How Crypto Is Transforming Argentina's Economy

Today we're diving into the vibrant crypto ecosystem of Argentina as experienced at Aleph, a unique crypto pop-up city in Buenos Aires. You’ll hear from three influential guests - Marcelo Cavazzoli of Lemon Cash, Federico Ogue of Buenbit, and Manuel Beaudroit of Belo - who are leading the charge in Argentina’s crypto revolution. The episode provides deep insights into why Argentina is becoming a global hub for crypto adoption, driven by grassroots enthusiasm and supported by the pro-crypto stance of the new government. Expect a blend of personal stories, expert opinions, and an exploration of how crypto is empowering millions in Argentina amidst the failing Argentine Peso. ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 ⁠ 🦄UNISWAP | BROWSER EXTENSION https://bankless.cc/uniswap ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum https://%E2%81%A0https//bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🌐 OBOL | STAKE ON DVs, SCALE ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/obol 🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT https://bankless.cc/toku ------ TIMESTAMPS 00:00:00 Start 00:16:37 Intro and Market Size 00:26:49 Demographics 00:30:29 Why isn't everyone using stablecoins? 00:37:14 Custody and Trust 00:42:29 Creating Crypto Power Users 00:49:08 Preferred Way Of Growing Wealth 00:55:28 Dealing With Competition 01:03:10 Building Under the Argentine Laws 01:12:21 Javier Milei 01:18:12 Crypto's Future In Argentina ------ RESOURCES Marcelo Cavazzoli - https://x.com/lemoncheli Federico Ogue - https://x.com/fedeogue Manuel Beaudroit - https://x.com/mbeaudroit ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04David Hoffman?

  Dear Bankers Nation! For the month of August, I've been in Argentina, attending AELIF, the crypto pop-up city in the heart of Buenos Aires. One part Zuzalo, one part DevConnect. The goal of AELIF is to give the crypto industry here in Argentina, which is already very strong, a shot in the arm in order to formally lock it in as a part of the Argentine economy. With Javier Millay's election last December, there is a unique window of opportunity that crypto has in Argentina. Argentina is one of the few countries with strong bottom-up support, and now it has an administration who is deeply crypto in spirit. AELIF is trying to seize the opportunity that the Millay administration has presented to the crypto industry and formally lock in pro-crypto regulation along with crypto support for the industries and startups that are present here in Argentina.

• 0:49David Hoffman?

  At the AELIF hub, a 1,000-person coworking space, crypto startups, venture capitalists, and the Argentine government have all met and mingled for a month of collaboration, support, and growth. While AELIF is just a one-month event that will eventually come to an end, the sparks it ignites will hopefully spread into a wildfire across the country of Argentina and then all of Latam. This wildfire is what we call crecimiento, or growth, in the crypto vernacular of Argentina. But why Argentina? Argentina is the spearhead of crypto. While developed nation venture capitalists and crypto Twitter hypothesize about use cases and adoption and attracting retail investors, in Argentina, crypto has already been adopted by millions of people who have a present and urgent need for crypto's value and services.

• 1:34David Hoffman?

  Argentina is the perfect breeding ground for the crypto economy. The intersection of easy internet access, currency inflation, capital controls, and traditional business frictions have produced an environment in which the power of crypto can truly shine. This recent Gort tweet made me chuckle, but the irony here is that in Argentina, millions of well-adjusted adults with nine-to-five jobs with monthly expenses and obligations have all found crypto to enable them to live their lives better and easier than the status quo. This satirical Gort tweet reads: "Retail is coming. You know, well-adjusted adults with nine-to-five jobs with monthly expenses and obligations. They're coming to trade digital commodities with us. That's what they're going to do. Just be patient, retail is on the way."

• 2:17David Hoffman?

  There's a stark difference between the crypto economy of Argentina and the perceived use cases and metas that are often hypothesized about on crypto Twitter. Local Argentines can't afford to bet on the next shiny alt layer one or be in the meme coin trenches. Their money is going to be worth 1% less tomorrow and 1% less again the day after that, as it has been for all of their lives. Of course, Argentina has its crypto natives who play in the degen games, but degen activity is dwarfed by the millions of Argentine citizens who don't care about crypto and couldn't care less about the fake world that degens on crypto Twitter have generated, but nonetheless are using their favorite crypto app, Lemon, Bello, Buendia, or Ripio, to escape inflation, buy coffee, and protect their wealth.

• 3:01David Hoffman?

  In Argentina, crypto is real. While the government of El Salvador has been praised by Bitcoiners for its Bitcoin forwardness, the citizens of El Salvador do not share similar excitement for the country's top-down investment into Bitcoin. In contrast, the citizens of Argentina are truly excited about crypto, or at worst are indifferent. Not every Argentine uses crypto, but its usage is normalized and culturally accepted by all. The average Argentine has either directly had their lives materially improved by crypto due to easy access to dollars, payment services, or bankless banking, or they know someone who has. The bottom-up support and acceptance of crypto is stronger in Argentina than anywhere else in the world. A north star of crecimiento and the ALIF pop-up city is the belief that Argentina

• 3:46David Hoffman?

  is just 100 good startups away from a wildfire of crypto-enabled economic growth and prosperity from spreading across the nation. Just 100 more startups, creating 5,000 more crypto-powered jobs, bringing the value of crypto into Argentina. And Argentina will become the first country to reach crypto-escape velocity and become the first end-to-end crypto-powered country on Earth. At ALIF, 67 crypto startups, from pre-C to Series A, are working together at a common coworking space, collaborating on problems, and supporting each other along their way. 22 mentors from venture capital firms, crypto teams, and successful entrepreneurs are present at the hub, offering their time, advice, and perspective in order to pass wisdom on to the younger generations of startups.

• 4:28David Hoffman?

  Every day at the ALEF hub, there is a university-quality curriculum of the skills needed to build in Web3. Workshops, talks, and mentorships were available from some of the industry's most technical frontiers. And a huge shout out to ZK Sync here. Overwhelmingly, startup builders and Hackathon attendees cited the presence and support of the ZK Sync team we're able to provide at ALEF. The third week of ALEF was ZK Week, and the ZK Sync Latam Devrel team went above and beyond providing education in both Spanish and English for the builders here. Here's a snapshot of what a day at ALEF just looked like for the builders. And here, for the podcast listeners, there is just a daily itinerary of some of the activities, starting with like morning health stuff, run club, yoga, guided meditation,

• 5:12David Hoffman?

  and then ZK City Bootcamp, or Road to VC Investment in Argentina, or the ALEF Weekly Showcase, where people can demo what they're building. Sam Richards presented Zero Knowledge Products. World ID was presented by the World Coin team. Alex Glukowski, the Matter Lab ZK Sync founder, gave a presentation about ZK. Lisa from Aztec. Kyle from Phoenix. Starknet hosted a meetup. There was also an intro to smart contracts in Solidity, first from the younger devs, and then, of course, a happy hour at the end of the day. This was just one day. And this is only like a third of the things that are on the itinerary of that day. On the other side of the equation, we have Malay's digital transformation, the top-down side of things. Argentina is the only country on Earth

• 5:55David Hoffman?

  that has both a strong grassroots crypto industry being met with a strong, top-down, pro-crypto state government. This is the potential that Crazy Manto is trying to unlock. The brand-new president of Argentina, Javier Malay, is deeply crypto in spirit. With this new administration making radical changes in the Argentine government, the crypto leaders of Argentina have identified the potential of permanently embedding crypto as a part of Argentina's growth plan for the rest of the 2020s and beyond. Javier Millay is massively pro-technology, pro-investment, and pro-acceleration. He has an actual blockchain consultant, Sergio Morales, in his cabinet. Millay's interest in Bitcoin and crypto is part of his broader economic philosophy, which includes dollarizing the economy, stable coins, of course, and reducing government intervention.

• 6:40David Hoffman?

  Millay drafted legislation that balances crypto innovation and investor protections, and has collaborated with some of the crypto industry to provide regulatory clarity. Part of Millay's initial economic mega-decree included the elimination of legal tender laws allowing contracts to be denominated in any currency. These are good steps for the legality of crypto in Argentina, but there's still a long way to go. The real question for the crypto industry is, can Argentina build and lock in a strong pro-crypto regulatory framework that gives crypto entrepreneurs and businesses the assurances that crypto will be legal and protected for multiple decades into the future? Can crypto protections be established that transcend past the current administration? What if a new administration comes and attempts to wipe out the pro-crypto progress

• 7:24David Hoffman?

  that the Millay administration has made, as has happened so many times in the past for other industries in Argentina? On the 22nd of August, ALEF hosted Regulatory Day, where leaders in the Millay administration came to the ALEF hub, the co-working venue where the 63 startups worked, in order to have a day of discussions, talks, and workshops, all focusing on what crypto businesses and startups need out of the Millay administration. It's not just Millay. Here's a picture of the previous president of Argentina walking in the ALEF co-working space with his ZK Sync team, holding the "Explain ZK Like I'm 5" book that they created. This is like if Bill Clinton attended the ETH Denver Hackathon. And I just want to highlight two things that came out of the Regulation Day at Cris y Miento. Here's a quote from what is effectively the Gary Gensler of Argentina,

• 8:09David Hoffman?

  Roberto Silva. And I mean Gary Gensler as in the leader of the Securities Administration, not the person who's trying to stamp out crypto. So Roberto Silva says, "We are 100% in favor of the normalization of technology of the crypto world. The United States SEC model is to sue cryptocurrencies, claiming that they are irregular. We do not follow that model." Just one statement. And another thing that happened during- Regulation week was that it was announced that Ethereum and Solidity are now formally integrated into the high school education programs in Buenos Aires. So as a high schooler, you can learn to write Ethereum smart contracts in Argentina. Unlike in the United States, the crypto industry in Argentina is deeply appreciated and encouraged by state officials.

• 8:50David Hoffman?

  There's also the technology that was used to support ALEF. ALEF pioneered some crypto-native technology being dog fooded by the 2,000 citizens at the ALEF pop-up city. Quark ID and Morphe, for example. Quark ID is an app incubated by the cities of Buenos Aires that uses verifiable credentials, decentralized identifiers, and zero-knowledge cryptography to produce a user-sovereign identity system for all the citizens of ALEF. After purchasing my ticket to ALEF, I have been issued a verifiable credential that allows my iPhone to open the door to the ALEF hub and access the coworking space. My rights and privileges as a citizen of ALEF means I get an allowance of 100 Morphe tokens a week. Morphe tokens are an ERC20 token

• 9:35David Hoffman?

  on the ZKSync Aramain net that are redeemable for 1,000 Argentine pesos at local businesses that have signed up to accept Morphe for payment for food, coffee, or other services around the hub. 1,000 pesos is about $1, but that's also depending on when you're listening to this. All of this is running on the ZKSync Aramain net and represents a real prototype for a Bellagian network state running on crypto rails. Maybe you're thinking, how do they get over 50 different businesses to accept crypto for payment? The sales pitch for crypto as payment is pretty easy. When you learn that accepting regular peso payment over fintech rails in Argentina results in a 60 to 90-day settlement time, meaning that the businesses don't get their pesos until after it's lost somewhere between 6% to 20% of its value. Last month, Argentina experienced its

• 10:19David Hoffman?

  lowest month of inflation in over five years at 4%. That's 4% in a month, not a year. You think the 2.9% credit card fees are bad? Imagine a business losing 10% due to the currency debasement simply because the banking rails are holding their money for two to three months before giving it to businesses. When Argentine businesses are informed that they are able to get their money instantly, it's an easy sell. Later this year, Quark ID, again incubated by the city of Buenos Aires, will build their own independent elastic chain on the ZK stack and will become part of the ZKSync Kuiper chain. Quark ID has plans to also build in more traditional services into their app like driver's license and other government-issued credentials to user-controlled wallets.

• 11:04David Hoffman?

  For all intents and purposes, if this mission succeeds, this will become the Argentina Layer 2. If you want to go further down this rabbit hole, check out the interview I did with Diego Fernandez, the Secretary of Innovation of Buenos Aires, last January. As ALEF comes to a close, the gringos, VCs, and mentors will all have to leave. We all have our homes to return to. The ALEF co-working space is on a three-year lease and will remain open for the crypto startups to use as a common hub for the crypto industry moving forward. Support networks have been created, connections, friendships, and investments have been made. But will ALEF be the final push over the edge for the crypto industry in Argentina? Argentina certainly has more than its fair share of problems that it needs to deal with: a convoluted taxation system that even regulators know full well that means everyone is dodging

• 11:47David Hoffman?

  taxes, business regulation constraints, not to mention decades of entrenched pseudo-communism that have held millions of voters locked in poverty as they constantly reelect the pronists that are promising them fiscal handouts, massively contributing to inflation, and creating millions of people dependent on that government handout, and leaving only a very painful path out of a very deep hole. If there's one thing that has consensus in Argentina, it's that the homegrown grassroots crypto industry is one of the brightest stars on the horizon. While the Argentines I talked to are more often cynical and in despair of the future of the country, they are somehow still optimistic about the alternative toolset that they have been given and the inherent scrappiness that comes with being an Argentine. While many Argentines in crypto that I know have become fantastically wealthy thanks to

• 12:30David Hoffman?

  the fortune of crypto, many of them have not taken that opportunity to leave the country. They love Argentina and the people in it. It's not a place to escape from, but instead, a culture worth experiencing and a country trying to become worthy of reinvestment. I don't know if crypto can single-handedly elevate Argentina, the jurisdiction, into higher-quality living, but we've already seen crypto elevate millions of Argentinas out of poverty and free from currency debasement. Maybe the governments in the modern age are simply too calcified to productively rebuild. That's sad, but that's fine. Crypto can help people help themselves regardless if their country can. And if their country can help crypto along, then that's even better. And with that, let's get into the conversation with three Argentine crypto founders who literally

• 13:14David Hoffman?

  have millions of users who are using their products and services. Like I said in my article, normal, well-adjusted adults working in a normal nine-to-five job who use Lemon Cash, Buenbit or Bello simply to do normal adult things. They're not speculating, they're simply using crypto to save their money without losing it along the way. We talk about the crypto industry in Argentina, how they got so many people to use their app, the user behaviors and demographics of their companies, how they chose to manage user risk when the choices they have made literally impact millions of people. And what's it like to be a founder in Argentina? How has the entrance of President Malay changed things? And what are they hoping for out of crypto in our Argentina? I hope you enjoy this episode of Bankless Nation. It's rare that we get to do an in-person interview with three people who have seen

• 13:57David Hoffman?

  everything when it comes to crypto adoption in the country that I think has adopted crypto the most. The video of this interview cut out halfway through, but nonetheless, the audio is totally fine and the conversation was fantastic. So let's go ahead and get right into the conversation. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. If you want a crypto trading experience backed by world-class security and award-winning support teams, then head over to Kraken, one of the longest-standing and most-secure crypto platforms in the world. Kraken is on a journey to build a more accessible, inclusive and fair financial system, making it simple and secure for everyone, everywhere, to trade crypto. Kraken's intuitive trading tools are designed to grow with you, empowering you to make your first or your hundredth trade in just a few clicks. And there's an award-winning client support team available 24/7 to help you along the

• 14:42David Hoffman?

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• 15:27David Hoffman?

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• 16:11David Hoffman?

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• 16:54David Hoffman?

  So the three founders that I have here today, first on my left, we've got Marcelo Cavazzoli. Marcelo from Lemon Cash. Marcelo, welcome to the podcast.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Thank you, David. It's great to be here and I'm super fond of the show.

• 17:07David Hoffman?

  And in the middle, we've got Federico Ogway from Buenbit. Federico, say hi.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Hi, everybody. Thank you, David, for the invitation.

• 17:14David Hoffman?

  And then last but not least, down at the end of the couch, we've got Manuel Bedroll from Bello. Manuel, welcome to the podcast.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks for the mic, Dan. Great to be here also.

• 17:22David Hoffman?

  So we are in the middle of crecimiento, which is the movement of crypto growth in Argentina, specifically at Alef, which is a one-day pop-up city, the coworking of coworking communities right across the street. Sixty-two crypto startups are all heads down, working along with regulators and just VCs, all kind of coming together to promote crypto. And my role here is to tell that story, to also tell the story of crypto in Argentina. And like I said, it just looks so different from what I think we are used to in the United States. All three founders here, the companies or respective companies, have millions of users. And I think that's just a very foreign concept to many crypto companies in America. Like, the idea of having a million users is something that we dream about.

• 18:07David Hoffman?

  Not too many crypto companies have a million users. You have Coinbase, all the exchanges, basically. And then after that, it's, it's, there's not, not that many that I'm familiar with. And so the first thing I want to do in this conversation is kind of really explore how big crypto is in Argentina, because especially with your guys' users, your guys' users, I wouldn't call crypto people. They are normal Argentines, well-adjusted adults, doing normal things. And they're not, they're not de-gening into tokens. They're not doing any of the stuff that we find on crypto Twitter. They are just living their normal lives. And so maybe you guys can, we can start like painting a picture of the customer base of your guys' companies, some metrics that you might want to share, if you can,

• 18:52David Hoffman?

  just to kind of like show how big your guys' customer base is and how big the industry is in Argentina.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  So, well, I think it's, there's not just one group of people. I think you will discover that there's many different groups and audiences that use crypto for different, for different needs. And I think that in our companies, that illustrates a lot, because each of us have like a specific focus that maybe it's more appealing for, for an audience.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  In my case, in Lemon, we are a wallet that combines crypto and fiat.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  And it's mostly focused on the Argentine, the this one that you're describing, right? The the the common Argentine that gets paid in pesos and that uses Lemon every day. So for us, it's a combination of, it's like, imagine having Venmo and Coinbase combined. So in our case, what we what we have is that is one wallet that we aim for the user to be the only wallet they need for their traditional fintech or finance needs and for their new needs. In that sense, we've grown a lot since we started.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  We are right now in 2.6 million users, registered users. Half of them, 1.3 million are active annually and more than half a half a million are active every month. So it combines different groups that I think we will discover in the talk, but what we have the most is people that use it every day, use Lemon every day.

• 20:35David Hoffman?

  So if it's Venmo and Coinbase, I'm guessing it's the most common swap is from peso to crypto dollars in some particular way, but then the rest of the usage of Lemon is is for payments. Is that right?

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, the the most, the most, let's say, swap is pesos to dollars. However, in in Lemon, and I think that this is different for each company, the asset that people held the most, especially this year, has been Bitcoin. So we have more Bitcoin than stable coins. And that's something that I imagine not everyone expected. So we have more Bitcoin, more stable coins and more ETH than than pesos.

• 21:19David Hoffman?

  All right, down the line, Federico. So Bienbit, how does Bienbit fit into the the crypto economy in Argentina?

• 21:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's one bit, like in Bueno, good bit.

• 21:29David Hoffman?

  That's not me not knowing, that's my accent and pronunciation being terrible.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  So as Chilo said, Lemon is like an everyday wallet for the payments. In our case, OneBit is an app for investing. We're for investing and savings and our main product is crypto. For example, stablecoins as a way to dollarize your savings and generate a yield on your savings. And then we have Bitcoin, Ether and the other tokens as an alternative for investing in non-traditional assets and digital assets. In our case, we have 900,000 registered users and we have 70,000 monthly active users.

• 22:11David Hoffman?

  So where Lemon Cash might be more for payments, would yours is more for savings and growing wealth and investing? Is that a fair categorization?

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, our main KPI is assets under management.

• 22:22David Hoffman?

  So this is like a Robin Hood for people that are in the States?

• 22:25Speaker 02

  We're going that way. We're trying to now open and be more of a holistic investment app. And we're starting to add tradFi assets. Right now, we're just crypto.

• 22:36David Hoffman?

  Okay, beautiful. And then Manuel, down to you.

• 22:40Speaker 03

  In the case of Bello, we understood that our main audience was mainly freelancers, remote workers looking to work from abroad throughout Latin America. So we tried to support as many countries as possible. Obviously, in Argentina is the widest audience. We have some interesting cases in which you have like this retired woman in their 80s that they are saving in Bitcoin because we have, you know, a big chunk of, let's say, crypto donated people in Argentina, which has been Bitcoin first for most of their life.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  In terms of the usage, we kind of are in the same page that although most of the volume is in stablecoins, the big chunk of AOM is in Bitcoin. So people start, we give them DCA, so they have a really easy way to, you know, getting exposed to Bitcoin and other currencies. And the usage is also kind of daily, daily based, but we try to narrow it down to, you know, these guys which are, you know, internet native people that are looking to connect with other countries and do a lot of cross-border payments.

• 23:55David Hoffman?

  And then how would the products and services differ from your two compatriots here? Like, how is it occupying a different niche?

• 24:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a good question. Obviously, I mean, I think we are the last company to see the light, although I've been in the space for some long time. We tried to kind of specialize into one segment and provide value there, which I think at the end of the day pays off really well because when you try to go too broad, at least in our experience, that can be a lot of waste of resources. So we tried to narrow it down to freelancers, remote workers, give them ways to collect from abroad, pay abroad. We integrate with PICS, which is the Brazilian Pay Method. So as a fellow user, you can go to Brazil, pay as local, which has been really an interesting experience.

• 24:44Speaker 03

  And we tried to replicate that in other markets. I think, you know, you need to build your audience and also from there build a product. So it's kind of this process through iteration, which basically also led us. Vision is super important, but you know, talking to the user, it's mandatory, you know?

• 25:07Speaker 02

  And it's interesting because, you know, like a couple of months ago, maybe a year ago, all of our apps were pretty much the same, you know? And when the bear market came and things got tougher, we started to think, okay, what's our competitive advantage? Or what's our core niche? And now I think we're like diverging and everybody's focusing on a specific use case or audience.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  You know, maybe just to add that we do, we do, every year we do a report that we share all of the data we compile from our business metrics and from our internal usage. And we share it with everyone. So you can see, you can look at it in the website. And I think that something very interesting is in this research, you will see that Argentina has more on-chain volume than Brazil and then Mexico. In terms of on-chain, and we are forty-five million people. And Brazil is two-hundred-and-twenty, two-hundred-and-thirty, Mexico is one-hundred-and-twenty, twenty-five.

• 26:12Speaker 03

  So that means like the on-chain volume per citizen is way up over the rest. And I think that is a very big opportunity, especially when, even when you look at the Lemon's numbers and we zoom out, the active user, our active user rates after Binance is the largest in Latam. So even, we are mainly focused in Argentina now. When you look at that from zoom out, it's the second-largest active user rates in the whole region. If you take out the, well, the casino.

• 26:49David Hoffman?

  What about demographics inside of Argentina? So crypto typically skews very young, and I would imagine that's pretty similar also in Argentina. But are there like professions that like find more usage in crypto that you guys find on your guys' apps? Is it, does it, does it actually skew young people? How far old does it skew? Like any sort of just like unique tidbits of information to pull out here?

• 27:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I think the curve should be pretty similar in every, in every, in every platform. You see a big slope, you know, in the twenties, thirties, and then a long tail towards, you know, nineties, eighties. It's interesting, the mix between women and men. This in Velo, it's pretty similar. So there hasn't been, you know, a big difference. Usually you think of crypto, it's like a ninety percent male, and it's not like that. And in terms of profession, I think it's pretty broad, you know? You have like from people which are working, you know, nine-to-five, to government officials,

• 27:57Speaker 03

  to policemen, you know, firefighters. I think one, one thing that, I mean, crypto in Argentina has gone through different, let's say, waves of adoption.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  In some cases, pre-connected to the bull markets. But in other cases, I think the guys from Boinbit have done terrific job in, I think it was 2017, 18, with stablecoins that was massive. And I think a lot of people get into crypto through stablecoins and kind of change their ways of operating and thinking about money. Because in Argentina, usually you have these customs around saving in actual notes, dollar bills. Argentina is the second place in the world with more cash dollar than anywhere. So it's, you know, it's really common to actually saving dollars.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  And we are seeing a change in habits in how people are doing it. And I think stablecoins as a whole has been, you know, pretty, let's say, demographic, democratic way of getting into crypto, you know?

• 29:09Speaker 01

  I was gonna add, you wanna let them? I was gonna add to Manu that the faces are super noticeable. In the past, many people came because of trying to hedge against the peso, right? Say, hey, I don't want my money to be lost. And it's something that is hard to understand, but if you look at Argentina, I think in 2023, if you look five years into the past, if you just held pesos, you would have lost 95% of your value. So that's like, yeah, we can talk, it's maybe like a, like an, you know, like a meme coin level drop.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  But that means, for people, it means that in five years, 95% of the time you invested, your savings is just gone. So that created a huge demand that we all experienced, like we, like Ferre was one of the first to do the crypto dollar, got really big. And then it started to mature, started to go to other stablecoins. And recently, I'm surprised, Manu, you guys have the same, people are saving more in Bitcoin. So I think it's like learning, you know, it's like, oh, I don't, we know the peso, we already know a little bit the dollar, let's just go to harder assets. And even having more ETH than pesos today. So it's like, people are maturing, I think.

• 30:29David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so I can't remember what this specific metric is, but it's something like one or two billion dollars of hard physical cash is actually inside of Argentina because of this very strong demand for dollars because of the inflation of the Argentine peso. And so you would think that if there's that much demand for physical dollars, that stable coins would be the obvious product that everywhere in Argentina, everyone would love. And that is why I think your guys' companies are some of the most successful in Argentina. But it also asks the question, why isn't everyone in Argentina on your guys' apps? Like, why isn't everyone in Argentina using stable coins? So like, what are the reasons? Is it like education, people just haven't like learned about your guys' companies? They don't trust, they don't trust stable coins?

• 31:13David Hoffman?

  Like, for what reasons are you, have you guys not won over the entire country, would you say?

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Can I ask you a question, David?

• 31:19David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Did you have the experience of changing US dollars to cash in Argentina in a Cueva?

• 31:24David Hoffman?

  Yes, I have, yeah.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  How was it?

• 31:27David Hoffman?

  Uh, I mean, I wouldn't call it bad. I went, this was when I was here in January and I took like $500 in to get it changed into pesos and walked out with a plastic baggie of cash. And then I realized that like, maybe I swapped too much because I could have swapped later when the exchange rate was, was different. Uh, I mean, it was cumbersome in the fact that I had to actually go somewhere. Uh, and so it took an hour out of my day. I was also unsure if I was getting the best exchange rate because different places were giving me different rates. Uh, and so I didn't, there was some level of uncertainty as well. Uh, and so, yeah, that's, that's kind of my answer.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  That's like a really Argentinian experience, you know, going to a Cueva with the US dollar bills. Maybe you have like 10 bills and you get a bag full of, of, you know, Argentinian bills. And related to your question, I think it's, it's a thing about trust, you know? People trust the, the, the physical cash because they had a really bad experiences with the banks, you know? In, I think it was 2000 or 2001, we have the Corralito that all

• 32:39Speaker 02

  US dollar deposits in the banks were confiscated. And they were exchanged to a virtual, you know, exchange rate that was four times worse than the real exchange rate. So Argentinians got burned with that, you know. I think it's something of the the older generation. But in general, Argentinians do not trust institutions, you know, and prefer to have the US dollar physical. That's why, as you say, it's calculated that there are 200 billion US dollars in cash. You know, so our work is trying to break a little bit of that, you know,

• 33:19Speaker 02

  fear of of institutions and say, OK, that was something of the past, you know. Also, digital currencies and stable coins are something of the future. It's not the same as having your deposits in the bank. It's also a value proposition that we offer, you know. If you have stable coins, you have money outside of the country. It's not in a in an Argentine institution. But I think it's it's something that you have to work with a trust, you know, with people.

• 33:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think there is there is a few things there. So Barca Opa is the biggest fintech here in Argentina. I don't know how many users they have, but I'm sure that near maybe 20 million, something like that. They took them like few hundred million dollars to reach that point and more than 10 years.

• 34:05Speaker 03

  And we are just getting started, you know. And and the thing is that we are dealing with, let's say, we are selling other assets. But as Fede said, people in Argentina like to hold their hard assets. So there is kind of a bias toward towards, you know. There is a paradox in a way, you know, because they want the hard asset, but they cannot touch it. And I think what we have done has been really interesting on, for example, connecting old technology with future money, which is the use of a prepaid card, you know, or the card. The plastic, the actual holding, the the plastic card card allow people to kind of.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  We reroute their minds in the sense that, hey, I know I haven't had an asset, but I know I can just use it to buy, you know, a fridge or whatever. And that, I think, helped us a lot into adoption. Obviously, at the end of the day, you need to invest in user acquisition, education and a lot of stuff. And that usually takes some time, you know, to accomplish.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna add on Manuel's point. When, especially in Lemon, when we did the card, I don't know if you saw it, but I think, yeah, the three of us have cards, right?

• 35:24Speaker 03

  That would be interesting.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  This is the Lemon card and it has the Ethereum and Bitcoin logo. And I think you guys also have, you know, the card.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  All right, sorry.

• 35:37David Hoffman?

  You guys all have cards from your own respective companies?

• 35:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah. That's funny. That's funny. So for the podcast listeners, we have three different Visa cards being shown up on the screens from the three different founders. One's a MasterCard, yeah.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, cheers to MasterCard.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  You guys are the competition.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. Two to one.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  But the most important, I think, here, like, we wanted, like, today, you can use crypto to pay with the card. You can use your pesos or you can use your crypto. And today in Lemon, and we shared this in the report, people, the volume paid in crypto is 20% only. So only 20% of the purchases done with the card are done with crypto and the rest is done with pesos. Now, it was very important for the card to break that feeling of this, it's already a complicated industry, like, you know, it seems like crypto lives in a bubble, in the cloud and financial stuff. So people didn't have something to touch.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Now with this plastic, they can touch it, they can say, oh, I can go and I can spend it. So it allowed to, like, unroot that system, that chip that we have.

• 36:48Speaker 03

  And yeah, well, now in Limo, we issued more than 1 million cards. So it's 1 million people that, I think you guys also do the same. We give some cash back back to the user. So that's 1 million people that got their first satoshis, that experienced the first, you know, getting Bitcoin without risking or accessing crypto without, you know, investing at first. And it's kind of like, it was like the first step to break that circuit.

• 37:14David Hoffman?

  So you mentioned, you guys brought up the idea that Argentine don't trust institutions. And none of you guys offer a non-custodial product. You guys are all custodial products, correct? And like, there's one, there's one reaction to that. It was like, oh, bummer, it's not totally bankless, right? We're not, we're not promoting self-key, self-custody. But also at the other time, on the flip side of things, like, how else are you going to onboard a million people? And so like, there's no coincidence that the three biggest, you know, companies in Argentina are all custodial, because that's what it takes to get people's first steps into the world of crypto. But you're also saying it's the biggest hindrance to people actually trusting an institution, because being a custodial institution makes you an institution.

• 37:59David Hoffman?

  Is this, is this an education problem? Or is this like people just being wary of things that are new? And they have their own preferred way of like, they just want to touch the dollars? And like, or how do you guys like, kind of solve this, like, this issue of trust when it comes to your customers?

• 38:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe this is an unpopular comment, but is everyone ready for self-custodial solutions? I don't see my mother holding their keys and remembering everything. So I think for me, and maybe I see this as a more pragmatic view. Fiat is the elephant in the room, and we need to kill Fiat in order to actually make this, the Satoshi vision, you know, actually accomplished. And it will take a lot of time. And I think each one of us needs to play a role in this movie. I would love to have a self-custodial solution.

• 39:02Speaker 03

  And I think there's a lot of. Ah nuances in how people operate, on how they they they build, you know, their their experience in the product that needs still to be sold because, you know, in general self custodial solutions are not the most friendly ones. Uh but going sorry to your question around how people see us as an institution. Obviously, I mean, you have lovers and haters. I think it's part of the of the game. Uh someone from that used to to work at this uh Giga Economy platform said, this is a big numbers game, so obviously you need to learn to to listen to your customer.

• 39:42Speaker 03

  Uh but you need to see kind of the trend also, you know, because uh obviously someone, they say, ah, you you're a froster, but he he's a froster. So you need to be really careful of how you you you actually operate the the whole thing, you know.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Um I have two two points here. The first one is kind of more eh personal. When we were we were getting started and you guys too, there was a moment in time that centralized companies were the enemies. We were, we had a lot of the industry attacking us. Like, I remember, right? We were on a podcast, I remember. Uh from a lot of wallets of custodial that they were like, oh, you guys are the, you know, these guys are a custodial, we need to get rid of them. It's like, we just wanna help, you know, we we want to onboard people. Many of those wallets that were eh back then, they don't exist anymore. And the ones that are are the ones that really added value and that onboarded people.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  And that when I, when the user ends eh ends their like education path, they they can jump to a self custodial. So I I think that the the first part is, I mean, you need to add value to the the user today. And I think that's what we focus on and and it worked. And and taking Manu's points, eh people, first they need to get rid of um of fiat, of of something that they cannot control. And stable coins, but Bitcoin eh is better, so decentralizing the monetary policy, which here we don't control. Um and then in the second place, eh.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  We get, for example, in Lemon around 40,000 tickets per month of people forgetting their password or changing the phones. Forty thousand, forty thousand per month. So imagine if we give, oh, here, here's your keys. There you go, sir. Don't listen. Yeah, exactly. I think that probably in one year, we will, we will lose our entire user base if we did that. So I think that we, we of course want that crypto future more than ever. But I think the tech has to evolve. There's a lot of things that in crypto need to get better.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  And there's a security in terms of the UX tools like account destruction, gasless transactions. There's a lot of things that need to evolve and they're gonna be there. Like my, my good news is probably in two, in two years, three years from now, I think the industry will be ready to jump. But now I think it's time to keep focusing on bringing more users to getting them to crypto. And when it's, it's ready to go, we will launch them to the centralized world.

• 42:29David Hoffman?

  When you, you guys onboard new customers and they are just using probably some of your most basic services, like simple peso to dollar swaps, simple payment stuff. I imagine that's where it starts. And then some users grow in their like relationship with your guys' products. They become power users over time. Uh, maybe at the end of this journey, they become crypto pilled and you know, they start listening to crypto podcasts, hopefully. Uh, how many people like kind of progressed down this arc? Like how many, how do you get people to become power users? And is that like, obviously that's one of your guys' goals, but just like, uh, what, what's the carrot that is pulling them further into your guys' products and apps?

• 43:10Speaker 01

  I mean, there is a lot of will to become a crypto power user. You need to be really honest and convinced that this is the future. Uh, my view is maybe more simplistic. People wants the best solution to fix their problem. And I think crypto in that sense make it super easy to tackle a few problems. For us, obviously, you know, starting with buying and selling, spending.

• 43:38Speaker 03

  Uh, paying for bills, top up, you know, with your mobile, uh, starting to experience with gift cards. Because you don't pay taxes with that, or you do cross border payments, or you start, you know, understanding that instead of buying every day manually, you can set up a DCA. So I think it's, I mean, I don't, maybe I don't have one direct answer. I would say that right now, like 15% of the user base, at least from Bello, are crypto native.

• 44:13Speaker 03

  And, and no, I think that will main, no, that will reduce over time. Because, uh, I think the, the rate of growth of, of non crypto, or let's say more pragmatic users, it's higher than the ones which are already there. So yeah, the, the art for crypto native is definitely lower, you know?

• 44:33David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I guess I, I mean less more about like becoming a crypto native person, but just like they start, they start their relationship with you guys, just like 1% of their yearly, yearly financial activity starts in, in their app, in your app. And then some of your users, I'm, I'm assuming grow to 5%, 10%, maybe beyond 50% of their financial lives happens inside of your guys' applications. How, how many of those users, like how far can you pull users down into just being, just their financial like relationship is with like Lemon, Bello, Bimbit? Uh, like, and, and like, why are they, why are they using your guys' products? Like how, why are they becoming like dominantly a crypto product user?

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Uh huh. What I think is that it's one of the best ways to get people into crypto is solving real world problems, you know? And related to, to the question you asked before, um, people in Argentina have like many, many other and more important problems that self custody. For example, protecting their money from inflation and devaluation, being able to receive money from, from abroad, from a remote work at a cheap cost. And that's what we solve with crypto, you know? And then many people go on and get into the rabbit hole of crypto and, and really get into crypto. In my case, or in our case, and I think it's the same case for for Cello and Manu, we try to solve real world problems first.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  And then people then like trickle down into crypto and get more into deeper into self custody and the philosophy of Bitcoin, etc.

• 46:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, you need to kind of see it from the prism of Maslow Pyramid, you know, you need to kind of, the base of the pyramid, it's, there's a lot of, you know, really interesting use cases where DeFi, maybe it's, you know, not so common or, or, or, yeah, to, to, to everyday user, but if you kind of embed it into a more user-friendly solution can be still used. So, yeah, I agree with Federer.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  In Lemon, we have this approach, which is interesting that you asked this question. Instead of thinking kind of like, you know, build something and then the users will come, like that would be for us, that is getting people into crypto. We have this mindset doing the opposite is introducing crypto to people. So it's like, hey, this, this person in their daily life, how can we make their life easier? How can we make it better? And we use crypto superpowers on the traditional fintech rates. So that's on one side. And the other one is when you think about, why would they kind of like migrate and go

• 47:23Speaker 01

  to the, to the next step on decentralization? One of the things you think is DeFi, right? Well, many platforms, I think, including you guys, we already have DeFi integrated. In our case, we have ABE connected. We do that all in background and it's all transparent. You can see exactly how much is deposited in every contract. It's super transparent that. We don't even take any fees, we just help the user connect. And imagine, I don't know, my, my brother or my, or my father, you know, trying to sign all of these contracts, moving, just one click here in Lemon, it's just, okay, I'm in, I'm in ABE. I believe that, and this is. Maybe not some common idea.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  I believe that that jump to the crypto world is not gonna come. It's not gonna come from this decentralization mindset. I don't think people that are born today think like that. I think it's gonna come from interoperability. I think it's gonna come on a world where, you know, that's full of applications that people can use and can leverage on one app and the other. I think once we have that kind of like big, big app store, when call it Ethereum or or or blockchain becomes kind of like this place full of financial products and not only financial products, like internet products that makes money with internet and you can use it, then

• 48:52Speaker 01

  it's gonna be an incentive for people to jump. Otherwise, I think, you know, it's from my father, it's better for him to use Lemon just to have his money in in Aave using Lemon and take care. I think users are even willing to pay for you to take care of that money instead of carry that burden.

• 49:08David Hoffman?

  Very buen bit. What are the users most interested in when it comes to growing wealth? Do they like yield? Do they like buying Bitcoin and hoping it goes up in price or buying other financial assets? Like, what are Argentines preferred way of growing wealth?

• 49:24Speaker 02

  Our main product is stable coins, stable coins and earning a yield on stable coins.

• 49:29David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  Different from from Mano and Cello, most of our volume comes from stable coins and most of our assets under management are in USDT, DAI and USDC.

• 49:41David Hoffman?

  And how do you actually offer them yield? Like, where does the yield come from? Is it?

• 49:45Speaker 02

  From DeFi, from DeFi, yeah.

• 49:47David Hoffman?

  And then, so how do you manage those choices? There's like a number of different ways to get yield. You can go to MakerDAO, you can go to Aave. How do you like manage the choices of the ways to provide yield?

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Well, we have a team that analyzes the safest and we call them like the blue chip DeFi protocols. And then we just say also to the customer, you're gonna deposit in Aave. No, we say that to the customer. The customer just has to say like opting, I want to invest one click and then we do everything on the on the backend.

• 50:17David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  But we try to choose, you know, Aave or Compound, Maker, the top different protocols that have a history of being, you know, robust.

• 50:28David Hoffman?

  How many, do you know off the top of your head, how many users are opting into a service like that? Or how much TVL?

• 50:33Speaker 02

  In stablecoins, we have 22,000 customers that have more than $100 in stablecoins and are investing in DeFi.

• 50:43David Hoffman?

  Okay, 22,000 customers with stablecoins investing in DeFi. That's a lot of customers. That's a lot of responsibility. You said you have a team vetting like the contracts, but like these are people who I'm sure maybe their first time even seeing the words MakerDAO or Ave are through your application. We're gonna, I'm gonna bring up some regulatory questions here in a second, but just like you guys are all navigating this far ahead of the Argentine government can even like reason about. How have you guys navigated this problem of just like making options for users to preserve and grow their wealth that also have like risks associated with them?

• 51:20David Hoffman?

  And since they're not becoming, you know, bankless, self-custodied people managing the chain themselves, you're enabling some sort of behavior which has, can have consequences. So like very big decisions are being made here that like in the rest of the crypto world, we know exists for our future. But you guys have already like made some of these decisions and have them in the rearview mirror. So like talk about, talk about the growth of this business line.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  Well, it is a big responsibility, you know, and I think it's our responsibility to try to educate and communicate things as clearly as possible. So we had the example with Terra that happened to everybody in the crypto space. And that was a very hard moment and it was a really, you know,

• 52:11Speaker 02

  experience and made us learn a lot about that. But we try to be as clear as possible with the customers of what are the risks, what is behind the investment, you know? But then people, it's real that people trust us and I think we invested a lot in education. And I think it's also a thing of time, you know, trust, you will trust with time. And we've been in the industry for seven years now.

• 52:42Speaker 02

  And yeah, it's really important, you know, it's something, it's a responsibility and that I, it's a weight on my shoulders, to be honest. But we try to do the best that we can in being clear with our customers.

• 52:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think there's a, there's an interesting metaphor that you can use, which is you don't want to have the You don't always want to have the fastest car, but the car with the biggest brakes. Because when you do asset management, as FESL, the responsibilities are humongous in a way. And, and you know, part of what you build can be destroyed in one second, you know, so. And the problem is that, I, I think it's part of the psychology of people overall. They like to kind of transfer their responsibility to you when they choose to opt in for something. And there is a lot of, you know, yeah, power also in that decision, you know.

• 53:40Speaker 03

  So you need to cool down your head and, and think, you know, really, really well on what, what you do, how you do it.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  And we took, we took out all of that decision making. I think with BlockFi and FTX and all of that, we said, no, no, this, this is too much. So we just let the user pick. Now we have only AVE connected. We are planning to add more protocols, like even like Stake E. But it's not going to be so many because as Manu mentioned, even though you make the user like maybe give them options. You're still kind of like in between and they're still going to, you know, take you accountable for it. But yeah, we, we took it off and say, hey, guys, this is default.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  We can connect it if you guys want, but we're not like choosing or making decisions there.

• 54:38Speaker 03

  There is kind of this, I will call it seed store game in which when you provide a lot of high yields, depending on the market condition, that can backfire you really quickly. So I think what is happening now with real world assets. So in some cases, we use mountain protocol, for example, for, for silver coins. I'd say kind of a great way to do it. There is some kind of ideological problem with that. It's that you're giving money to the Fed, you know, which is what we are doing. But, but I think it's, I mean, you need to kind of work on those balances

• 55:17Speaker 03

  in order to give a more robust experience for, for the user, which is also kind of anti cyclical to, to what the market is showing you, you know.

• 55:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think this conversation probably isn't too foreign to listeners about like the tension here between having a large amount of users who have their savings. So they're not speculators. They are trying to save their their real money, hard earned money. You guys are making, you guys as startups need to offer the products and services that people want. So there's pressure to add in these yield sources into the apps. But then also, you need to slow down and not add something too fast too soon, because you have 20, 30, 40, 50,000 users who are going to press that button. And so the repercussions are very large. And so there's a tension to go fast. There's a tension to like, slow

• 56:06David Hoffman?

  down and move more slowly. But then also, we have this, this thing that happens when like Alex Mashinsky is exists somewhere, and he is cheating while he is sourcing yields. You guys are offering a very stable yield of like 4%, 5%, and Alex is offering 13%, 16%. And how can you compete with that when this guy is offering like that much? And this is what happened to BlockFi. Maybe BlockFi would have been totally fine. But BlockFi was tugged by their competitor down the risk curve, because Alex Mashinsky was cheating. And so this tension exists. And so there's, and there's also a lot of complexity here. And so like, how do you like navigate all of these different tensions?

• 56:48Speaker 03

  I would say something, as with competitors, you don't, you don't want to look that way. No. I mean, to be honest, I mean, we are part of the ecosystem. But I don't look at Wb.11 to do whatever we do. We just focus into our user base and what we think is best for them. I think getting to the yield war, it's a problem, because you become the yield. And that we know how it ends up. So I prefer to maybe, you know, be less competitive in that sense. But rest assured that I will sleep by night.

• 57:28David Hoffman?

  And you also brought up Mountain Protocol, which I think is interesting because you could you could take your stable coins, you could deposit into AVE, MakerDAO. These things are stable and secure. They have been for a long time, but nonetheless, there's like smart contract risk, especially if you use perhaps like a yield aggregator, which is kind of what like what BlockFi was. It was a yield aggregator. But Mountain Protocol, you're actually just putting it into doing one thing with it, which is putting it into the Fed. And so there's kind of like a de-risking of that as well. Is that why Mountain Protocol is like attractive?

• 58:01Speaker 03

  I think it's, as you mentioned, I mean, we need to diversify risk, you know, because I think that's kind of, I'm not an expert, but it's kind of the whole thesis around asset management, you know, you need to put your eggs in different baskets and each basket in different trains in order to have, you know, a secure investment. And I think what they did was one of the first, at least as far as I know, which start offering these high-yield T-bills to the public through, to the public, but through tokenized assets, which is, I think, really interesting in terms of what else you can

• 58:42Speaker 03

  do on-chain, which is blended also with the TroyFi ecosystem. I think that is where also the, the, the, the, let's say, this war is heading. It's not just black or white. It's all those grays in the middle, which make all these products super interesting, you know, and you need to test it. You need to kind of, you know, go through that, yeah, experience and get the most and translate that into really powerful product, you know. I'm gonna add like a ugly truth.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  In terms of the security of the risk on the yielding, I'm sorry to say the user doesn't care. They don't care. You try to explain to them, they don't care. They say, "Oh, 10 million percent why?" I think that those solutions like Manta are really good, especially for companies like us, that we don't want trouble. We don't want to be, you know, like, like machine ski and so on. And, I mean, it's, it's kind of like, it's sad because you, you want them to understand the risk, but they, they are not gonna care. I think you will lose users, but you will use the users that are more after that yielding. The users that, for example, you add, add, add value to, they're gonna stick. So even like, you know, like purchase out your mercenary users.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  So I think that we are like, kind of like, in, in, in that era, we saw what happened with all of these companies that fought for the highest yield, and we, we are not longer in, in that race. And if, if the users want to do it, they will find the platforms. They will find those, you know, sense use app of, of the world. And I hope they, they don't disappear. Yeah.

• 1:00:29David Hoffman?

  New projects are coming online to the Mantle Layer 2 every single week. Why is this happening? Maybe it's because Mantle has been on the frontier of Layer 2 design architecture since it first started building Mantle DA, powered by technology from EigenDA. Maybe it's because users are coming on to the Mantle Layer 2 to capture some of the highest yields available in DeFi, and to automatically receive the points and tokens being accrued by the $3 billion Mantle Treasury in the Mantle Rewards Station. Maybe it's because the Mantle team is one of the most helpful teams to build with, giving you grants, liquidity support, and venture partners to help bootstrap your Mantle application. Maybe it's all of these reasons all put together. So if you're a dev and you want to build on one of the best foundations in crypto, or you're a user looking to claim some ownership on Mantle's DeFi apps, click the link in the show notes to getting started with Mantle.

• 1:01:14David Hoffman?

  The Uniswap extension is here. The self custody wallet, created by the most trusted team in DeFi, Uniswap Labs, designed to make swapping feel effortless. This extension lives in your browser's sidebar, letting you swap, sign transactions, and send or receive crypto without Ever losing your place on the internet. Plus, with human-readable transaction messages, you'll always know exactly what you're signing. Navigate a multi-chain world effortlessly with support for 11 chains like Ethereum Mainnet, Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism. No more chain switching or token importing. All your assets are right where you need them to be. The Uniswap extension is designed to level up your swapping experience with other Uniswap Labs products as well. Easily onboard to the extension using the Uniswap Mobile Wallet to begin managing your assets across platforms and take advantage of smooth, seamless synergies with the Uniswap Web App.

• 1:01:58David Hoffman?

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• 1:02:42David Hoffman?

  Introducing the Obol Contributions Program. Visit obol.org/banklist to stake on DVs, either through a partner staking protocol or at home. Earn access to future governance and ownership in Obol while contributing to retroactive funding for projects that are actively decentralizing Ethereum. This is your opportunity to secure inclusion in one of the most important projects working to scale Ethereum's foundation for future growth. Visit obol.org/banklist to get started. That's O-B-O-L dot org slash banklist. What's it been like building under the laws of Argentina? And so this is a very new industry. Crypto in Argentina is very huge. How have the laws of Argentina either gotten in the way? Or what's nice about building in Argentina? Like, what is it like to build under this regulatory environment?

• 1:03:27David Hoffman?

  Fun. Yeah?

• 1:03:30David Hoffman?

  Stressful, those. Stressful?

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  No, but to be, to be, to be fair, I mean... My, my previous company was an exchange, one of the first in Latam. And we opened a bank account in 2015.

• 1:03:45Speaker 03

  And at that time, and still today, banks have been the de facto regulators in the ecosystem in many ways.

• 1:03:54Speaker 03

  And I think Argentina is pretty innovative and they, they, they kind of open your arms to, to do stuff, which I don't see in the US, for example. I mean, you have clear opposition from the government against crypto and that's a motherfucker, you know, because it incentivizes innovation. So right now we have a regulation here for BASP license. My fear is that that will kill innovation because two guys or two girls in a garage, maybe they don't have enough assets to actually build a company of this characteristic. But I think in general, you know, it has been pretty open, pretty innovative, a lot of, you know, laissez faire in a way.

• 1:04:40Speaker 03

  You need to play ball. If you're a froster, you will go down really quickly. We have a, let's say, a heritage of lots of ponces in Argentina, mostly in places where people are not well educated, which is obviously backfires to you because main media say, this new Ponzi called SoBe Cash and they put a picture of Bitcoin, which doesn't make sense, you know. But that's part of the education process.

• 1:05:08Speaker 03

  So, yeah, I mean, obviously things take time, but I don't know, maybe I'm, I'm just old, you know.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  I, I was gonna say, Manu, that you had a totally different experience than I did. For me, for me it was super hard, man.

• 1:05:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  It was hard for the banks. We got shut down. We opened a bank account, three months later, got shut down. We had to say, we are a software company. We had to say, we are tokenizing, got shut down. It was, oh, again, we gotta open a new account. And we went to these, these crazy banks that didn't understand like what we were doing until they figured it out and shut it down. Then you didn't know if you would wake up and your company, like crypto would be illegal or something like that. I remember I had such a terrible experience and you were part of it. One day we woke up, I woke up and I saw my WhatsApp, a friend sent me like a, a link of a news.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  An article, and I open and says, "The central bank is investigating crypto companies for financial intermediation." I say, "What is financial intermediation?" And I ask my complaint, and the guy, he says, "Chelo, that's a crime, four years of jail, minimum." He's like, "No, man, no way." I ask, "Is there wifi in jail?" He's like, "No, no." And then I call Fae, I say, "Hey, guys, did you see this? So you didn't know if at the next day you will be not only shut down or block your operations, but even you could go to jail if these crazy guys decided to." And I think that that has changed a lot since then. And I know, Manu, what you mentioned in the regulation is true, but it also gives peace, you know, because you cannot invent a new regulation.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  This is the regulation. I mean, that's it. It's written here, and it gives clear rules for everyone.

• 1:06:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, I have, you know, mixed feelings with regulation. I think it's, um, regulation, it's a really easy way to build new businesses for lawyers, for selling their time, you know? Because, I mean, it's what we see every day. I think the main thing, and this is something that we discussed like two years ago, it's actual, um, security around the law. So if these are the actual regulation or laws that apply, stick to it. And you know you won't go out of business, or you don't have this surprise visit or whatever.

• 1:07:39Speaker 03

  But changing the rules of engagement all the time, that's the main problem with Argentina. That's what I think Chelo was also saying. But from my point of view, you don't need to have a regulation to actually have rules of engagement. You have other laws which implies, you know, don't do in fraud and other stuff around that. But I agree that hopefully we'll see it maybe in one year or two, regulation will bring more external investment, which is, I think, the only thing that Argentina is lacking. So talking to you, BCS, come invest in Argentina, which is what we did, you know?

• 1:08:19Speaker 02

  Exactly, adding to what Manu said, you have regulation and you have regulation like in Argentina. That is something that changes every day and that you can, you know, wake up one day, especially in the, on the weekends. They put like a new regulation and everything changes and you have to go run and change everything, you know, the, in the back end, the back office and all that stuff. And having said that, I think we crypto companies thrived in, in that ecosystem because crypto was a way of tool in order to like find a way to all of the, um, trabajo, how do you say, like the, the, the new bloggers that we had.

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  So in that sense, I think it was good for crypto, you know, all of those regulations and, you know, uncertainty about what was, what was going to happen.

• 1:09:07Speaker 01

  I have, I have two points. The first, in terms of regulation, I agree, Manu, eh, in terms of innovation, but something that we did that was really important on the regulation is that eh, it didn't mess with, it didn't touch the decentralized world. So even like we went discussing with our regulator and say, oh, let's make this, eh, you know, um, have to, for the self custodial wallets, they have to reach it. No, no, no, self custodial, everything, let's just keep that aside, let's keep that innovation open. And basically what it is today in Argentina is not so complicated. It's just this VASP, which is kind of virtual accessory provider registry, that you need some, um, you know, um, standards to comply with.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  And then you have to comply with the anti-money laundry and terrorism unit so that, uh, you know, you can interoperate with our systems. But this brings a lot of new cases. Um, because you are institutionalized, um, you know, you have this regulation for these institutions. Then it allows, for example, we had two weeks ago, the first company that was created where the treasure is in Bitcoin and stablecoins. And this is because it has a VASP behind it. Then there's gonna be this big taxation event, this tax exemption event called the blanque, where if you had money that you didn't declare, you can declare it. How, how do you come to?

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  Tax amnesty.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  Tax amnesty, yeah.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  Where, I mean, if we didn't have this regulation, then you probably wouldn't be able to do it with crypto. You should be only with dollars. Now with crypto, because we have this, this, this standard, we can, it's bringing more opportunities. I think that it can, even in the future, real world assets or tokenization, I think it's going to be really important to have that. And if we keep the decentralized world out of regulations, I think that's fine.

• 1:11:01Speaker 03

  I agree, I agree. We need to kill some taxes. So here we, you pay taxes for the things that you, with, I think withholding taxes. In this, uh, being a person, you know, with a wealth tax, which is, you know, nonsense. Uh, so I think, yeah, overall, I think the, the long-term value is there.

• 1:11:25Speaker 03

  My, my only concern, because I see this in New York, bid license, kill the business, Mexico, the same. So there's a few cases in which a bad regulation can kill the industry. And I think as, as players in the country, you need to work on, on that direction, you know? It's not just our business, but the actual ecosystem that you need to protect in order to have a bigger cake, let's say.

• 1:11:52David Hoffman?

  So the answers I'm getting, it doesn't seem that crypto has really been targeted as an industry. It's the laws and regulation around finance as a whole that you guys are having to work around. There's no like crypto-specific laws that are targeting or oppressing the crypto industry. Is that right?

• 1:12:09Speaker 03

  So bus licenses from this year. So it's pretty new. And it's mostly, as Chilo said, registry and you need to inform movements and it's more on the E M L side, you know?

• 1:12:21David Hoffman?

  How has the entrance of Javier Millay becoming president, not terribly long ago, six, seven months ago? How did that change any, like doing business in Argentina, being a crypto business in Argentina? How did that change things?

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  I can start with an external point of view.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  I was in Silicon Valley, I think, two months ago, and the last time was in 2022. So when I went in 2022, every VC asked me the same question. When are you leaving Argentina?

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  When is your company going to be in another market? And you had to make these plans on, you know, how to get another market and so on. Uh, this time that I went, eh, not even one asked me that. Actually, what they asked was, how much can you grow in Argentina? So I think on one side, it changed the perspective a lot on the risk associated with Argentina. Uh, Javier, Javier Millay, and I think that man who, the access of capital, I think this is going to be, you know, really, really good for the, for the entire industry. Um, and then in the, in terms of the, the millais internal, well, we have this secretary of, how do you call it? And regulation, deregulation.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  So you have this guy with job is to take out regulations. So I, we're just waiting, waiting.

• 1:13:43Speaker 03

  You know, the other day in the, in the space with Elon Musk and, and Trump, and Trump said, hey, Elon, you are my deregulation guy. So this first, which was, used to be the, the president of the central bank. He's in charge of basically stark killing regulation, which is stopping the, the acceleration of Argentina.

• 1:14:02Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm pro-business, pro-acceleration. I think this guy kind of goes in the right direction. Maybe the most conservative agenda I'm not totally, you know, aligned with. But I think he definitely he put us in the map again, you know, uh, being in with Elon Musk, with Mark Zuckerberg or all these guys. I think that's super impressive because you don't get to know, get to meet with these guys really easily. And, and I think, you know, the Argentina deserves, you know, kind of a new, uh, new opportunity to, to come back to the, to the world.

• 1:14:39David Hoffman?

  On the 22nd of, so that's the next week at the time of recording is the regulatory and just, there's a lot of administrators coming to ALEF to actually be here. I also just learned that Javier Millay has an actual blockchain advisor on his board. Diego, who is in charge of digital transformation, is like building a crypto app sponsored by the city of Buenos Aires, which is pretty cool. And so, and I also think there's a chance that Javier Millay will also be here himself for that week here, for that day in ALEF. What are you guys hopeful for to come out of that day, of that regulatory day, when the crypto industry has the eyes and

• 1:15:21David Hoffman?

  the ears of everyone who's writing the rules of crypto and business in Argentina? What are you hopeful? Like, how do you guys want to see progress to be made?

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  I can start if you guys want. I think that the regulation we have today, it's at the minimum, and I hope it doesn't change. Like, most things in Argentina, they keep it that. But it allows something new, besides the new cases, which is the tax reforms. So today, like, no one even understands if they have to pay taxes on crypto or not. And it's really, like, difficult if you want to buy a house, like, how are you buying that? How, did you have that money declared or not? So I think that it could be interesting if we take advantage of Argentina's dominant position in terms of adoption in Latam and in the world.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  And if we can do something like Portugal or other states that, you know, those taxes are not gonna get, you're not gonna get money from those taxes anyways. So why don't we use that and make some exemptions that accelerate the industry and accelerate Argentina as the capital crypto? So I hope that this tributary effects kind of this week is useful for that.

• 1:16:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I have some faith into, which is, sounds really weird coming from me, but on these guys, leading these organizations, because I think it's the first time in a long time, which they put people which are experts on the matter. I think the thing that needs to happen is, so, I don't want to be against socialists.

• 1:17:07David Hoffman?

  Socialist?

• 1:17:08Speaker 03

  No, no, socialist, sociologists.

• 1:17:12David Hoffman?

  Sociologists?

• 1:17:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the ex-CMB guy, the head was guy from the socialist, which is nonsense, you know, and this guy, Ricardo Silva, is a lawyer from Capital Markets, so he knows the actual thing, and the same happens with the central bank. I think what Chilo said around taxation, it's key, and having, I think, also, an open channel of conversation with them, which is something that has come back, is super important, because last government, last administration was a mess. You know, it's kind of, if you're a private company, you're the enemy, and, which is nonsense,

• 1:17:57Speaker 03

  you know, so having this, you know, communication channel open, is something which is building again, and it's super important for a good regulation and good pace of business to actually happen, you know.

• 1:18:12David Hoffman?

  What are you guys hopeful for, out of Javier Millay's presidency, or even just Argentina more broadly, over the next two to five years? Are you guys optimistic? Are you guys worried about something? What comes to mind about crypto's future in Argentina?

• 1:18:27Speaker 02

  I'm really optimistic with Millay. And what I want out of Millay is that he, I mean, I trust him in that he can make like this cultural, you know, social change, in that, you know, corrupt, you know, populist, authoritarian government can never come back, or a party that can't compete with that, I think that's, for me, for Millay, is the most important part, you know, that cultural change, that for me is the most important.

• 1:19:05Speaker 01

  I was gonna say that maybe this is not the best for like OG crypto businesses and for the Cuevas. But something that is happening, I think, and you guys can correct me especially. I think that this year, if you held pesos in a money market, was better than holding dollars. Is it true? Yep. So it's something interesting happening where even like in our company, some people are like, I can't get paid in pesos. So I think this is something that maybe for the, you know, old school crypto businesses. You know, the demand for dollars might die out. We don't know. Maybe it's impacted. But in the end, it's gonna be good for the country.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  So I think that people having more money is in the long, in the long run is better for all of our companies. Because they have more wealth, they can use more money, they can invest more. So I hope that his economical policies keep, keep going and we can battle inflation finally. And yeah, get out of this hole that we are in.

• 1:20:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that, so I met Javier in 2020, before he was even a candidate for, for the Congress.

• 1:20:20Speaker 03

  And I think the, the, the speech has been pretty much the same, which is, he, he talks about, you know, destroying the central bank. The subtext of that is, you know, competing currencies, which I think is awesome. But for that, you need, that means that you could pay with Bitcoin. But in order to do that, you need, or whatever other cryptocurrency, you need to take out the taxes imposed right now in each of these transactions made by whenever selling capital gains on, on these assets. I think competing on assets will definitely be super cool for not only the country, but also to the ecosystem.

• 1:21:00Speaker 03

  Because you will be, have more incentives to actually go to the merchant and say, hey, start accepting crypto because it's legal. Sometimes people don't do it because they don't have clarity in terms of what will happen. Uh, I think that is, I think. Super interesting and it's to happen. And then, you know, time will tell. Obviously, we live in Argentina. I'm pro Argentina. We want to, to, I have a daughter. I want, you know, my daughter to be in Argentina because it's where we have my friends, my family. And I think it's a terrific place to live, a lot of freedom. This chaotic, you know, this, this mixture between chaos and freedom, I think, and, and, and let's say, uh, some sort of, um,

• 1:21:41Speaker 03

  um, well, Argentina, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a really rich country, poorly managed, you know? So I think if we kind of tweak a few things, we can make a really interesting place to, to live in.

• 1:21:55David Hoffman?

  There's something interesting about Argentines and Argentine culture that I've picked up on just from the time that I've, I've spent here is that there's a lot of, uh, people in crypto in Argentina that got very wealthy just from being in crypto, just because they got in in 2013, 2015. Uh, and they had the opportunity to go live somewhere else, go live in Mexico, go to the United States, go, go anywhere. Uh, but, but no Argentine I, I've really met really wants to stay away from Argentina from all that long. Uh, they all want to come back home. They want their Osados. They want their family. Uh, yet also, uh, all of you Argentines always kind of like chirp at all the other Argentines about like, there's a lack of trust amongst Argentines.

• 1:22:36David Hoffman?

  Uh, they're like, I heard a joke recently where, um, I can't remember who said it, but they said, if you want your crypto company to succeed, you put an Argentine at the helm steering the ship. But if you want your company to fail, you'll put two Argentines at the helm. Uh, and there, there's something about like, uh, maybe it's the culture of the corruption that has been in the government for so long that maybe there's a lack of trust. How do you guys see, uh, this, if crypto, as we know it, comes and, and does all of the things that we want it to for the world, including Argentina? How, how are you guys hopeful that that might help some of this like cultural change come to, come to Argentina?

• 1:23:15Speaker 03

  I think it's giving power to the people, in a way. It's taking out all the things that can go wrong and from centralized authorities and giving the chance of people actually having that power in terms of money, privacy, life, future, your wealth, you know, whatever. And I think, at least how I see this, it's if we, I mean, one successful outcome of Bello should be Bello eating themselves, itself, you know, cannibalizing and making every user a self-custodial sovereign individual.

• 1:24:00Speaker 03

  How much time it will take, I don't know. Hopefully, that happens and we have a more educated people, more free, more powerful, more sovereign. That's what I see, you know?

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna say, I think Argentina, and I don't want to be like Argentina classic arrogance, but the things we live as a society, I think that we are a bit advanced on the rest. Like, today we're talking about how capital controls in the US could be a thing, and for us it's like, it's crazy. And everybody, you ask a taxi driver, he's gonna say, "No, man, we already experienced that."

• 1:24:44Speaker 02

  More like a dystopia in that sense, ahead of time.

• 1:24:47Speaker 03

  Exactly. So we went through the wrong path so many years that we have a society that matures and, I think, has an advantage compared to the rest of the world. With crypto, I think we can give them these tools, these superpowers, to put Argentina in the map and to make, you know, us worthy again and Manu's daughter have a good future. So I hope this makes the world and the country better.

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  Exactly, I think we Argentinians are one of the best people in the world, prepared to use crypto as a tool, you know? And that's really, that's really good for us.

• 1:25:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I think it's also why, it's important why. So Argentina, it's a land of heritage. Italians, Spaniards, you know, mostly Europeans fleeing from hunger and war. And there is this deep desire to progress through hard work. And it's something I think we are kind of, you know, getting back. And it's through the private sector that you can actually do that, not through the state. And culturally speaking also, Argentina, at least in Latin America, has been one of the lighthouse of progress in many ways.

• 1:26:06Speaker 03

  And it's not because we are superior or whatever, it's obviously not true. But I think it's that, that pulls, that, that grit into, hey, we need to succeed at any cost because we have gone through so shitty situations and we know everything can go wrong. So we kind of have that ability, you know, to actually go through and progress. So I think that's, that's one of the things that also make Argentina and Argentinians world quite interesting, you know?

• 1:26:39David Hoffman?

  Manu, Fede, Salo, thank you guys so much for coming on the podcast today and giving me a little window into crypto in Argentina. And this is my third time in Argentina over the last number of years or so. And I enjoy my time down with all the Argentines every single time. Maybe it's because of the Asado, maybe it's because I can use USDC on my phone. But there's something magical about Argentina. And so thank you guys for being a part of that magic.

• 1:27:03Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 1:27:03Speaker 02

  Thank you, David.