Argentina burns in crypto: from tokenized Messi to paying with USDT at the grocery store
- Larisa - LoQueArde
- Nov 28
- 4 min read
A country improvising the future at the speed of chaos: homes financed with Bitcoin without selling it,
peso-stablecoins fighting to exist, QRs that speak
every language, regulation leaving breadcrumbs, and a global ecosystem waking up again.
These signals don’t show up as trends — they appear when reality decides to move first.
Argentina is moving like it just stepped on an exposed wire.
Everything sparks.Everything outruns itself.
And in the middle of the noise, a detail appeared that sounds like a joke —
but suddenly makes the whole scene make sense:
Messi, tokenized.
It’s financing, it’s fandom, it’s blockchain dragged straight onto the grass.
It’s not a metaphor and it’s not a poster.
It’s a player turned into a digital asset,backed by a platform that already tokenized more than 220 footballers,as if the field had quietly morphed into a micro-finance boardstill smelling like match day.
And that’s the first symptom:
when the stories that used to be untouchablestart slipping through the cracks of the new system,something is shifting in scale.
(a coincidence… maybe)
Meanwhile — almost quietly —
families in Buenos Aires are buying homes
without selling a single satoshi.
They don’t sell their BTC.
They use it as collateral.
A surgical move in an ecosystem that shifts before it warns you.
In Villa Raffo there’s already an apartment being rented out
that exists thanks to that twist:
a physical property financed with an asset
that never left the wallet.
(a curious synchronicity)
That intersection between brick and code
has a strange texture:
it’s tangible but it won’t let you hold it,
like something that’s still being born
and somehow already has consequences.
On the other side of the planet,
China — which shut the door on miners in 2021 —
is starting to show signs of coming back.
The 2021 ban never killed anyone… the giant is stirring again.
If this gets confirmed, global volatility is guaranteed (for better and for chaos). (what a timing)
It’s not a technical promise.
It’s geopolitics turned into electricity.
Here, much closer to your block,
Argentina started its own race of peso-stablecoins.
First wARS —
the one you covered the exact day it appeared on Lo Que Arde.
Now ARGt.
The whole country playing a speedrun to see who tokenizes the peso first.
(all of them appearing almost at the same time)
Each one trying to capture the same ghost:a digital version of the peso that doesn’t fall apart in your hand.
And while all of that runs,
payments rearrange themselves.
Minipay now lets you pay with USDT directly in stores across Argentina and Brazil.
You scan the QR,the payment goes through,
and you haven’t touched an exchange,
a bank,or any old intermediary.
No more predatory exchange rates.
The QR became a universal language. (nicely aligned)
For tourists, Takenos did the same:QR for anyone in the country without a bank account,without having to beg for a decent exchange rate.
Meanwhile, the CNV — an institution that always moved with a slow, echoing step —got on the Devconnect stage to say something it didn’t blurt out by accident:
that they want to push digital investment.
The State admitting that digital is no longer a nerds-only hobby.
(an interesting move)
No hype, no marketing.
Just a sentence that—coming from a regulator—
sounds like tectonic plates shifting.
In the market, last week shook the impatient ones:
more than a billion dollars in leveraged traders got wiped out.
Double that if you count the entire crypto ecosystem.
Excess leverage flushed out → cleaner ground.
(pretty precise timing)
It’s not a tragedy —
it’s the kind of cleanup that makes room.
Like when you drag furniture to sweep underneath
and realize the floor still answers back.
And behind all of that,
Argentina is shaping a labor reform
that would allow employees to choose to receive part of their salary in crypto.
Nothing symbolic:direct payment in digital assets,
no converting to pesos first,
no unnecessary detours.
A door that seemed impossible two years ago
and now shows up in official drafts
as if it had just been waiting for its cue.
(a curious crossover at exactly the right moment)
It’s not in effect yet, but the direction is obvious.
The system is moving, even if it swears it isn’t.
Lovely fact for anyone who uses ChatGPT:
This creature helps me write EVERYTHING…BUT, OH WHAT A COINCIDENCE, this paragraph is the one it swallowed whole. OH WHAT A COINCIDENCE, when I put it back in, it hands it back twisted. OH WHAT A COINCIDENCE, when I touch three very specific little topics (out of a million possible topics on the planet), it jumps into the sermon of “there’s no evidence…” that NOBODY asked for.
So you know: when it plays the side character, call it out; when it gets militant, report it.Yeah, yeah, I know — I fight with the AI a lot. And?
Anyway, drama solved. Let’s get back to it before my keyboard cools down:
Put all the pieces together and a twisted, vibrant, uneasy map appears.
A country running on hunger,
testing things before they’re ready,
improvising parallel financial systems
because the official one has nowhere left to stand.
None of this is prediction,
or prophecy,
or recycled hype.
It’s something simpler and more unsettling:
reality getting ahead of itself.
🔗 Sources & Further Reading
https://www.criptonoticias.com/mineria/mineria-bitcoin-acelera-china-4-anos-prohibicion/ https://www.coindesk.com/es/markets/2025/11/24/china-returns-as-third-largest-bitcoin-mining-hub-with-a-14-share-reuters https://www.iproup.com/economia-digital/62195-opera-habilita-pagos-con-usdt-en-comercios-de-argentina-y-brasil-con-minipay https://www.ambito.com/negocios/takenos-la-startup-argentina-que-revoluciona-el-devconnect-pagos-qr-extranjeros-tiempo-record-n6215578 https://www.argentina.gob.ar/noticias/cambios-regulatorios-cnv-2025-digitalizacion-tokenizacion-y-simplificacion-normativa-en-el-mercado-de-capitales-en-idea https://www.criptofacil.com/es/la-mineria-de-bitcoin-vuelve-a-crecer-en-china-incluso-con-la-prohibicion/ https://es.marketscreener.com/noticias/la-miner-a-de-bitcoin-resurge-en-china-desafiando-la-prohibici-n-de-2021-ce7d5edcdd8bf524
And if you want to keep reading these shifts
before the headlines ruin them
we keep untangling signals over at the Burning Blog
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