Decoding Argentina: The Daily Life of a Web3 Invisible Superpower, Where Stablecoins Have Become a Necessity for Survival

Original Title: Decoding Argentina: The Daily Life of a Web3 Hidden Power, Stablecoins Have Become a Necessity for Survival

Original author: Laughing

Source of the original text:

Reprinted: Mars Finance

I've been in Argentina for almost two weeks attending Devconnect. Argentina is the farthest country from China, and there are relatively few attendees this time, almost all of whom are developers and builders. I hope this article can help bridge some information gaps. First, let's talk about a few counterintuitive phenomena I've observed here:

· Argentina is the country with the highest adoption rate of stablecoins in the world, and it also has the highest Crypto penetration rate in the entire Western Hemisphere.

In large cities, almost all stores (restaurants, cafes, supermarkets, taxis) can scan the Mercado Pago QR code to pay with USDC.

· There are over 6,000 underground OTC shops on the streets operating U exchange business, with revenues higher than banks.

· Argentina's hidden Web3 superpower: contributing 4-6% of Ethereum's GitHub code volume in 2025 (the first among non-English speaking countries), approximately 1/4 of the core infrastructure in the global Ethereum ecosystem has Argentine genes.

Let's discuss in detail below.

1. Crypto has already transformed from “speculation” to “daily infrastructure” in Argentina.

Argentina has become a textbook case of cryptocurrency adoption globally, where the driving force is pragmatism, unlike the speculative-driven markets in Asia and Europe.

As mentioned at the beginning, Argentina has the highest cryptocurrency penetration rate in the Western Hemisphere (approximately 22.8%), with a stablecoin adoption rate as high as 61.8% (the highest in the world).

About 5 million people use crypto assets in their daily lives, with this proportion reaching as high as 25-30% among the young group aged 18-35. For many post-00s, crypto wallets are their “main bank accounts,” rather than traditional banks.

Crypto payments have been seamlessly implemented in Argentina, where almost all offline transactions in major cities support QR code payments.

It is not that merchants directly receive U, but rather that they utilize the interoperability standards of Mercado Pago (which can be understood as Argentina's Alipay):

Users use crypto wallets like Lemon and Belo to scan the merchant's fiat QR code, and the backend automatically completes the process of “on-chain USDC → bridging to local payment gateway → exchanging for pesos → merchant receiving payment.”

This Off-ramp experience is extremely smooth and fully compliant.

2. The most profitable Crypto business is the street “deposit and withdrawal” hole-in-the-wall shops.

On the streets of Buenos Aires, small shops (commonly known as cuevas) with signs saying “Compro USDT pago efectivo” can be seen everywhere, with statistics indicating that there will be approximately 4,000-6,000 such shops throughout the city by 2025.

Peak daily revenue per store is 10,000 to 20,000 USD, with a profit margin of 5-8%. Many stores have a net profit exceeding that of traditional bank branches in a year.

They are essentially offline P2P intermediaries that help ordinary people bypass the official monthly limit of $200 and a 60% tax, becoming the most resilient and profitable part of the Argentine crypto ecosystem.

3. Argentina is the hidden Web3 superpower.

More than half of the hardest infrastructure in the Ethereum ecosystem (such as OpenZeppelin, Hardhat, Decentraland, POAP, etc.) comes from Argentinians, contributing 4-6% of the Ethereum GitHub code volume in 2025 (the highest among non-English speaking countries).

Among the 150,000 developers nationwide, about 20,000 to 30,000 focus on Web3 (the highest in Latin America), and there are core contributors from Argentina in top protocols like Lido, Uniswap, Aave, and Chainlink.

Vitalik said in an exclusive interview with Infobae during Devconnect: “I have been coming to Argentina almost every year since 2021; it is one of the largest and most active crypto communities I have seen globally.”

Argentina is still one of the largest countries for remote worker output in the world (commonly ranking in the top three on Upwork/Fiverr), with developer salaries only 1/3 of those in the United States, but top-notch quality, good English, and a friendly time zone.

Why do Argentinians love crypto so much?

After Milei took office, inflation has been reduced from 211% to 31.3%. Why has the enthusiasm of Argentinians for Crypto increased even more?

From the perspective of a local:

· An annual inflation of 30% is a disaster anywhere in the world;

· The peso continues to depreciate, and the feeling of “one price a day” hasn't changed;

· Capital controls are only relaxed in individual segments, far from achieving free convertibility.

For them:

Crypto is no longer a question of “whether to invest,” but rather a question of “how to lock away the money needed for living in something that won't evaporate.”

In conclusion:

In Argentina, crypto and stablecoins are not a technological narrative, but the financial infrastructure that ordinary people rely on for survival.