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The crypto city: why San Martín de los Andes became the Silicon Valley of Patagonia

2021-07-28T15:50:11.957Z


Two fintech companies with less than three years of life raised 27.3 million dollars to expand payments in cryptocurrencies: Buenbit and Lemon.


07/28/2021 12:14

  • Clarín.com

  • Technology

Updated 07/28/2021 12:22 PM

San Martín de los Andes can already boast of being the first

“100% crypto” city in the country

: 60% of the community already seems to know that this type of digital assets are used to make purchases and

40% of its businesses already accept bitcoin .

This week there was a very important news in the field of fintech: two Argentine companies specialized in savings and payments with cryptocurrencies obtained financing for

27.3 million dollars. 

Buenbit and Lemon

, two companies that despite having less than three years of history raised this figure in two Series A bond placements with the aim of

gaining market

in the region and replicating the experience of the crypto boom in Argentina in neighboring countries.

And San Martín de los Andes, the city of Neuquén

where Lemon is from

, is already witnessing this crypto growth: founded in 2019 by a group of local youth, its main product is Lemon Cash,

a virtual wallet

to buy and sell cryptocurrencies , send and receive money and receive earnings in crypto every week.

The money, the company assured, will be used to double its workforce, improve savings options on its virtual platform and advance with the printing and distribution of prepaid cards that work with both pesos and crypto.

“Thanks to the trust of our first-line investors, we can continue to push towards a borderless payments infrastructure where we all 'speak' the same monetary language and that each Lemon user can own a part of the future on their cell phone," said Marcelo Cavazzoli , co-founder of Lemon, in a statement.

We have very good news!

🚀We received USD16.3M in financing and broke the record in Series A of Argentine fintech companies.

🇦🇷


👉 https://t.co/cA7zwKDBu5 pic.twitter.com/3EFHuQsu7Y

- Lemon (@LemonCashApp) July 27, 2021

Currently, the company has more than 60,000 clients on the waiting list to receive its "Lemon Card", a prepaid card that will combine pesos with cryptocurrencies and will allow the use of available balances in cryptocurrencies in any business thanks to an alliance with VISA

, so it would be the first of its kind to operate in Argentina.

But among Lemon's projects, perhaps the most interesting is that of turning San Martín de los Andes into a

“crypto city”.

San Martín: crypto city

The Lemon Cash card.

Photo Lemon

The shores of Lake Lácar could be experiencing a crypto boom in the area.

"We estimate that

60% of the people of San Martín de los Andes know what a Bitcoin, Tether or Ethereum is

. It is common currency and almost all its inhabitants know what it is about. And most have some savings in these assets, which They don't stop growing, "Borja Martel, one of the co-founders of Lemon Cash, told iProUP, a site specializing in tech news.

This virtual wallet works in a very simple way, similar to Mercado Pago, Modo or other means of payment with QR.

And in fact, that's what Lemon Cash aims at: being the

"Mercado Pago Cripto", since it can combine pesos and virtual currencies for payments every day.

This is how Martel graphed it: "You can go to the supermarket, rent equipment, ski or kayak, buy in the greengrocer, bakery, ice cream parlor, chocolate shop and even in a corralón. You can also rent a bike or pay in restaurants.

The data from San Martín de los Andes suggest that there is a kind of "crypto boom":

40% of the businesses that process payments with Lemon Cash through a QR

or mobile payment terminal convert funds to cryptocurrencies.

🎙 ”This is only the first step of a revolution that is beginning.

And we are not going to stop until every person in Latin America can access the potential of cryptocurrencies ”, @lemonborja (CCO and CoFounder).

pic.twitter.com/N7IZ7kgrT1

- Lemon (@LemonCashApp) July 27, 2021

According to Martel, six out of 10 retail businesses already accept their QR: from neighborhood businesses, to supermarkets and providers of tourist excursions in the area, thanks to agreements with the cameras, they explain in iProUP.

The prepaid card they use uses the balances both in pesos and in Bitcoin and

other digital currencies, to pay at any location that accepts Mastercard.

In this context of acceptance of cryptocurrencies, one of Lemon's plans with the money raised is to create a "Patagonia Crypto Valley", a city that, through blockchain and digital currencies, puts the city as a reference in these experiments of innovative technologies that in the world are already very advanced.

Buenbit, another crypto symptom

Buenbit is a platform specialized in transactions with DAI, the "digital dollar".

Photo Capture Buenbit

For its part, Buenbit announced in mid-July that it had raised $ 11 million in Series A securities from Libertus Capital and

12

other

international investors

, also to expand operations to countries in the region.

“The objective of this investment round is to consolidate Buenbit as the main player in the crypto industry at the regional level.

It is key because it allows us to continue adding the best talent to our team: we are putting together a dream team to build the leading crypto application of the future for Latin America, "said Federico Ogue, CEO and co-founder of Buenbit.

By the end of 2021, the company plans to be fully operational in

Peru, Colombia and Brazil,

and seeks to exceed one million registered users, thus achieving growth of over 200% for the year.

In this sense, the company went from having 12,000 total users in the first quarter of 2020 to 377,000 in the first half of 2021, while the total volume of operations went from 12 million dollars to almost 400 million in the same period, according to data by Buenbit.

Founded in 2018, Buenbit is a crypto platform focused on saving through DAI, a stablecoin that follows the value of the dollar, although recently it also enabled the purchase and withdrawal of the main cryptocurrencies on the market:

Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH ).

Thus, both Lemon and Buenbit push cryptocurrencies in the country and the region.

Perhaps San Martín de los Andes is the crypto lighthouse in Argentina.

.

With information from Télam.

SL

Look also

What is the Argentine start-up that was chosen by the main funds in England and the United States?

More controls on virtual operations: fintech companies must inform AFIP of their names and movements

Source: clarin

All tech articles on 2021-07-28

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