Buenos Aires Addresses Blockchain

Buenos Aires considers itself to be a crypto city and includes cryptocurrency and blockchain projects as part of its development and growth plans. Recently further statements concerning the prospects of crypto were made in Buenos Aires.

For the first time on August 11, 12 and 13 the city of Buenos Aires hosted Ethereum Latam, a three-day conference. The event connected different representatives of the crypto ecosystem and addressed topics related to blockchain technology, mainly on Ethereum, DAOs, infrastructure, NFTs and much more.

At the conference, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, the head of the city government, announced that they are promoting the use of cryptocurrencies and invited Argentinians to take part: “What we need are ideas and concerns, that bring us proposals to see what they think we can do better,” he said.

Here is one of these new ideas: at the conference Diego Fernandez, secretary of Innovation and Digital Transformation of the city, announced that the city of Buenos Aires will host a number of Ethereum validator nodes. He said that they would pursue this for exploratory and regulatory purposes. The city would be one of the pioneer cities in Latam to deploy its own cryptocurrency nodes.

Among other digital initiatives the Buenos Aires government are considering:

• tax payments with cryptocurrencies through exchanges (government will not receive crypto directly from residents but instead Argentine pesos, via conversions to be carried out by crypto companies), announced in April
• a digital blockchain identity system TangoID (only the digital identifier will be stored on blockchain, private documentation will remain in the possession of each user and will be presented by scanning a QR), announced in March and expected to go live by 2023.

Diego Fernandez has a strong belief in the future of crypto in Buenos Aires as he sees increased interest coming from the local population. He retweeted this tweet with “1000%” note:

According to him, cryptocurrency is like the internet back in 1995:

“It’s going to explode, that is, it’s going to grow a lot. I have a very positive look at the crypto world. In particular about the big ones that are established from the beginning: Bitcoin and Ethereum.” Regarding the rest of the cryptocurrencies, he says that “an immense majority will fail, as happened with the famous .com boom.”

He and other authorities of the city think that the adoption of Bitcoin, Ethereum and blockchain applications in Buenos Aires and the rest of the world will grow, and they are ready to support it.

“If there is interest on one side and political will on the other, technology can transform our quality of life,”says Larreta.

Most probably, soon we will have more “buenos” news coming from Buenos Aires to discuss, so we continue to observe.