Hashdex, the Rio de Janeiro-based crypto asset manager with over 4 billion Brazilian real ($765 million) in assets under management, has raised $26 million in a new funding round from investors. According to Bloomberg on Wednesday, venture capital firm Valor Capital Group led the funding round with participation from Coinbase Ventures — the VC arm of American exchange giant Coinbase — and SoftBank. The $26-million capital influx comes as Hashdex is set to pursue its expansion outside Brazil. Indeed, the company is reportedly planning to open as many as 75 new locations across the world before the end of the …

Mexican cryptocurrency exchange Bitso has concluded a $250 million Series C capital raise, putting it in the upper echelons of Latin America’s fintech industry. The latest investment round gives Bitso a total value of $2.2 billion, making it the first Latin American cryptocurrency exchange to be worth over $1 billion. It’s also the third-most valuable fintech company on the continent. The raise was led by Tiger Global and Coatue, with additional contributions from Valor Capital Group, Bond and Paradigm. Daniel Vogel, Bitso’s co-founder and CEO, said it took the exchange six years to get its first million customers and less …

Banking giant Citigroup has successfully completed a proof-of-concept for blockchain-based cross-border payments in collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank, or IADB. According to a Thursday announcement, Citigroup’s Citi Innovation Labs and the IADB enabled several disbursements from the United States to a recipient in the Dominican Republic, using the LACChain blockchain network — a proprietary effort by IADB’s regional program LACChain. As part of the project, the IADB deposited tokenized funds denominated in U.S. dollars in a Citi account and transferred the funds using digital wallets, IADB’s blockchain specialist and LACChain technical leader Marcos Allende explained. “After tokenized, these funds …

The Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission, or CVM, approved two cryptocurrency ETFs this week — one 100% Bitcoin and the other composed of five cryptocurrencies, in addition to Bitcoin (BTC). For QR Asset Management, manager of the Bitcoin-only ETF, the product could accelerate the launch of a similar product in the United States, since the CVM, as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, are part of the International Organization of Securities Commissions, or IOSCO. Both ETFs will be traded on the Brazil's Stock Exchange, or B3. According to Brazil Journal, two of the country's main banks, Itaú …

Argentina's brittle economy — stricken by endemic problems that have only worsened amid the COVID-19 pandemic — has sparked rising unrest in the country's agricultural sector. Earlier this month, representatives of the bulk of national producers rejected President Alberto Fernandez’s government's decision to suspend all exports of corn as part of its efforts to stem inflation and exert downward pressure on domestic corn prices. The farmers' strike followed a similar wave of resistance in the oilseed and soy industries in December 2020. The rise in labor unrest poses a challenge for the stewards of the national economy, given that agriculture …

Brazil’s largest Bitcoin exchange, Mercado Bitcoin, has announced plans to expand across Latin America. Chief executive Reinaldo Rabelo named Chile, Mexico, and Argentina as among the jurisdictions it will expand into first, comparing the “regulatory culture” in those countries to Brazil’s. According to Useful Tulips, Mexico is currently the fourth-largest Latin American country by peer-to-peer Bitcoin trade volume, with Chile ranking fifth, and Argentina ranking seventh. The strong P2P trade volume suggest there may be significant demand from local traders that is not met by centralized platforms. The announcement comes alongside news of an investment round that saw Mercado Bitcoin …

The World Trade Organization and Trade Finance Global have published their latest taxonomy of blockchain projects in international trade, arranged into what they present as a “periodic table” for the industry. The original rendition of the periodic table was published in winter 2019. Since then, a lot has changed: despite the pandemic, several indicators used in the table show that blockchain trade innovation projects worldwide are reaching ever greater maturity. On a scale of one to five, projects’ maturity was assessed as being 2.3 on average in Dec. 2019. As of this month, the same figure stands at 3.3. To …

The cryptocurrency industry welcomes another high-profile executive from traditional finance. Filomena Ruffa, a former vice president of innovation and strategic partnerships at Visa’s Latin America division, has joined Crypto.com to expand the company’s Latin American market. According to an Oct. 28 blog post, Ruffa will now be responsible for managing all operations and driving strategic business partnerships for Crypto.com in Latin America. The former Visa executive brings extensive work experience in the region as well as expertise from her top positions at payment firms like CardinalCommerce and SafetyPay. Crypto.com’s hire comes as the company records major new milestones. As reported …

A report published by Arcane Research has revealed that nearly half of Paxful’s trade volume comes from trade between Bitcoin (BTC) and gift cards. The report found that, “purchasing Bitcoin with gift cards has been the preferred solution on Paxful each month throughout the five-year span analyzed,” and in June accounted for 48% of Paxful’s volume. Paxful processes nearly $40 million in weekly trade, which means up to $20M of BTC is exchanged for gift cards every week. Arcane highlighted the last week of June this year in the report, in which $16.2M BTC was sold for gift cards. Arcane …

New York-based blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis has published new research highlighting there have been up to 200,000 crypto transactions in the past year, worth more than $1 billion between Latin America and Asia. The study Latin America Mitigates Economic Turbulence with Cryptocurrency, analyzed crypto trends in Latin America between July 2019, and June 2020, and shows that banking access issues and the need for remittances are driving unique patterns of cryptocurrency usage, especially in crossborder commercial-related transactions. While North America and Western Europe are the biggest source of fiat remittances to Latin America, East Asia transactions lead the way in …

Dash has partnered with Mexican cryptocurrency exchange, Tauros.io, to release the first crypto Visa debit card in Latin America. The offer will initially only be available to Tauros’ customers in Mexico. The card will work at millions of stores in Mexico by converting crypto funds to pesos using the Tauros mobile app. It will also be capable of conducting online transactions. Speaking with Cointelegraph, Ernesto Contreras, Head of Business Development at Dash Core Group, provided more details about the new product, which is the first of its kind in the region: "The Tauros card is a first in Mexico and …

El Zonte, a village located in El Salvador, was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, the community implemented an economic system based in Bitcoin (BTC). According to a report published by Forbes, the community’s BTC-powered economy began to take hold after an anonymous donor gave a multi-year, six-figure donation to El Zonte in early 2019. Bitcoin used to pay for anything within the town Residents started to adopt Bitcoin as a local alternative to conventional financial solutions after their tourism sector was decimated by the pandemic. The article details that Bitcoin owners are able to use crypto to …