The recently appointed general director of Bitso in Argentina, Julián Colombo, assures in an interview that in the face of the crisis facing the country, citizens turn to digital assets to maintain the greatest possible purchasing power.
“Many users use Bitso to protect their money with something tied to the value of the dollar. Due to issues that are combined with inflation, Argentines like to save in dollars,” he said.
The manager explained that the government implemented a measure so that Argentines cannot change more than 200 dollars a month and when paying with a credit card an extra tax is charged, so digital assets such as the USD stablecoin, or stable currencies linked to the dollar, they are exempt from regulation and people use them.
The USD stablecoin are stable coins that link their price to the dollar, avoiding the volatility of other assets such as bitcoin, which in recent days reached a value of 16,000 dollars, after a maximum of 61,000 dollars.
“The appeal of the ‘crypto dollar’ is that being a virtual asset tied to the value of the dollar it escapes these restrictions because it is not a financial asset.”
Bitso has one million clients in Argentina and is the third largest market after Mexico and Brazil. Globally, the firm has 6 million clients.