High-interest rates and inflation have majorly contributed to the region’s growth in crypto adoption.
Latin America has emerged as one of the major regions driving growth in crypto adoption in 2022, receiving about 9.1% of the crypto value globally. Several Latin American countries have emerged as top adopters of crypto, fuelled by various reasons. As a beacon of hope for crypto in 2022, Latin America has immense potential for further growth in crypto adoption. Factors like non-fungible tokens (NFTs), inflation, and tokenization seem to have contributed to this growth.
Brazil has been at the forefront of adopting crypto in Latin America by recently approving a bill to regulate crypto and with its central bank dabbling in digital currencies for a full launch in 2024. Fabrício Tota, Director at Mercado Bitcoin, said, “Brazil has been a major player in the crypto economy story in Latin America for several reasons: institutional adoption, regulatory advances, and general public buy-in. In that sense, public sector involvement is inevitable – this represents an extremely positive move, which enhances the crypto-active industry while providing greater security for investors.” Other countries like Columbia and Chile also have future plans to release digital currencies of their own.
Other countries like Argentina had initially resorted to crypto due to high inflation in their country, but this eventually helped the crypto community in their country to grow with many startups. Tokenization has also gained vast popularity in Latin America in recent years, especially in music and art, paving the way for many artists to get headway in the web3 world. Latin America is expected to continue its progress in crypto adoption further in 2023.