Argentinian economic crisis leads to a surge in Bitcoin volumes

Written by

Updated on Jun 15, 2024

Reading time 2 minutes

Argentinians recently started buying more BTC than ever, despite the drop in their fiat currency's value.
Interest in cryptocurrencies is growing in the county, especially due to its failing economy
The interest also started attracting major crypto exchanges, with Binance and Huobi.

Follow Invezz on Telegram, Twitter, and Google News for instant updates >

While the whole world is going through a pandemic and a pandemic-caused financial crisis, some areas are always suffering more than others. One example is Argentina, which suffered economic issues even before the coronavirus outbreak. Now, the economic problems continue to harm the country’s citizens, and its fiat currency, the peso, continues to lose value. As seen before in countries like Venezuela and Turkey, Argentinians are also turning to crypto for help. Specifically, to Bitcoin.

LocalBitcoins sees a surge in BTC volumes

According to a recent report published by Arcane Research, it appears that Argentinians are spending more and more on Bitcoin investments. LocalBitcoins’ weekly volume confirms this, as it shows a 1,000% increase.

https://twitter.com/ArcaneResearch/status/1253240673899286529?s=20

Of course, it is worth noting that the peso value dropped significantly simultaneously with the growth of BTC purchases. Peso is currently 70% lower when compared to the USD. This, of course, means that Argentinians had to spend more peso to buy the same amount of Bitcoin as before. However, that is not all. The number of purchased Bitcoins also surged by 407%. That means that they did not only buy the same amount as usual but for more peso, but also that they purchased more BTC than before. The growth in interest already started attracting major exchanges, and the first international ones to move to Argentine were Binance and Huobi. Huobi added a fiat gateway for BTC and USDT for its branch in Argentina this February. Meanwhile, Binance launched an entire fiat gateway platform, calling it Latemex. The platform specifically targets Brazilian and Argentinian traders.

Argentine struggles with paying its debt

Meanwhile, Argentinians continue to struggle, and the situation does not seem to be moving for the better. The coronavirus lockdown is only damaging its economy further. Meanwhile, its economy minister, Martin Guzman, recently noted that the country “will not be able to make [any] debt payments in the coming days.” This was just before Wednesday, when Argentine was supposed to make a $503 million payment. Now, the country entered a 30-day grace period, during which it needs to pay its debt to avoid defaulting on $65 billion of total foreign debt.