Crypto-currencies can be a major factor in Latin America breaking the shackles of financial constraint. And it is those who know about the technology that are already approaching it.

The great British historian Eric Hobswahm once described Latin America [as] “a region where historical evolution occurred at rapid speed. Recently, this could be taken as true. The civil conflicts in Ecuador and Chile show how things can change on the continent, especially in Chile, a nation known for its economic stability.

Social dissolution in Venezuela, President Jair Bolsonaro’s questioned political management in Brazil, and the threat to the delicate peace agreement (signed in 2016) between the Colombian government and the Marxist rebels of the FARC have plunged the continent into “possible” confusion.

The current COVID-19 pandemic is only fanning the flames of greater social unrest, which could create a scenario in which the countries of the continent descend to something similar to the dark days of the 1960s and 1970s, when military dictatorships, assassinations, and political intimidation were the order of the day.

Here is a question:

Did you know that some of the highest rates of crypto-currency adoption are in South America?

Countries like Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico have record levels of crypto-currency users on the planet, embarrassing some of the nations of the developed world.

One reason for this could be that people’s confidence in their nations’ currencies is at an all-time low. This is where crypto-currencies come in in Latin America

High adoption rates

The great recession in South America, which began in 2008, caused confidence to plummet. Argentina’s financial crisis began last year, when inflation rose by more than 50% once again. Brazil in 2016, when much of the same thing went down. And let’s not forget Venezuela’s economy.

One reason for the popularity of Satoshi’s legacy is the security in which crypto-currencies can be sent. With many Latin Americans living in North America and the Iberian Peninsula for economic reasons, it is an easy solution to send remittances to their families back home.

For a large number of the South American population (some say up to 50%), the reality of being unbanked is a massive obstacle to social acceptance and civic engagement.

Cryptosystems, however, eliminate all this, dislocating the unbanked from the machinations of the bureaucratic nature of their nations’ financial ineptitude.

Services such as Crixto from Venezuela, the new Mexican company Volabit, Panda from Colombia, Ripio from Argentina and the new Uruguayan company Cryptofacil, are changing the face of finance in the continent forever and the way crypto-currencies are used in Latin America

The cryptocurrent, and the underlying technology behind it, the block chain; is breathing new life into a continent that has been under the table for too long.