Growth in Latin America

It seems like the world of crypto is exploding at the seams with new technology and innovation. We see amazing projects pop up all over the world. The growth of digital currency use and adoption, as well as blockchain-based tech in Central and South America, is a particularly exciting development to us here at Tacen. It is no secret (though a deeply underappreciated fact) that Latin America has been fertile soil for the mission of digital assets for a few years now. Much work is happening that has led to widespread awareness, higher rates of business adoption, and enthusiastic use. As a result, we have been very public about our eagerness to become part of the LatAm market, and that providing a non-custodial solution to local traders is a crucial goal of ours.

Latin America is home to several countries with volatile and unstable economies. We have seen a massive influx of people putting savings in stablecoins to avoid the financial destruction of inflation and devaluation. Maker Foundation's stablecoin DAI, a token backed on the Ethereum network, has been the most popular coin used to stabilize savings. Maker reported that daily volume for DAI in Argentina alone has quadrupled from $5 million before quarantine to $20 million in May. Further, at the beginning of 2020, DAI was only offered in one exchange operating in Argentina. Today, that number has grown to six. A competitive token backed by Bitcoin, Money on Chain, is based in Argentina and is experiencing similar growth.

This growth is not limited to Argentina only. Venezuela, Columbia, and Peru are all reporting much higher volume numbers. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to significant upsurges in volume in both Chile and Mexico as well. This growth isn't going to go away. Latin American American countries often have some of the youngest populations in the world as well as reporting some of the highest shares of mobile technology usage in the world. Furthermore, the vast difference between the number of people with access to credit cards (~120 million) and the number of people with access to the internet (~400 million) supports our thesis that crypto usage will find a permanent place in LatAm.

Tacen has had the opportunity to establish valuable connections with Latin American companies doing great work in the crypto space. We are committed to connecting Central and South America to private and secure non-custodial trading using RSK and are currently developing a relationship with IOV Labs. We are meeting with as many LatAm crypto wallet companies as possible so that we can provide even more avenues of secure integration for traders. These relationships are vitally important to our plans because we have placed growth in LatAm as one of our core focuses. Many crypto companies are focused primarily on expansion into the Asian market. While the Asian market remains one of the largest, we believe this to be a big oversight. Some of the most promising opportunity for crypto is found right here in the Americas. We intend to be right here before the next wave of hype.

If you have any questions or suggestions as to who we should reach out to in Latin America, let us know via Twitter or our Telegram chat here.

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