The crypto establishment is making headway in some corners of Latin America, where adoption would appear poised to accelerate.
Why it matters: The U.S. is the financial capital of the world. But there is a future in which crypto adoptees in Brazil and Argentina, for example, drive the utility of digital assets farther than consumers in developed nations have.
Driving the news: This week heavyweight financial firms BTG Pactual and XP Inc. rolled out their own crypto platforms, called Mynt and Xtage, respectively.
The arrival of the crypto establishment in pockets of Latin America shows the growing market there, which represented roughly 9% of all crypto transactions tracked by research firm Chainalysis between July 2020 and June 2021 (the most recent data available was published Oct. 2021).
Be smart: Crypto adoption in emerging nations is playing out very differently than in developed nations and is being seeded by retail customers rather than the big and the well-heeled.
The big picture: In regions where a trifecta of factors — high inflation, political instability and traditional banking services being out of reach — push folks to find alternatives to the state-backed currency, crypto sings.
Case in point: The unstable Argentinian peso has given rise to black-market currency exchanges called cuevas, highlighted in yesterday's newsletter.
The other side: There's already concern, however, that some crypto-enabled humanitarian organizations and private companies just doing business are doing more harm than good, and there's a term for them: crypto colonialists.
Another roadblock: Crypto can only go as far as broadband internet can go, according to Brazil's central bank.
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