Welcome to Latam Insights Encore, a deep dive into Latin America’s most relevant economic and crypto news from the past week. This edition explores how digital currency is prepared to take over the world, and how even nations that first banned it, like Bolivia, will rely on it sooner or later.

Latam Insights Encore: Bolivia: Another Domino Falls on the Road to Crypto Adoption

We are not in the early days of crypto anymore. I remember when I got to the crypto stage, in the middle of the so-called blockchain war, the concept of ETFs, bitcoin reserves, and the word institutional were still a dream in the ecosystem.

Nonetheless, these are now a reality, and crypto has become mainstream thanks in part to the push of the current U.S. administration. Now, even countries that had first banned crypto to “protect” their financial and economic system from “contagion” are opening their hands to crypto and digital currencies.

Bolivia, the South American nation, is perhaps one of the biggest and most unknown countries to have done a 180-degree turn on this subject.

In 2020, Bolivia issued a blanket ban on cryptocurrency assets, forbidding banks from using, marketing, and trading crypto assets in the national payment system. So they had one of the hardest stances on crypto out there.

Fast forward to 2024, and the dam broke. In June, the central bank lifted this ban, with crypto volumes more than doubling in just three months after lifting these prohibitions.