Bolivia is quietly turning to crypto

Not long ago, Paolo Ardoino shared some photos on X showing product price tags in Bolivia labeled in USDT. At the time, many assumed these were just airport shops (where travelers might not have local currency or know the exchange rate), and the prices seemed absurdly high.

But now Reuters has dug deeper and revealed something bigger: this isn't limited to airports. In the city of Cochabamba, accepting crypto is now common practice among small businesses. Why? Two main reasons:

• The local currency is rapidly losing value due to an economic crisis.
• US dollars, the usual fallback in such cases, are simply unavailable—banks don’t sell them.

Why aren’t dollars available? Maybe demand exceeded supply. Maybe there are political reasons. But that’s beside the point. What matters is this: the dollar is easily being replaced. Not just by stablecoins, but also by other cryptocurrencies. According to Reuters, people are actively using crypto ATMs to swap their local cash for bitcoin.

I found the Bolivian response incredibly inspiring. Economic crisis? No problem. Use bitcoin for saving, use other crypto for spending. (And just to add my two sats: if you ever need to swap your savings into spending money, rabbit.io is here to help.)

It’s a shame that it took a crisis this deep to push people toward crypto. And from the price tags in Ardoino’s photos, it looks like the crisis is indeed pretty serious.