge in stablecoins and crypto to avoid devaluation, which might explain this exponential growth.
Brazilian Crypto Giants Team up to Launch Real-Pegged Stablecoin
Bitso, Mercado Bitcoin, and Foxbit, three giants of the Brazilian cryptocurrency market, have recently teamed up to launch brl1, one of the first real-pegged stablecoins seeking to capitalize on the growth of these solutions in Brazil.
Brl1 will be launched into the market later this year and will help expedite transactions between local exchanges, facilitating cryptocurrency purchases and sales without using fiat-based rails. Cainvest, another member of the launch consortium and one of the largest liquidity providers in the country, will be the institution in charge of maintaining brl1 trading pairs against BTC and ETH, and with more tokens.
Fabricio Tota, new business director at Mercado Bitcoin, stated that brl1 was designed to remove the friction between the cryptocurrency industry and the traditional banking system.
Avalanche Powers Littio’s New USD Savings Accounts in Latin America
Littio, known for its mobile banking services, is using Opentrade’s real-world asset-backed yield vaults, known as Yield Pots, to offer its users access to USD savings accounts with returns supported by U.S. Treasury Bills. This move, Littio says, allows the neobank to provide secure, dollar-based accounts for Latin Americans, many of whom lack access to traditional banking systems.
Opentrade’s infrastructure is integrated with Avalanche’s blockchain, which Littio believes will enable the firm to expand its offerings efficiently and at scale. Latin America has seen a surge in interest in digital assets, partly due to high inflation and currency instability in the surrounding areas. Littio’s transition to Avalanche, known for its low transaction costs and quick settlement times, is expected to help the neobank scale up its services to meet growing demand.
What do you think about this week’s Latam Insights report? Tell us in the comment section below.
