What Is Latin America’s Love for Bitcoin? Feat. Sebastian Serrano

Latin America has been in the middle of the crypto community’s attention after El Salvador adopted bitcoin as a legal tender. But is it actually a good thing for bitcoin and for El Salvador, and will it benefit the country’s citizens?This week, “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller and Anna Baydakova are talking to Sebastian Serrano, who is the CEO of Ripio, a popular crypto wallet and exchange in Latin America.

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ABOUT

This week, “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller and Anna Baydakova are talking to Sebastian Serrano, who is the CEO of Ripio, a popular crypto wallet and exchange in Latin America.

This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network.

Ripio was founded in 2013 and since then has been expanding in the region with offices in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay as well as Mexico and Spain. Ripio bought Brazil’s second-largest exchange, BitcoinTrade, in January. (Full disclosure: One of Ripio’s early investors was Digital Currency Group, CoinDesk’s parent company.)

Latin America has been in the middle of the crypto community’s attention after El Salvador adopted bitcoin as a legal tender. But is it actually a good thing for bitcoin and for El Salvador, and will it benefit the country’s citizens? Serrano has his own take on this.

Listen as Ben and Anna talk to Sebatian about crypto use cases in Latin America, his thoughts on whether other countries would follow El Salvador’s lead and accept bitcoin as money, and what Latin American nations should do about bitcoin.

Sebastian Serrano’s Twitter handle: @sserrano44

Image credit: Hernan4429/iStock/Getty Images Plus, modified by Coindesk

HOSTS

Dan Ilett

Dan Ilett writes on tech, money and energy. He advises business on digital strategy and technology messaging for large deals. He is founder of Erbut - an advisory company - and Greenbang - a smart technology research company.

Anna Baydakova

Anna writes about blockchain projects and regulation with a special focus on Eastern Europe and Russia. She is especially excited about stories on privacy, cybercrime, sanctions policies and censorship resistance of decentralized technologies.
She graduated from the Saint Petersburg State University and the Higher School of Economics in Russia and got her Master's degree at Columbia Journalism School in New York City.
She joined CoinDesk after years of writing for various Russian media, including the leading political outlet Novaya Gazeta.
Anna owns BTC and an NFT of sentimental value.

Danny Nelson

Danny was CoinDesk's managing editor for Data & Tokens. He formerly ran investigations for the Tufts Daily. At CoinDesk, his beats include (but are not limited to): federal policy, regulation, securities law, exchanges, the Solana ecosystem, smart money doing dumb things, dumb money doing smart things and tungsten cubes. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL tokens, as well as the LinksDAO NFT.

Benjamin Schiller

Benjamin Schiller is CoinDesk's managing editor for features and opinion. Previously, he was editor-in-chief at BREAKER Magazine and a staff writer at Fast Company. He holds some ETH, BTC and LINK.

Danny Bradbury

Danny Bradbury has been a professional writer since 1989, and has worked freelance since 1994. He covers technology for publications such as the Guardian.

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