Local Crypto Adoption
Let’s try to answer some questions that Joel made:
What’s the crypto adoption scene like?
Here, cryptos are mostly unknown for most people, there are some prejudice about it being too complex and too risky. It is mostly linked with rich people doing some kind of financial investment on something without any real impact.
And, sadly, that conception is not far from truth regarding the local usage. Most crypto enthusiast enjoy a far above the median salary and are linked to trading, directly or through investments platforms. The exception is some crypto enthusiast that use crypto as long term savings to scape from inflation.
There is mostly not usage for actual transactions, but those in-out from FIAT and those are starting to not even exist, as transactions are done within exchanges, so they don’t ever touch any blockchain.
Which are the major exchanges and services? Is it easy to get Dash with fiat?
There aren’t many exchanges, those are mostly listed on coinmonitor and the focus is on bitcoin making it even harder to the average people to even touch the blockchain, as bitcoin transactions cost a lot. There is no exchange with support for Dash and the services supporting crypto is pretty small, but it is growing slowly.
Also, most sites, services and applications related to crypto out of Argentina break somehow when working with ARS, making them harder to use for most people that is not used to think on USD. Why it get broken? Because the USD-ARS exchange rate is rather complex.
Do you know of a group of Dash enthusiasts there?
There are some interested people on a crypto for payments, but as there is almost no usage, no one is doing the first step.
Do most people have smartphones? Are they used to digital payments?
Most people use phones and there is a big campaign to use it for payments, but that usage is mostly state-bank centered, with big companies like mercado pago leading the trend. It is still a challenge as most merchants still prefer cash, but state is pushing the usage and acceptance of that, using regulations for merchants, giving incentives for clients (discounts ~ 30%) and opening bank accounts on welfare programs, so merchants eventually give up.
What are the regulations like for crypto?
As actual usage for transaction is almost non-existent and as regulation for USD use almost all the regulator resources, there is almost no regulation in place, but there are comments about the central bank thinking about them.