The “eBay of South America”, MercadoLibre, is pushing the adoption of Bitcoin and co. The e-commerce retailer now enables customers to trade cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin is still in the red. On Tuesday morning, the cryptocurrency recorded a price loss of 2.2 percent compared to yesterday’s trading day. On a weekly basis, this results in a minus of almost 7 percent. At press time, BTC is trading at $ 56,172.
A similar picture emerges in the altcoin sector as well. The ten most valuable cryptocurrencies in terms of market capitalization all recorded price drops between 1.3 and 3.3 percent. This also includes Avalanche (AVAX), which only set a new all-time high two days ago. On a weekly basis, the numbers of the Ethereum competitor are still impressive. Overall, AVAX grew by almost 40 percent.
MercadoLibre wants to offer customers access to Bitcoin and Co.
Although the prices seem a bit on the spot today, something is happening in terms of Bitcoin adoption. More precisely: in South America. Because how Bloomberg reported, the continent’s largest e-commerce retailer plans to MercadoLibreto enable its customers to invest in the world of cryptocurrencies. This is explicitly the Group’s digital payment provider – MercadoPago. This should promptly launch a corresponding service in Brazil.
MercadoLibre founder and CEO Marcos Galperin responded to the Bloomberg report Twitter. In it he texted:
In #Brazil, @MercadoLivre and @mercadopago users can buy, hold and sell crypto.
Marcos Galperin on Twitter
It is not the first time that MercadoLibre has approached crypto space. In April of this year, the “eBay of South America” accepted Bitcoin as a means of payment for real estate transactions in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires. Now the company is expanding its activities. Trading in cryptocurrencies is initially limited to Brazil, but is likely to be expanded to other Latin American countries in the foreseeable future. If you look at the number of active users of the platform (78.7 million in Q3 2021), you can get an idea of the effect this could have on the crypto space.