Cryptocurrencies prove a lifeline in Argentina's chaotic economy
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Loading... - Facundo Gonzalez
- 16 Mar 2022
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Sports stadiums, buses and highway billboards across Argentina are plastered with adverts for cryptocurrency exchanges, as the nation’s economic instability fuels one of the world’s biggest booms in digital money.
TV and radio hosts talk about investment options in digital coins, and a crypto exchange is currently one of the sponsors of the nation’s biggest football tournament.
Workers are increasingly getting paid in cryptocurrency to circumvent exchange controls and to protect them from currency swings and 50 percent inflation. Argentina has a higher proportion of employees getting paid in cryptocurrency than anywhere else, according to Deel, a payroll company that operates in 150 countries.
Driving the trend is a local law that allows companies to pay as much as 20 percent of remuneration in kind.
That’s a huge advantage due to Argentina’s currency controls. If a company were to pay US$1,000 through the banking system, the employee would receive about 109,000 pesos, at the official exchange rate. But if the worker instead got paid in a cryptocurrency, that could be changed at the unregulated parallel exchange rate for about 200,000 pesos – 83 percent more.
“Crypto sweetens local wages,” said Matias Dajcz, Global VP OTC at Ripio, a Latin American company that offers services to companies that pay in cryptocurrency. Read More...
