A little more than a year ago, Crecimiento (opens new window) was still just an idea.

On April 28, 2024, after weeks of brainstorming, late-night conversations, and endless Telegram messages, during The Mu’s pop-up city (opens new window) in the heart of Buenos Aires, a group of dreamers from across the globe came together to ignite something bold. Not a startup, not an event. A movement. One designed to support thousands of startups, put Argentina’s financial infrastructure onchain, and bring prosperity to millions. We didn’t wait for permission. We got to work.

I had a ticket to Berlin for the following week. My old life was waiting for me there. I was a nomad at the time. I’ve always been drawn to the idea of exploring different corners of the world, coming and going, spending some time in Argentina and some time elsewhere. After living in Rome for a few years and then Valencia for all of 2022, I spent 2023 drifting across the Balkans, Northern Europe, and Turkey. In April 2024, the plan was to stop briefly in Buenos Aires before settling in Berlin. But the energy here — raw, urgent, creative — changed everything. I couldn’t leave. I had to join Crecimiento. I couldn’t walk away from the Argentine Opportunity.

In this post, I outline why Argentina in 2025 is uniquely positioned to lead the world in crypto adoption and institution-building, how Crecimiento emerged to catalyze this transformation, and why I stayed to help drive this movement.

The Argentine Opportunity

Argentina is the only country in the world that combines two rare ingredients: massive bottom-up adoption and talent at scale, and regulators willing to support innovation and economic activity. Some countries, like El Salvador, Singapore, or the US, have favorable policy environments. Others, like Nigeria or Turkey, have high user adoption driven by economic necessity and where their populations use crypto to thrive. Argentina has both. The perfect sandwich, with a secret ingredient: some of the most talented builders in the industry.

Argentinians have helped build the pillars of crypto: from deploying the first version of DAI, auditing USDT, or inventing the ERC-20 and the metaverse. With 20% crypto adoption from real people, Argentina is solving real problems. Its unreal devs are crafting unreal tech.

Crecimiento exists to help crypto make the most of the Argentinian Opportunity. Crecimiento is not a community, a marketing campaign, an accelerator, a VC, or an event. Crecimiento is a movement of thousands of people who believe in the possibility of crypto to improve people's lives. Adoption, regulation and talent make Argentina the best place to build. And the moment is now.

I’ll be clear about my bias. My path — studying how economies grow, choosing entrepreneurship over politics or philosophy, trusting technology to amplify value — still guides me. Value is created when people can freely exchange, and technology multiplies those exchanges.

That’s the promise of crypto. My fear has always been that we’d rebuild the same old systems with faster rails. My hope is that we’ll build new institutions instead. That’s why I left Berlin. That’s why I’m here.

If we succeed, we will transform an entire country for the best. We improve the lives of millions of people and inspire many more. We will prove crypto useful and bring meaning to this industry, accelerating adoption and human progress all over the world.

In just over a year, Crecimiento has connected thousands of people, serving as the connective tissue between the people that shaped the industry, fresh generations of talented builders and grassroot communities and global networks, like Protocol Labs, Ethereum Foundation, Lisk, ZKsync, Funding the Commons, and many others.

Why a Movement

Technology only lasts when it is rooted in people, in culture, in daily life. Without that foundation, it is just code. With it, it becomes durable.

Argentina shows this clearly. Here, crypto is not a speculative playground — it’s civic and economic. It’s how millions of people protect their salaries, move money, and build small islands of stability in an unstable system. But adoption at this scale doesn’t come from one product or one leader. It takes thousands of people, each following their own dreams, aligned (consciously or not) around a shared cause. Builders, researchers, founders, investors, users. Each pushing in different directions, yet adding to the same current. That is what makes this a movement.

And movements are what change trajectories. They compound energy across time and space. They inspire. Turning isolated sparks into fire. Think of Maradona: his greatness did not lie only in the goals that he scored, but in the myth he became, fueling the dreams of millions of children who carried his spirit forward each time they touched a ball. Talent, when multiplied through inspiration, creates generations.

Argentina’s crypto movement has that same dynamic. It is not defined by a single application or moment of crisis, but by the ongoing creativity of people who refuse to give up. This is the difference between being “a country with inflation that uses crypto” and being “the first real crypto nation of the world.” Necessity explains adoption, but it is talent and the willingness to organize that talent into something larger that turns survival into leadership.

Movements matter because they allow thousands of independent initiatives to align without central control. They provide coherence to otherwise independent active bodies. They make it possible for one person’s experiment to ripple into another person’s breakthrough. Over time, those ripples become waves strong enough to shift institutions and rewrite what seemed inevitable.

That’s why Argentina’s crypto story isn’t just about tools — it’s about people. A movement of people who, by following their own paths, are building something greater together.

Examples of Real-World Adoption in Argentina

Crypto adoption in Argentina is not an abstract promise. It’s real. You can see it in how people save, how institutions experiment, and how startups are building. Here are just a few examples.

1. Stablecoins and Savings
Stablecoins are the lifeline of Argentina’s digital economy. In a country where inflation tocpped 200% in 2023 and salaries lose value overnight, millions convert their paychecks into USDT or USDC the day they are received. By 2024, stablecoins still made up more than 60% of crypto purchases, even as Bitcoin rallied to record highs.

Apps like Lemon, Belo, and Bitso have normalized this behavior, issuing debit cards that let users spend stablecoins as if they were pesos. The rails are invisible: tap a card, buy groceries, and behind the scenes you’re transacting in digital dollars. Stablecoin adoption was a great solution for thousands of families to reduce the impact of inflation.

2. Tokenization Pilot
But Argentina is not just adoption. There’s also a very promising movement at the institutional level. Crecimiento and other key industry leaders helped shape the CNV’s (Argentina’s SEC) launch of a tokenization sandbox under General Resolution 1069/2025. This initiative allows mutual funds and trust certificates to be issued onchain — a major step toward integrating blockchain into the country’s financial system.

Startups are already building on this foundation. BoulderTech, founded by Rodrigo Benzaquen, ex-MercadoLibre, is working with some of the country's greatest real estate owners to enable the next wave of adoption through bringing Real World Assets onchain. Berry, a startup by young developers, allows Argentinians to access the US stock market through tokenization. Betrusty, from the Crecimiento Startup Ecosystem, is working to tokenize rent access.

Tokenization in Argentina is no longer theoretical. It’s underway, driven by regulators, major asset holders, and a new generation of builders.

3. QuarkID and Digital Identity
Argentina became one of the first countries in the world to pilot blockchain-based identity at scale. Through QuarkID, millions of citizens in Buenos Aires can now access official documents onchain, such as birth certificates, marriage licenses, and proof of residence.

This matters because identity is the foundation of civic life. A secure, portable, and verifiable digital identity opens the door for broader access to public services, financial inclusion, and cross-border recognition. By anchoring identity on blockchain rails, Argentina is showing how web3 can upgrade not just money, but the very infrastructure of citizenship.

4. Other Use Cases Emerging
Beyond savings and regulation, crypto adoption is spreading into unexpected corners of Argentine life:

• Real estate: In January 2024, Argentina saw its first rental contract signed in Bitcoin—an early sign that property markets are willing to experiment with crypto rails.
• Football economy: The world’s most passionate football nation is experimenting with tokenization, from securitizing future earnings of young players to the first transfer of an Argentine footballer paid fully in crypto. For fans and clubs alike, crypto is becoming part of the sport’s financial fabric.
• Justice system: Even the judiciary is testing blockchain. The Supreme Court of Mendoza partnered with Kleros to pilot decentralized arbitration mechanisms, exploring how disputes could be resolved more transparently.

These cases show how crypto is not confined to finance. It is bleeding into housing, sports, and justice — domains that define everyday civic life in Argentina.

Where We Are Now

The time is now. Argentina stands at a rare intersection: decades of crisis and resilience, years of community and talent building, and a global industry finally paying attention. Crypto here isn’t an experiment anymore. It’s already part of daily life. What started as survival is turning into leadership.

Crecimiento helped give this energy a face, a name, and momentum. The recent Aleph Hackathon was a great proof of it: more than 1,300 hackers across the country and dozens of universities and communities hosting local chapters. It wasn’t about breaking records on numbers or prizes. It was about impact, about showing what happens when Argentina’s raw talent gets the chance to build.

Now comes the next push. Devconnect is around the corner. Argentina will host a season of builder programs (opens new window) — residencies, tracks, hackathons — leading straight into LabWeek Web3 (opens new window), where local builders will sit next to global networks and ideas will turn into institutions. The perfect next step of a historical process that is transforming a country, and the crypto industry with it.

It’s time to build. Time to support Argentina. Time to bring it onchain. Movements don’t wait for permission. They don’t predict the future—they create it. Argentina is already proving what’s possible. The only question left is who’s brave enough to join.

Santi Cristobal is the managing director of Crecimiento (opens new window), a growing movement of web3 builders based in Buenos Aires.