I hope everyone is having a great Friday. Thanks again for reading.
For those who missed it earlier this week, we wrote about the member of congress central to Mexico’s crypto legalization plans and how it compares to the El Salvador context.
Besides that, here are several things we think you need to know from this week:
Lapsus hacked Argentina’s Mercado Pago this week. The group also recently hacked Nvidia and Samsung.
Mexico’s Wise Telecom partnered with blockchain security provider Sollensys. Wise says it is under pressure to be able to bounce back immediately after ransomware attacks.
Argentina’s Num Finance is launching a stablecoin in Brazil, Mexico and Peru. Santiago Migone’s stablecoin project will compete with Jack Mallers’ Strike project in Neuquen province. Strike is using the USDT stablecoin issued by Tether.
Paraguay’s Bitcoin law advances from the senate to the lower house. Lower house representatives will discuss the bill further before being passed into law. In contrast to making legal tender, Paraguay wants to classify Bitcoin and other crypto assets as property-like assets.
Colombia’s military is preparing for a Russian or Venezuelan cyber attack during Mid-term elections on Sunday. The government’s paranoia has increased since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Bitso Transfer is being used at Grupo Gicsa for bitcoin acceptance.The chain of malls is using Mexican Bitso’s platform for buying with crypto.
Buenos Aires city government wants to incentivize crypto development. The secretary of innovation for the city of BA Diego Fernández is a believer in crypto broadly - not just Bitcoin.
However, Argentina’s finance minister Martin Guzman sees crypto as a potential recipe for money laundering and informality. The finance minister is under pressure to answer to the IMF’s request to “discourage crypto” and encourage formal banking. The IMF is worried that unregulated crypto adoption will lead to an increase in informality and money laundering.
Colombian senator Carlos Abraham Jimenéz wants to regulate crypto. His main pitch is so that consumers will avoid scams and fraudsters. The thing is, Colombia’s SFC (the financial regulator) is already building regulations. Congressional laws would cloud those regulations.
Mexican drug cartels are using internet platforms and crypto to sell drugs. The UN narcotics control board published a report finding the two cartels Sinaloa and CJNG at the center of this practice. Colombian armed groups are using it too, mainly because of anonymity and speed of transactions.
Lenin Tarrillo will lead Peruvian Credicorp’s crypto product development. The high-level tech hire shows that Peruvian banks are beginning to wake up to the demand for crypto.
Gabriel Silva and Cenobia Vargas put competing crypto bills to the Panamanian congress. Where Silva’s proposal focuses on investments and is limited to BTC and ETH, Vargas’ proposal involves Tether (USDT) and NFTs as well.
Thank you for reading.